01307nas a2200121   4500000000100000000000100001008004100002100001400043245011800057300001200175520098400187022001401171                                       d1 aBell Yung00aMusic as Intangible Cultural Heritage: Policy, Ideology and Practice in the Preservation of East Asian Traditions  a498-4993 aUNESCO first proclaimed Masterpieces of Oral and Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2001, later subsumed under “elements” to a Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity; its expressed goal was to preserve music whose survival was being threatened. Not surprisingly, East Asian nations embraced UNESCO s actions with enthusiasm, for many of them had decades earlier enacted laws for that purpose, attesting to the nations  strong sense of history through the arts. Such a sense is treated in this fine volume, which presents ten case studies of musical genres from Japan, Korea, Taiwan and China, with an introductory chapter by Keith Howard on the ideology and policy of UNESCO and of individual nations. The central issue that most of them focus on is “preservation,” as is shown in six of the titles. The musical genres chosen were designated as endangered and in need of “preservation” by either UNESCO or the nations themselves.  a0305-7410