Welcome to Traditions of Music and Dance, the flagship journal of the International Council for Traditions of Music and Dance (ICTMD). Traditions of Music and Dance is the fourth name for this journal after the Yearbook for Traditional Music (1981–2024), Yearbook of the International Folk Music Council (1969–1980) and Journal of the International Folk Music Council (1949–1968). The new title is notable for dance studies because this is now one of the only major peer-reviewed journals which explicitly acknowledges the relationship between music and dance in its name. Yet neither music nor dance studies have ever been isolated, monodisciplinary fields. As the essays in this issue demonstrate, our contributors continue to celebrate a shared passion for studying traditions of music, dance and related performing arts in their cultural, social, economic, political and ecological contexts around the world.

Our first article, “On Shared Musical Traditions: The Tunisian-Libyan Maluf Slam Collaborative,” examines a form of cultural heritage which thrives in transnational spaces. In contrast with the ostensibly well-defined boundaries that have been drawn around national music and dance traditions, the maluf is commonly performed in eastern Algeria, Tunisia and Libya. Jared Holton introduces us to the Maluf Slam collaborative, a group of Tunisian and Libyan musicians, poets, artists and others who hosted a series of concerts in Tunisia in 2019. His attention to the process of collaboration illustrates how these creative artists negotiate and play with similarities and differences in their individual approaches to the music. In a challenge to nationalised traditions, members of the Maluf Slam purposefully use music to build social and cultural connections across geopolitical boundaries.

The second article, “From the Creation back to the Creator: Shifting Attitudes towards the Informant in Greek Folk-Music Collections,” surveys historical changes in approaches to acknowledging research informants in published and archival sources. Drawing on Greek folk music collections from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries, John Plemmenos illustrates how earlier collectors tended to focus solely on documenting the music. Their tacet erasure of the musicians’ identities gradually shifted over time. By the mid-twentieth century, the names and other details about informants were commonly published alongside song texts. This trend is indicative of a shift from musicological to anthropological methods in other parts of the world as scholars began to pay greater attention to the people making the music.

In “Rediscovering Silent Areas: Music and Ecotourism in Tuscany,” Luca Gambirasio investigates the strategic use of music by environmental groups, conservation organisations and park authorities in Tuscany, Italy. These organisations use both live and pre-recorded music to enhance public awareness and appreciation of nature. As an ethnographer visiting the sites and a performer at some of the venues, Gambirasio offers a multifaceted account of the experience of walking through these places and hearing the music and sound recordings in dialogue with the natural landscape. His case studies illustrate how music can promote ecotourism, a financially viable industry which the organisers hope will lead to more positive ecological outcomes for national parks in Italy.

Austin Emielu and Obianuju Akunna Njoku contribute our first co-authored research article in this issue. In “Contesting Orthodoxy, Negotiating Liberalism: Sustenance of Music Traditions in Selected Muslim Communities in Nigeria,” the authors share fieldwork data on two predominantly Muslim communities where musicians and audiences are successfully maintaining their cultural traditions despite outside pressure to change. Emielu and Njoku identify four factors that support these traditions: the agency of Muslim musicians, the role of music in community life, the resilience and resistance of indigenous cultures to assimilation and economic factors. They argue that these musical traditions have been maintained through an Islamic liberalism which contrasts with Eurocentric, individualistic definitions of liberalism by emphasising the collective.

Our fifth article is written by Subash Giri, the 2022 Student Paper Prize winner at the 46^th ICTMD World Conference in Lisbon, Portugal, who has revised his paper for publication here. Giri is motivated by reconnecting ethnographic archives with community members in what he terms a “Community Collaborative Participatory Archive.” Drawing on methodologies from Participatory Action Research and based on fieldwork with a Nepalese immigrant community in Alberta, Canada, Giri proposes a strategy for co-creating an archive with community members by involving them in every stage of the research and archival production process.

Our final article takes the form of an experimental dialogue on a persistent question: “Has Dance Become Definable?” It begins with Egil Bakka’s proposal for a science-based definition of dance. We invited a group of leading scholars to respond to Bakka’s proposal, including an active member of the ICTMD Study Group on Ethnochoreology, an ICTMD Executive Board member with expertise in dance studies, a scholar who recently completed a monograph on comparative musicology and another working on decolonial music and dance studies. We are particularly pleased to see this collaborative essay in print because it celebrates one facet of the journal’s new name, highlights our strength and unity in diversity and demonstrates contrasting approaches to defining the very thing we all work on.

The issue concludes with several reviews curated by our expert team of editors. They include our first Thai language review of a book published on Thai fire dance by an American publishing house in English. We also have a review in English and Spanish of a book published in Spanish. We remain eager to publish in languages other than English and welcome reader suggestions for new reviews and essay formats. If you have materials for review or ideas for new research articles, please reach out to the relevant editors directly. Lastly, I would like to express my gratitude to our peer reviewers who play a pivotal role in maintaining our rigorous standards for research quality, ethics and integrity. We hope you enjoy the fruits of their and our contributing authors’ labour.