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Thai Classical Singing: Its History, Musical Characteristics and Transmission.

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Thai Classical Singing: Its History, Musical Characteristics and Transmission. By Dusadee Swangviboonpong. (SOAS Musicology Series.) Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Co., 2003. [xxiii, 232 p. ISBN 0-7546-0790-9 $94.95.] Music examples, illustrations, discography, bibliography, index.

Dusadee Swangviboonpong has made a marvelous contribution to the small but growing body of Western-language empirical scholarship devoted to the classical music of Thailand. The first serious study of Thai singing to be published in a European language, the work stands out for a number of reasons. The author himself is a practicing Thai vocalist who has cultivated his own musicianship--performing and teaching in the U.K., Europe, and the U.S.--while gaining British graduate training in ethnomusicology. As a disciple of one of Thailand's greatest twentieth-century vocalists, Careencaj Suntharawaathin, the author is in a unique position to analyze vocal music and musical theory from within the system. For technical as well as cultural and aesthetic reasons, non-Western vocal music has perhaps been neglected by ethnomusicologists, receiving neither the breadth nor depth of study that instrumental music has. At the same time, while Thailand has its own vibrant tradition of music scholarship, most Thai scholars today are also practicing...

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