the way that these are expressed, negotiated, or offers a tentative step forward, although, as is subverted in popular culture. These concerns, as frustratingly common in studies of popular mu- always, are a little late coming to musicology, sic, the music itself is still left out of much of the but they are coming. discussion or sketched in with such vagueness Country is white working-class music, still that it evaporates upon scrutiny. I am left with largely associated (although much too narrow- a nagging sense of dissatisfaction with most of ly) with the American South. It is still “white the essays. There is nothing unworthy about any trash,” beneath notice, and it has consequently of them. It is not that they are historically inac- suffered from scholarly neglect. It is a field that is curate; it is simply that, even within the tight still largely untouched, and much mapping and confines of a book chapter, I feel that there’s so marking remain to be done. A Boy Named Sue much more that could be said.

Sensational Knowledge: Embodying Culture through Japanese Dance. By Tomie Hahn. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2007. 224 pp.

Wendy Hsu

After the recent release of Steven Spielberg’s onlookers’ gaze by revealing and concealing her blockbuster movie Memoirs of a Geisha, Björk’s body . . . to reappropriate the fan, kimono, and CD Homogenic, and a series of music vid- hair ornaments to tell a very different story of eos by Madonna, Missy Elliot, Ginuwine, and Japanese performing women” (14–15). Christina Milian, the kimono-clad Asian wom- Hahn’s monograph on the embodied trans- an has become one of the icons of Asian chic mission process of Japanese dance (nihon in pop America.1 With the nineteenth-century buyo)—narrating while analyzing the author’s French fad of Japanese art and culture known fieldwork and experiences of learning the dance as japonisme in our nearly remote hindsight, for over thirty years—is rhetorically captivating the exoticized and eroticized bodies of Japanese and intellectually nuanced. Hahn draws method- women are certainly not a new trope in Europe ological and theoretical ideas from a number of and North America. One wonders what cultural disciplines, including “ethnomusicology, dance impact this Western fascination with the Asian/ studies, anthropology, performance studies, and Japanese female body has on women who prac- Asian philosophies of the body” (2). As Hahn tice traditional arts in Japan. indicates, the book’s organization poetically cor- Tomie Hahn’s ethnography Sensational responds to the unfolding movement of a sensu, Knowledge: Embodying Culture through Japa- a paper fan supported by a bamboo backbone, nese Dance provides a powerful dissonance often used in nihon buyo. The first chapter, to the widely circulated objectifying images of “Introduction—Sensual Orientations,” outlines Japanese women. In the introduction Hahn in- reflexive ethnographic methods and the frame- vokes her subversive impulse to “reappropriate work of cultural transmission with a focus on the exotic mystique of the ‘fan dance’ stereotype body knowledge and multisensory experience. of the demure ‘Oriental lady’ who entices the The second chapter, “Moving Scenes,” narrates the recent social history and structure of the practice of traditional Japanese dance. Chapter 1. Specifically, the cover of Björk’s Homogenic features a portrait of Björk with white facial foundation and deep 3, “Unfolding Essence,” elucidates the relevant red lipstick in a kimono-like outfit. And these music vid- concepts and aesthetic principles of Japanese eos are of Madonna’s “Nothing Really Matters,” Missy arts. Chapter 4, “Revealing Lessons,” details Elliot’s “Get Ur Freak On,” Ginuwine’s “In Your Jeans,” and Christina Milian’s “Dip It Now.” the transmission process, with a substantial sec-

110 Women & Music Volume 12 tion devoted to discussing each of the senses in- Abu-Lughod, Ruth Behar, and Michelle Kisliuk volved. The last chapter, “Transforming Sensu,” to write with vulnerability and reflexivity.4 explores issues of codeswitching, identity for- Rather than making passive, nonparticipatory, mation and articulation, and cultural transfor- quantifiable, and objectifying observations, mation involved in the embodiment practices of Hahn foregrounds social relationships, revolving fieldwork and performances. around those with her teachers. Her framework Hahn locates her body as a deposit of her field and analysis are informed by the poststructural- experience. The field site is conceived as a broad ist and feminist critical requisite of elucidating landscape, at the center of which is her own authorial positionality. In relevant ways Hahn body and from which extend other important explicitly exposes her identity and authorship, social actors such as her teachers, colleagues, allowing her reader to position herself or him- and the audience of her performance. This frame self in relation to her point of view to navigate of knowledge appears and disappears, depend- through the passages. The social particulars of ing on how her body engages with the history of Hahn’s position(s) within her research field shed the dance and the memories of her dance teach- light on “the complex process of comprehending ers (xiv). Echoing recent feminist dance and per- the relationship of self to other, and the embodied formance scholarship, Sensational Knowledge’s knowledge of the participant-observer-research- emphasis on the body as a key epistemological er, as a resource within the research” (10). locus diffuses the historical mind-over-body Dance, expression, and embodiment are baggage in Western scholarship.2 Hahn’s adher- all multisensory experiences. In chapter 4, ence to the cultural specificity of the Japanese “Revealing Lessons—Modes of Transmission: traditional practice and principles—the in- Visual, Tactile, Oral/Aural, and Media,” Hahn terdependence of mind and body, theory and analyzes the transmission process of nihon buyo practice—illuminates her implicit critique of the by providing a multisensory account of physi- masculinist Western Cartesian split. cal and social structure of her dance school in Sensational Knowledge confronts the chal- Tokyo and then unfolding the embodied process lenging task of translating movement into text based on each of the senses involved. In the sec- head-on with keen descriptive details written in tion on oral/aural transmission Hahn discusses elegant prose. “I crave specificity and a semblance dance and music as one inseparable practice. of physical presence in dance scholarship. Limbs. Many dancers learn a musical instrument in Breath. Shoulders. Muscles. Gaze” (6). Inspired by the dance writing of Barbara Browning and order to understand the nuances of the musical other dance ethnologists since the mid-1980s, composition and musical vocabularies. During the moving quality (physically and affectively) of transmission dance teachers sing a dance lan- Hahn’s prose achieves kinesthetic sensation and guage comprised of “instrumental mnemonics evokes the reader’s empathy.3 In Hahn’s writing blended with fragments of the vocal line and dance is not just composed of movements and verbal dance directions (instructional and emo- techniques but is a stream of sensations, experi- tive)” (122–24). To nihon buyo practitioners ences, meanings, and emotions. musical knowledge is translated into an oral Hahn follows feminist ethnographers Lila form of dance instructions and then transmitted through embodied gestures.

2. See Barbara Browning, Samba: Resistance in Motion (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995). See also 4. These citations include Lila Abu-Lughod, “Writing Diedre Sklar, Dancing with the Virgin: Body and Faith in against Culture,” in Recapturing Anthropology: Working the Fiesta of Tortugas, New Mexico (Berkeley: University in the Present, ed. Richard G. Fox (Santa Fe: School of California Press, 2001); and Michelle Kisliuk, Seize of American Research Press, 1991); Ruth Behar, The the Dance!: BaAka Musical Life and the Ethnography of Vulnerable Observer: Anthropology That Breaks Your Performance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998). Heart (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996); and Kisliuk, Seize the 3. Browning, Samba. Dance!

Reviews 111 Hahn recognizes the recent incorporation ing stylized stereotypes in Japanese dance is con- of video technology and media in nihon buyo tentious. Hahn argues against the assumption pedagogy as she self-consciously incorporates that these women merely perpetuate or are con- them in her field research and ethnographic rep- fined to stereotypical images of themselves and resentation. The ability to rewind and watch the thus reinforce male domination in their society. video in slow motion allows a close-up access to She asserts: the subtlety of the transmission process and the embodied practice of dance. The metaphoric shifting present in nihon buyo choreography empowers women through the Curiously, kinesthetic sensations (the sense transformative, shared, embodied experience of motion and orientation) often fell over me of multiple identities as well as flexible notions when I observed the videotapes, and some of self, within a society that has historically re- guided me through the analysis. It seemed that stricted their expression. (162) the videotapes were reinforcing my physical understanding of movement/sound while my Codeswitching, a self-conscious performance body also informed the analytical process. (78) and shifting of identities in creative and every- day life, is thus a product and means of survival. Hahn’s convincing argument that video (and Moreover, Hahn’s formulation of codeswitch- other forms of media such as dance notations) ing implicitly presents a theoretical dissonance can be consumed in holistic and kinesthetic ways to Judith Butler’s work on gender performativ- has a feminist implication. Hahn’s intimate im- ity.6 Hahn’s theorization of the process of trans- plementation of video technology and media in forming into an “other,” derived from observing her body-centered study implicitly ruptures the the practice of nihon buyo in Japan, requires a historical Western gendered dichotomy between “clear knowing and establishing of self” (162). the feminized body/nature and the masculinized Contrarily, Butler’s critical interpretation of machine/technology.5 (North American) drag performances in Gender Overall, Hahn is concerned more with gen- Trouble lacks a convincing account of the role dered embodiment than with gendered mean- of self-knowledge and reflection. ings. As noted in the beginning, Hahn is not Hahn makes a few explicit observations about interested in producing a narrative that risks re- gender, commenting on the recent transition from inscribing the age-old Orientalist prototypes of male-headed schools to female-headed schools the sexualized Asian female body. Instead, she and the fact that most nihon buyo practitio- aims to carve out a legitimate discursive space ners have been women. In a close reading Hahn for Japanese women dancers to assert their notes that a man feels awkward or “verdant” in agency through the practice of nihon buyo in his dancing attire, whereas female dancers feel their contemporary lives. The issue of embody- quite at home with the fashion and movement of the practice (92). Confronting these observa- 5. The gendered dichotomy of feminized nature versus tions, I wonder if the feminine connotations of masculinized technology often assumes men to be techno- nihon buyo produce anxiety for (heterosexual) logically oriented while separating women from technical tasks. See Beverley Diamond, “Media as Social Action: male practitioners. We learn from Hahn that Native American Musicians in the Recording Studio,” women seek liberating moments in nihon buyo in Wired for Sound: Engineering and Technologies in apart from their everyday life. But how do men Sonic Cultures, ed. Paul D. Greene and Thomas Porcello (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2005); relate to the traditional dance form? Is there any and Charity Marsh and Melissa West, “The Nature/ linkage among the gendered movements, the Technology Binary Opposition Dismantled in the Music of Madonna and Bjork,” in Music and Technoculture, ed. Rene T. A. Lysloff and Leslie C. Gay, Jr. (Middletown, CT: 6. Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Wesleyan University Press, 2003). Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1990).

112 Women & Music Volume 12 gendered relations within the group, and the ethics when Hahn narrates her embodied experi- gendered identity of the participants? How has ences of being biracial in her performance and the gendered dynamic within the nihon buyo so- everyday life in chapter 5, “Transforming Sen- cial system changed over time? What role does su—Presence and Orientation.” Multiracial indi- the gendered dichotomy between modernity and viduals must negotiate the boundaries of ethnic, tradition play in the contemporary practice of national, and racial construction not only in per- traditional Japanese dance? This line of inquiry formance situations but also in their daily lives, can be assisted by certain postcolonial feminist which perform, or display, an interruption of cul- critiques that have investigated the oppressive tural and ethnic lineage. Not only that, mixed- feminization of non-Western and “traditional” raced individuals represent the threat of miscege- practices and values in contemporary postcolo- nation and ethnic and racial impurity (169–70). nial, transnational settings.7 It would be fruitful, In her reflexive and persuasive examination of for instance, to examine the ways in which wom- the ideology of race, ethnicity, and nationality, en participants negotiate the gendered expecta- Hahn’s theoretical parallel between performance tions of perpetuating “traditional” Japanese and everyday life deconstructs the biologistic rather than Western arts and culture in relation definitions of the body. She takes seriously the to the patriarchal ideology of nationalist, ethnic, body as a site of accumulation, transmission, and and racial purity. transformation of cultural knowledge, ideals, Sensational Knowledge reveals its politics and and ideology. Embodiment is a meeting ground between social structure and human agency. Po- 7. In her ethnography of Indian American youth culture litically, this project not only deconstructs the op- Sunaina Maira discusses the double standards for Indian pressive ideology of the biologistic notions of the American women of bearing the burden of perpetuat- ing the patriarchal ethnic purity (of India) by remaining body, it also points at the body as a potentially sexually pure or only available to men of Indian descent. triumphant site of human agency. Femininity or womanhood is mapped onto nationalism or In Sensational Knowledge passages flow, pag- ethnic purity. This ideology is informed by the modernity- tradition dichotomy, with the former being gendered mas- es turn, concepts resonate. Reading and inter- culine and ethnicized as American (Western) and the latter acting with it, my mind is engaged and my body as feminine and Indian (non-Western). See Sunaina Maira, touched. Hahn’s monograph on Japanese dance Desis in the House: Indian American Youth Culture in New York City (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, positively illuminates the relationship between 2002). See also Gayatri Gopinath, Impossible Desires: the flow of cultural knowledge and the body; it Queer Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures also demonstrates the possibility of coalescing (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005); and Robert J. C. Young, Postcolonialism: A Very Short Introduction text and performance, mind and body, theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). and practice, and research and ethics.

The Queer Composition of America’s Sound: Gay Modernists, American Music, and National Identity. By Nadine Hubbs. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004. 282 pp.

Judith Tick

Nadine Hubbs has written a deceptively short If her questions resist definitive answers and book. Its 178 pages of text and 69 pages of end- her book is not exactly “linear,” it is partly be- notes are as dense with questions as the woods cause few writers and thinkers these days claim in a German opera. She draws on gender studies, to have answers to the kinds of questions Hubbs queer theory, feminist cultural theory, and gay raises. Thus, Hubbs involves herself in some history to seed musicological scholarship about of the prominent intellectual debates of our gender and music with challenging ideas. era, among them the extent to which sexual-

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