The following ethnographic accounts of music and dance from Europe, Southeast Asia, andAustralasia examine how performances of gender, place, and emotion intersect. Ethnomusicology andanthropology have long recognized the connections between these aspects of performance, yet they areseldom analyzed together. Most recent studies have examined music in relation to either gender,place, or emotion. Instead of addressing each field of inquiry as an individual lens through whichto understand musical practices, our aim is to explore the ways in which the three elements overlap.Our volume proposes that the intersections of gender, place, and emotion generate an interplay ofperformative issues, rather than discrete, bounded areas of inquiry.

The studies presented here reveal how the gendered practices of music making are intimatelyshaped by performers' emotional engagements with place. In addition, because places feed intoperformers' imaginations, affecting gendered musical meanings and experiences, contributorsto this volume show how these elements of performance—gender, place, andemotion—intertwine in a “relationship of circularity.”“Circularity” in this sense refers to a multilayered approach in which each elementimplicates the others in a coconstitutive relationship. The process is examined from differentregions around the globe, as contributors address two key questions: How are aesthetic, emotional,and imagined relations between performers and places embodied musically? And in what ways is theperformance of emotion gendered across quotidian, ritual, and staged events?