"Olsen provides a history of Nikkei emigration and music from the Japanese homeland, comments on the contributions and the roles of song contests and karaoke in shaping their new social life and identity, and discusses Nikkei aesthetic values. His research sources include interviews, memoirs of immigrants and their children, newspaper accounts of Nikkei musical experiences and thoughts, and observations of musical events. Olsen also documents and interprets his own performances with and for the Nikkei on the Japanese shakuhachi flute." "Covering five generations of Nikkei over more than a century, this ethnomusicological investigation makes an original contribution to Japanese diaspora studies. It will be of special interest to scholars of the sociology of immigrant cultures and identity formation, Asian and Latin American studies, and ethnomusicology. It offers a model of innovative theoretical and experimental ways to learn about subcultures in diaspora."--BOOK JACKET.