Southeast Asia is distinctive for the uniqueness of each culture’s response to outside influences, especially from India, China, and the West. The idea of assessing the region’s precontact musical resources presumes that we can isolate them, but we cannot be sure we can. Nevertheless, a discussion of possible precontact resources is reasonable. Two topics, organology and animistic rites, include aspects most likely to have predated the coming of foreign religions, languages, and instruments.
Southeast...