Pān-toh is an ancient practice of collaborative roadside banquet in Taiwan, in which participants temporarily occupy a public space, arrange the meal and enjoy the anarchic feast. Although this custom has declined in frequency as a result of capitalist developments, the idea has seen a nostalgic revival in the past decade amidst international military tensions and domestic ideological battles. It has been appropriated into artistic productions to demonstrate an activist gesture of minority alliance that reflects the (post)colonial histories and reticent survival tactics therein. This essay takes Gather Theatre Group's Twelve Dishes Ballad as an example, to see how the pān-toh performance allegorized a reparative solidarity that departed from the paranoid interpretation of political scenarios and moved forward to a non-violent practice that emphasizes underground mutual dependence and intervulnerability. This apparatus of solidarity, nourished by Taiwan's experiences, contributes to a critique of the currently prevalent tendencies of defensive protectionism.

Trommeslåtter (drum tunes) have played a vital role in Norwegian traditional music for several hundred years. This article examines the development and performance of drum tunes in Norway, with a special focus on the work of Johannes Sundvor in transcribing drum music. We present several examples and analyse tunes from Sundvor’s collection. We also demonstrate how this Norwegian drum tradition is related to a tradition of European military drumming. The article concludes with a discussion of aspects of interpretation and an outline of the status of drum tunes today.

This article examines the COVID-era shift in the disability politics of sensory-theatre artists in the United Kingdom who create work for neurodiverse young audiences, arguing that the pandemic pushed them toward a more expansive and overtly political understanding of disability. I examine the work of three companies – Oily Cart (London), Frozen Light (Norwich) and Spectra (Birmingham) – who adjusted their practices to embrace their audiences’ shifting access needs, including those in caregiving roles. These changes move sensory theatre into a more politicized realm, echoing calls from crip studies scholars and disability justice activists to reimagine disability as a relational category from which solidarity can arise that does not hinge entirely on medical diagnosis. These artists’ renewed commitments to relational access provide lessons for performing artists and audiences navigating how to care for one another through the massive death and disablement of the ongoing pandemic.

The Oberammergau Passion Play – arguably the largest and longest-running Passion Play tradition in the world – depicts Jesus’ arrest, conviction and crucifixion at a spellbinding scale. It has also been at the centre of a controversy regarding its historic antisemitism and its efforts to reform, having engaged a director with a zeal for radically changing it. However, this article, informed by a large ethnographic study, argues that the feud that engulfed the town for decades – with reformers and traditionalists at loggerheads – has now abated. The 2022 Passion Play was made almost entirely by pro-reform locals, with traditionalists now outnumbered and sidelined, due to both their own choices and intentional exclusion by those at the helm. What remains of the feud has now changed shape, focusing not on the changes to the play but on the leadership style of the director.

This article examines how practice-based researchers in a transcontinental intensive residency transformed their practice and developed their skills through composing digital scores. Four researchers from an Australian university undertook an intensive residency in Hamburg, focused on creating and performing new digital scores. An analytical study of this residency was conducted, centred around each researcher's connection to the materials, experiences of flow, changes in digital musicianship and transformations. The study revealed both challenges and illuminating experiences for the researchers. Each composition went through significant changes during, before and after the transcontinental project, resulting in changes to the digital scores, directions for interpretation and the researchers’ established artistic practices. Exposure to new environments and facilities allowed them to develop fresh approaches to collaboration and technology. Engaging with digital scores led to new skills being developed and new collaborative projects with each other and international musicians. The intensive and transcontinental nature of the project resulted in significant developments to the skills and approaches of the four researchers.

The plucked selo, a three-stringed variation of the cello, in langgam Jawa kroncong music was originally inspired by Javanese gamelan kendhang drumming. By the 1960s, however, Ki Nartosabdho had developed a style of kendhang playing that imitates the selo, often called kendhang gaya selo (selo-style drumming), bringing this musical exchange full circle. Not every piece, however, is considered suitable for this rhythmic treatment. In this article, we examine musical exchanges in a song form known as langgam Jawa between the selo and the Javanese kendhang, and investigate when drummers decide to use kendhang gaya selo in gamelan settings.

This article revisits the concepts of makam modality and chordal harmony, and argues for viewing interwar rebetiko as a musico-cultural amalgamation. I explore the transcendence of the theoretical incompatibility beyond the East–West dichotomy by employing the Foucauldian concept of heterotopia as a de-ideologised analytical tool. I conduct a case study of makam Sabâ and pertinent harmonisation on the guitar, by analysing two representative historical recordings from the 1930s and interpreting them within the contemporaneous musico-cultural context. As a result, I contend that the terms “equal-tempered makam” and “idiosyncratic harmonisation” mirror expressions of modal heterotopia within interwar rebetiko.