Having not exactly been hibernating, I now find myself in what doesn’t merit the term of “sabbatical”. It’s partly that I’m beset by a lack of focus; while it’s good that I currently feel no need to inflict my ideas on others, it’d be nice if I had something to say. Still, this may come as a relief to some readers.

As to China, I remain intrigued by Zhang Zhentao’s review of my Gaoluo film. So far I haven’t found sources unpacking foreigners’ supposed proclivity for representing the “ugly” side of China, which is well worth refuting, seeming to imply that honest depiction of rural life is to be censored—but I welcome leads.

I still struggle to write about how Gaoluo and other village ritual associations on the Hebei plain have been affected by the Intangible Cultural Heritage project. And I search in vain for new studies of household Daoist groups active around north China, which (like the Hebei associations) are still bedevilled by their discovery by musicologists. And ethnographies of ritual life in the countryside seems to be in short supply these days.

On my visits to Istanbul, while trips along the Bosphorus on the vapur ferry continue to delight, I’m ever more diffident about my random delvings into Turkish culture. One remarkable recent addition to the pleasures of the Kuzguncuk mahalle is a little basement cafe where young Sufi singers and instrumentalists get together to practise the makam.

And a wealth of previous posts will still keep you busy (roundup of roundups here!), on topics such as jazz, Mahler, Indian raga, and the Beatles. Meanwhile, the blog Stats are being mysteriously inflated by coverage in Japan of my roundup of posts on Japanese culture, of which the gem is the Must-Read That is the snake that bit my foot!

So despite the paucity of recent output, do keep reading!