The musical instruments of East and Southeast Asia enjoy increasing recognition as parts of humanity’s intangible cultural heritage. Helen Rees edits a collection that offers vibrant new ways to link these objects to their materials of manufacture, the surrounding environment, the social networks they form and help sustain, and the wider ethnic or national imagination. Rees organizes the essays to reflect three angles of inquiry. The first section explores the characteristics and social ro...

Framing timely and pressing questions concerning music and cultural rights, this collection illustrates the ways in which music--as a cultural practice, a commercial product, and an aesthetic form--has become enmeshed in debates about human rights, international law, and struggles for social justice. The essays in this volume examine how interpretations of cultural rights vary across societies; how definitions of rights have evolved; and how rights have been invoked in relation to social s...

YOU THINK WE'RE WHAT?!When Leon invites Marie to spend summer break with his family, everyone assumes the pair are as good as engaged. Marie, being little more than an aristocrat in name only, resigns herself and parts ways with Leon. But that smile and receding silhouette is hauntingly familiar, reminding Leon of his sister from his previous life. Can he really let Marie go?

THE CHIPS ARE DOWN!Marie's always longed to relive her school trip. Reincarnated in an otome game, she'll get her chance! But she's not the only one seizing an opportunity. While Julius is gone, Olivia's enemies drag her to a casino and force her to rack up debts. Leon himself jumps in to save her. Can this would-be high roller bail Olivia out? Or will his ill-advised gamble doom Marie's planned holiday and Olivia's academic career?

ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK...Possessed by the Saint while dungeon-clearing, Olivia dares to act against her bullies. Those actions quickly lead her to butt heads with Angelica, the prince's fiancee. The prince's soft spot for Olivia has Angelica's hackles raised, and she might finally lash out in earnest at the scholarship student...Despite Olivia's difficulties with dungeon-clearing, Leon and Marie have been assigned that exact task. Their dungeon trip may pro...

THE FLOWER PRINCESS (Dae Neui Fa or Dinühua in Mandarin) has become the most renowned Cantonese Opera since its 1957 premier in Hong Kong. The opera is a serious political drama played out between the Han and non-Han following the fall of the Ming dynasty, and the plot pits romantic love against the lofty Confucian ideals of social hierarchy and moral rectitude. This is the first complete English translation of the opera, featuring text, song titles, speech types, and choreographic and sta...