About 20 new entries to the Indonesian Cello/Strings bibliography--including 7 articles and monographs on keroncong cello pedagogy and analysis! The cello world is truly so big once we get out of strictly Western repertories and styles.
silpayamanant.wordpress.com/cello/sea-vl...
I'm working with a Peruvian flautist right now and we're looking at rep to perform. First flute/cello duo I played was the Villa-Lobos "Assobio a Jato" (several performances) back in the 90s
I also have a clarinet/piano/cello list for another group I worked with. doi.org/10.6084/m9.f...
Another project I'm working on currently--a resource page for flute and cello works by Latin American composers!
silpayamanant.wordpress.com/composition/...
Here's a breakdown of the unique composers from Global Cello events (2023-2025).
Interestingly, this masks diasporic & ethnicity info. For ex., the Central Eu composer is Austro-Persian & six N American composers are Armenian Am, Black Haitian-Am, Black Belizean-British, Filipino Am, & Indian Am.
Since starting the Global Cello series a little over a couple years ago, I've performed 76 pieces on 15 different events & recitals!
I've been breaking down the composers' demographics by region, gender, ethnicity & the works by date, form & style, and difficulty levels and thought I'd share this.
Was thinking about Rissa SoFar's recent Facebook post about K-pop's roots being in Black culture, and realized I needed to include that post in my resource, "K-Pop, Appropriation, & American Imperialism," which I'd forgotten this was still set to private.
silpayamanant.wordpress.com/k-pop-approp...
Yes, it will be publicly accessible in the near future!
Hadn't updated the "DAW, Music Production, and Colonialism" bib in a while but I just added about a dozen pieces I've come across recently. Can't believe I didn't add my "Sound Archives, Music Production, and Colonialism" resource in there now too!
silpayamanant.wordpress.com/bibliography...
Thank you! So great to reconnect with you too!
"For children of school age, not only does „popular music‟ change every few weeks, but there is evidence that some pupils conceal their „real‟ musical tastes when at school, in favour of appearing to be a part of the mass mediated music of the Top 40. This may be particularly so in the case of children from minority cultures.2 It is therefore reasonable to suggest that mass music provides a „safe‟, if not always authentic, cultural space which pupils can inhabit, and behind which they can conceal private cultural identities." From page 105 of Lucy Green's "Popular music education in and for itself, and for ‘other’ music: current research in the classroom" https://doi.org/10.1177/0255761406065471
Something I always keep in mind, especially as this was my experience as a young student and a reason I founded the Saw Peep Pan-Asian Ensemble and Global Cello projects!
p105 of Lucy Green's "Popular music education in and for itself, and for ‘other’ music" doi.org/10.1177/0255...
Joshua Han's 2026 "On the politics of 'music theory' and the implications of its importation into research on music and meaning"
Open access here: doi.org/10.1515/jwl-...
Currently working on a database and resource page for solo cello works by women composers. I'm still in the A's but already have 60 works by 30 composers. This may take a while! 😆
Thanks for sharing the links, btw!
Definitely plans to analyze them! Working on taxonomy and analytic categories now--tons of lit about that, so a massive lit review is in order.
I'm actually curious about the patents too, though, especially since Dellenbaugh's published dissertation
elischolar.library.yale.edu/gsas_dissert...
I've almost doubled the number of entries in the music notation timeline this year alone--and it's hard to believe that in a year this resource will have been online for a decade!
silpayamanant.wordpress.com/timeline-of-...
Seen in a comment in the music theory group. Lot's to be said about the whole post, but the highlighted part is one of the many reasons I refer to these communities as "safe spaces for colonialist harmony"-as if the entire body of music theoretical works deals only with [invariably Western] harmony.
Image text: "Vasiliy Antipov Experience shows that whenever a post like this is published in a group, a certain type of “progressive” immediately rushes in and begins asking, with feigned astonishment, something along the lines of: “But what about the drumming of a savage or a cannibal on a tambourine — why isn’t that included here on an equal footing with Western European music?” And here comes their other favorite trick: they will seriously pretend that there exists yet another “layer of musical culture” — say, cannibals jumping around a fire — and on that basis declare Kharlap’s observations irrelevant, outdated, or biased. And you won’t even be able to tell them the obvious truth: that, at this point in history, Western European civilization has produced the most powerful and the most relevant body of musical culture. The moment you say that, you will instantly be accused of supremacism. Such is one of the characteristic pathologies of contemporary society."
*Phew* I haven't read something like this since the last time I read an 18th/19th century European music history/theory treatise.
JK--this is a pretty common sentiment at this (and other) online music theory forums and I come across this daily.
www.facebook.com/groups/87619...
Saw Peep is halfway through its COLLIDER Residency and I've been enjoying the smaller talks given in the studio as much as the big workshops we've given.
Pics from the Shadow Puppet workshop (12/14), Asian Fiddles (12/13) and Music Notations of Asia (12/10) presentations!
www.lfpl.org/collider
Image text: "Chad Grimes Shortcomings?????? Then you would know that African, Indian, Asian, and Afro-Cuban has a long history of NO notation! Western history of music went out of their way to further develop a music notation system and actually have a system that every style of music in the world can notate their styles. Musicians in western style of music have spent their entire lives learning and appreciating all styles of music. Way more than Asian and Indian music history is learning western!" Jon Silpayamanant Chad Grimes Here's a timeline of over 1800 entries documenting the long history of nearly 5000 years of "No notation" in "African, Indian, Asian, and Afro-Cuban." https://silpayamanant.wordpress.com/timeline-of-music-notation/ "
I know, I probably shouldn't bother. 😑
Comment here: www.facebook.com/groups/87619...
"As I'm compiling a bibliography of primary sources about orchestras and ensembles of enslaved musicians I've decided to map their locations."
silpayamanant.wordpress.com/2025/10/25/m...
I keep forgetting to post on the micro-platforms. Here's the beginnings of a South Asian Music Theory & Treatises Bibliography I started last summer. Eventually I would like to include info and links to translations as well.
silpayamanant.wordpress.com/south-asian-...
Raqs Maqom: Dances & Music of Central & West Asia
Sun-Oct 19-2PM
World Affairs Council Lobby
223 S 5th St, Louisville
Free-limited seating; RSVP: worldaffairscouncilofkentucky-bloom.kindful.com/e/see-paw-ra...
Raqs Maqom: collaboration between Crescent Moon Dance Co. & Saw Peep Pan-Asian Ensemble
Always makes me chuckle when r/musictheory mods just refer folks to r/GlobalMusicTheory. 😅
www.reddit.com/r/musictheor...
Image text: 'This is what cellist and researcher Jon Silpayamanant (2020) describes as “how Imperialism and the Trans-Atlantic and Trans-Pacific slave trade enriched European countries to the point that they could afford to create a music ecosystem with large scale and expensive orchestras, operas, and ballet companies which might not have emerged absent those conditions”'
Some of my more scholarly work is contributing to the expansion of string pedagogy in surprising ways. Esteban Hernández Parra's recent dissertation "Resuena Abya Yala: Otherwise Practices in Bowed Strings Learning and Performance" cites 1 of my pieces abt slave orchestras!
hdl.handle.net/2022/33684
“[T]he evolution of the orchestra was brought to a standstill”
silpayamanant.wordpress.com/2025/08/28/t...
Next Friday, Aug 29, we'll be at the World Affairs Council's inaugural WorldFest Kick-Off Reception. We hear it's already sold out, but you can come see us at WorldFest mainstage on Saturday at 3-4pm!
www.sawpeep.com/events/ @silpayamanant.bsky.social @divyakrthk.bsky.social
Examples of bird songs from Simeon Pease Cheney's 1892 "Wood Notes Wild: Notations of Bird Music" (Cheney died in 1890, so this was published posthumously).
Images are from pages 39, 94, and 101. Cheney's book is downloadable here: archive.org/details/wood...
200+ more entries added to the Timeline of Music Notation since the last update. 1700+ entries total now!
silpayamanant.wordpress.com/timeline-of-...
A number of Korean notations; systems for animal songs (esp. for birds/whales); accordion/free reed tabs; & some dutar/fiddle/folk instr. tabs.
The original poster gave an example of adding a Pipa to an opera that he's writing.
Love how the implication here is that there are "non-ethnic" instruments. It's the classic way to normalize supraethnic/macro-ethnic (e.g. Western/European instruments) phenomena as neutral and/or universal.
www.reddit.com/r/composer/c...
