Ensembles include Chinese instrumental music, West African drum and dance, the Indonesian Gamelan, Japanese Shakuhachi (bamboo flute), and Afro-Brazilian Samba music, while the World Music Choir teaches students to sing in a range of vocal styles and traditions from Africa, Europe, Asia and the Americas.
Non-western musics are also studied by research students and staff in the ethnomusicology department, exploring aspects of diverse (and sometimes their own) musical cultural heritage and practice. Current students and recent graduates’ research has focused on music from Samoa and the Pacific Islands, China, Japan, and other parts of Asia, Uganda, Iran and the Middle East, and parts of Eastern and Northern Europe. The cultural collections of the University also hold a number of historic non-Western musical objects, particularly in the Grainger Museum, many of which were collected in the nineteenth and early twentieth century.