Longing for the Past

When American and European record companies began recording music in Southeast Asia, their goal was simply to create markets for new phonograph machines. In doing so, they created a rich historical archive of beautiful music that has been vastly underexplored and barely studied. Longing for the Past is the first-ever survey of the 78 rpm record era in Southeast Asia. A kaleidoscopic collection featuring four CDs with 90 tracks of music from 1905 to 1966, this beautifully produced 272-page volume includes essays and annotations by ethnomusicologists, along with more than 250 vintage photographs, record labels and sleeves. Illustrations include photographs of musicians from the countries covered, which range from Burma, Indonesia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam to Singapore, Cambodia and Malaysia. The nearly 100 tracks range from Laotian classical music, Vietnamese opera and Cambodian monks to Khmer classical selections, Buddhist sermons from Laos and folk opera and piphat ensembles from Thailand.