The Tai society in Dehong, Yunnan, China, has a custom that several singers engage in improvised antiphonal singing called khaam maak. The Tai improvised antiphonal singing is performed in the here-and-now through collaboration with others. Singers interweave elements of their own experience or thought into their songs and evolve an emotional story interactively. This paper focuses on the improvised antiphonal singing khaam maak of the Dehong Tai and examines how the practice of improvised singing in public actually works. Through this discussion, I show the cultural features of aesthetic sensibility in the improvised singing of the Tai.
    In the first part of this paper, I analyze the basic structure of improvised singing and then examine two local concepts, lam khaam and kop kaai, as the basis of creating lyrics and evaluating songs. Lam khaam means sensitivity to words or rhetoric. People need to be fluent in the poetic language lam khaam to be able to savor the poetic images in the songs. kop kaai means the art of “bridging” between words, or collaborative work with others. Kaai is a Tai word that designates many kinds of everyday practice such as making bridges, building houses, weaving textiles and certain kinds of ritual action. Singing improvised songs is also recognized as one of the diverse arts of kaai.
    Next, I examine poetic features of songs improvised through the art of kop kaai, such as padding syllables used to fill out the meter, the rhetorical techniques of inversion and omission, paradigmatic association, and parataxis of words. Singers have mastered the practical art of improvised singing, using their poetic skills under the time-and-space constraint of the here-and-now. In addition, the poetic features of improvised singing are made clear by the analysis of specific examples, such as accidentally misusing words while singing. Singers and audience enjoy and evaluate not only the developing story but also the quick decisions involved in creating lyrics on the spot.
    In the practice of improvised singing, it is said that the song should be felt by the mind rather than understood in the brain. Thus, people are absorbed in the improvised singing, and experience the sense of pleasure or ecstasy known as khao tsaw. Moreover, such a sensuous experience is thought to be deeply related to the ideal situation of the soul, khoan, because people's consciousness concentrates on and is lived in the improvised poetic world while the singing continues.

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    Various musical activities with gongs performed in Southeast Asia have been studied in their respective local cultural contexts. This paper concerns an example from northeastern Cambodia, which is populated by several indigenous ethnic groups. Previous studies on musical activities conducted in this region are rare; but in most cases, gongs are indispensable to indigenous people who pay great attention to maintaining benevolent relationships with spirit beings. How humans and spirits interact in the midst of the gong sounding has not previously been studied. Based on fieldwork in a village of the Krung people in Ratanakiri Province, my paper clarifies the experiential aspect of human-spirit relations arising through gong performance.
    According to the people with whom I studied, playing gongs is important because it makes spirits happy. How do people regard gong performance as enjoyable for spirits? It seems reasonable to assume that the enjoyment in this scenario depends upon a “mood” occurring spontaneously and collectively among the people present rather than by each person’s individual will. Therefore, this paper describes the mood of several collective gatherings, including gong performance, to illustrate the resulting enjoyment and its subtle implications.
    My observation focuses on “miscellaneousness” or the various, capricious ways in which people gather casually and yet do something together (hunting, logging, drinking wine, etc.). A gathering results from individuals’ varied motivations, unrelated purposes, and desultory incidents. This paper approaches such miscellaneous factors and movements through a qualitative description of the events included in the acoustic experience.
    The participatory process in gong performance is central to the description. It isobligatory to play gongs when a buffalo or an ox is sacrificed. However, a rule or sense of duty cannot be the major driving force for the actions of participants. Rather, the sessions almost totally depend on the mood of the varied events. This study demonstrates how most participants’ actions in the gong ensemble as well as many other social actions, however obligatory, emerge from varied, spontaneous moods.
    I also explore a link between humans and spirit beings through consideration of a spirit-possession ritual (séance) incorporated into the ceremony of buffalo sacrifice and gong performance. Spirit beings are usually vague and invisible, but by entering the body of the spirit medium, they become visible and tangible. Therefore, we can observe how people and the spirits possessing the mediums--i.e., the spirits appearing through the expressions and actions of the medium--interact during the course of events. Here again, I indicate the dominance of miscellaneousness in the actions being performed.
    The spirits possessing the mediums and the people mingle in the gong sound. What activates the scene is a certain lively mood--supported by miscellaneous actions, expressions, and noises of all the participants, both human and spirit. Miscellaneousness without restraint is not merely a descriptive character but a necessary condition for the unfolding of actions in events such as the buffalo sacrifice with gongs.

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    This paper investigates the sesame-seed markings (goma) that serve as musical notation in noh scores (utaibon), and concludes that the dynamic chanting mode (tsuyogin) partially existed in the early Edo period (1603-1868). Dynamic chanting and its complement, the melodic chanting mode (yowagin), are chosen by the composer depending on the content of the text in question. Until now, the first clear notational distinction between these two modes was traced to noh scores published in 1681.
    This study focuses on Genna Uzukibon noh scores published in 1620 (the early Edo period) by Kanze Kokusetsu (1566-1626), before specific symbols had been developed to distinguish between the two modes. Starting in the third line from the end of a typical structural section called ageuta (high pitched song), there are two sesame-seed marks oriented downward on last two syllables in pieces that are today sung in dynamic mode. This disposition of marks is not found in pieces now sung in melodic mode. This difference clearly indicates that sesame-seed marks were used to distinguish between the two chanting modes. There is also evidence that Kanze Kokusetsu first developed this method of distinguishing dynamic and melodic chanting in 1605, before publishing it in the Genna Uzukibon noh scores in 1620.

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    Resāle Kanz al-tuḥaf dar mūsīqī (hereafter "Kanz al-tuḥaf") is a Persian treatise on music, probably written in either 1355 or 1363 by Ḥasan Kāšānī. It is considered to be the most important treatise written during the 14^th century on the theory of Persian music.
    The treatise consists of four discourses (maqālat). Discourse One deals with thetheoretical foundation of music, including the definition of music, sound, notes, and intervals, etc. Discourse Two deals with the practical theory of music by means of the ‘ūd, a short necked lute. Discourse Three describes the musical instruments, including the construction of nine musical instruments as well as their tuning; and spinning of the silk strings and the gut strings. Discourse Four consists of a series of advice for would-be musicians and of description of poems which are suitable for musical composition.
    The original text of Kanz al-tuḥaf has not survived. Therefore, we must depend on the following five manuscripts (in chronological order). 1. I.O.Islamic 2067, presently housed in the British Library, but formerly held at the India Office Library and catalogued as Ethé 2763 (1383); 2. Suppl. persan 1121, held at the Bibliothèque nationale de France (1435); 3. Cod. 271 (2), held at the Leiden University Library (1580); 4. Or.2361, held at the British Library (1665); 5. King's, No.211 held at the Cambridge University Library (date unknown).
    By comparing and collating all five copies of the Kanz al-tuḥaf, this author has found that none of the extant copies is complete. Furthermore, the British Library manuscript Or.2361 is distinctly different from the other copies. Unfortunately the only typographic reprint is also based on this 17th-century manuscript (Binesh 1992).
    The present article is an attempt to annotate and translate Discourse Two into Japanese, based on the 14th-century copy (I. O. Islamic 2067). Although quite a few sentences in a single manuscript hardly make sense, we could decipher them only through careful collation of all five manuscripts.
    Kanz al-tuḥaf was apparently written after the model of the Kitāb al-adwār of Ṣafī al-Dīn ‘Abd al-Mu'min (d.1294). At the same time, however, Kanz al-tuḥaf contains descriptions of some different musical terminology and theory, which demonstrate a new development of Persian music in the 14^th century.

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