Since part of my mission (whatever that is) is to vary the distribution of the diverse posts on this blog, keeping you guessing, this latest annual roundup (cf. 2018, 2019) is an occasion to group together some major themes from the last year (see also the tags and categories in the sidebar). This is just a selection (with apologies to the posts I’ve missed—do seek them out!):

For China, note

• Four posts on Coronavirus—the fourth describing the activities of the Li family Daoists, who, if you recall, are the main raison d’être for this blog!

A substantial addition to my series on the ritual associations of Gaoluo:

• Vocal liturgists

Also new to the extensive Local ritual menu:

• Buddhist ritual of Chengde

and on folk culture around Tianjin:

• Dharma-drumming associations
• Tianjin: a folk Buddhist group

See also

• Precious recordings from imperial China
• Early film footage of religious life in Fujian
• Films on ritual drama
• Blind musicians in China and elsewhere—a major theme
• A roundup of posts on Hunan—fieldwork, Daoism, social issues, mining

Book reviews, mostly on religion and politics:

• The temple of memories
• Spirit mediums in Henan
• Gender in changing religious life
• Precious scrolls: another new volume
• Doing fieldwork in China
• A new volume for a great Chinese scholar
• Tiananmen: bullets and opium
• Confessions: an innocent life in Communist China

as well as

• Compound surnames in Chinese and English
• Chinese film classics of the early reform era
• Ancient Chinese humour—with a moral
• Daoist non-action (Han Feizi, Liezi, Martin Gabel, Walt Disney—but not quite Miles Davis)

On modern Tibetan cultures, I’ve added a whole series, listed here:

• Recent posts on Tibet—including Labrang, opera, reviews of major new books by Woeser and Barnett, as well as
• How not to describe 1956 Tibet

—complementing my series on Uyghur culture in crisis, also with new input:

• Soundscapes of Uyghur Islam
• Another Uyghur film-maker

besides

• Chinese–Russian Muslims: the Dungan people

* * *

For fieldwork and cultures elsewhere around the world—bearing in mind the important perspectives of

• Bruno Nettl and
• Bruce Jackson:

• A series on Native American cultures
• Music and the potato
• Musics of Crete
• Songs of Valencia
• Festive soundscapes of the Rioja
• Whistled languages, mundane and transcendental (the latter for early China)
• Folk traditions of Poland
• Madonna pilgrimage in Communist Poland
• Frozen brass
• Bhutan: a tongue-twister, archery festivals, and teasing cheerleaders
• Iranian lives
• Self-mortification: dervishes of Kurdistan
• Reviving culture: the Yazidis

This year’s new posts on Indian raga, including some divine dhrupad singing:

• The changing musical life of north India
• Rāg Yaman Kalyan
• Yaman 2
• Bhairav and Bhairavi

* * *

On the travails of the 20th century:

• Noor Inayat Khan
• A life in secrets
• The great siege of Przemyśl
• Why the First World War failed to end
• The first gulag
• Kolyma tales
• The Kazakh famine
• Hašek’s adventures in Soviet Tatarstan
• The struggle against Mussolini
• Sexual politics: Kate Millett, Henry Miller, Anaïs Nin

* * *

On jazz:

• Miles meets Bird
• Some middle-period Miles
• The spiritual path of John Coltrane
• Mingus

and WAM:

• Mahler 2!!!
• Mahler 4
• Anna Mahler—Groucho, and sculpture 
• The Celibidache mystique (part of a growing series under The art of Conducting)
• Méfiez-vous des blancs (Ravel)
• French organ improvisation!
• La nativité du Seigneur
• Messiaen in Japan
• Bach’s Matthew Passion, staged
• Better than ever: more Bach
• O ewiges feuer
• Late Beethoven quartets
• Modulation: Schubert and Coltrane

On TV, film, popular culture:

• A Beatles roundup (introducing a whole series!)
• Normal people
• Staving off old age (The end of the f***ing world and Fresh meat)
• Musicology: igneous rocks and window-smashing
• Smile (Charlie Chaplin, Nat King Cole, Judy Garland)
• Unpromising chromaticisms (Vera Lynn, Bing Crosby)
• Dusty
• Punk in Madrid

* * *

Thanksgivings for liberation from tyranny:

• Dancing in the streets!!!
• The wise AOC

And another sign of hope:

• Saint Bill

More jocular items include

• Some pupils of Nadia Boulanger—real and alleged
• Profane embroidery
• Script to an iconic head-butt
• When you are engulfed in flames
• Nearly an Italian holiday
• In the kitchen 2

as well as additions to The English, home and abroad:

• The mantric Shipping forecast
• Hancock’s half hour
• By the sleepy lagoon (Bognor)
• Replies from the Complaints department (Lonnie Donegan and Mick Jagger)
• The global art market

and new entries under the headlines tag:

• More fantasy headlines
• Some recent headlines
• News desk

Further roundups:

• Some all-time favourite posts
• Responses to crisis

And much much more, As They Say. Having grouped them together like this, I hope readers will scramble them all up again like a jigsaw, rather than retreating into their own little boxes… And do click on all the links within these posts! Happy, Happier New Year!