Content area
Full Text
The Chrysanthemum and the Song: Music, Memory, and Identity in the South American Japanese Diaspora. By DALE A. OLSEN. New World Diasporas. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2004. xxviii, 342 pp. $65.00 (cloth).
Music is one of those indelible cultural activities that observers often point to as a marker of group identity. Ethnomusicologist Dale Olsen makes this central point in his study of music among Nikkei (persons of Japanese ancestry) in South America. Olsen's study includes Nikkei in Peru, Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, and Bolivia based on a review of literature, a survey of newspapers and other publications, questionnaires, interviews, and his own involvement with Japanese music as a performer of shakuhachi (end-blown flute). Indeed, one of the innovative features of this book is an accompanying Web site of audio examples recorded by the author, over...