This volume explores the originating encounter in field work of ethnomusicologists with the musicians and musical traditions they study. The contributors provide case studies from nearly every corner of the world, including biographies of important musicians from the Philippines, Turkey, Lapland, and Korea; interviews with, and reports of learning from, musicians from Ireland, Bulgaria, Burma, and India; and analyses of how traditional musicians adapt to the encounter with modernity in Japan, India, China, Turkey, Afghanistan, Morocco, and the United States.

1: Introduction: Reflections on the Formation of an Ethnomusicologist; I: Encountering Musicians; 2: The Art of Master Musician Necdet Ya?ar as a Key to the Subtleties of Classical Turkish Music; 3: An Ethnomusicology of Musical Art and Individual Success: Hwang Byungki and National Music in the Republic of Korea; 4: The Visiting Artist as Culture Broker: Joe Heaney and the Negotiation of Identity; 5: High Queen Damoao and the Teaching of Maranao Kolintang Music; 6: Teachers Studying Teachers: Pedagogical Practices of Artist Musicians; 7: Greetings from Lapland: The Legacy of Nils-Aslak Valkeapää (1943-2001); 8: Evaluating Artistry on the Bulgarian Bagpipe; 9: String Theory: A Meditation on Lives in Ethnomusicology; II: Encountering Music; 10: Making the Music of Indonesia Series: A Memoir; 11: Mediated Tradition: The Globalization of Burmese Music; 12: Deconstructing Haydar: Lineage, Ownership, and Innovation in the Creation of an Alevi Classic; 13: Hymns to the Sun Goddess: New Music for a Shinto Worship Service; 14: Rooted as Banyan Trees: Eis? and the Okinawan Diaspora in Japan; 15: Saints, Prostitutes, and Rotten Sardines: The Musical Construction of Place and Ethnicity in a Moroccan Insult Contest; 16: The Politics of Music in Afghanistan; 17: Music Ownership and Control in Blackfoot Culture: Remarks on Identity, Knowledge, Performance; 18: Some Aspects of Qin Construction and Acoustics; 19: Thoughts on the Relationships among Anthropology, Ethnomusicology, and Musicology; by an Anthropologist