Music originates in sound and persists through memory, perception, ethics, community, and learning. This issue of PULSE: Journal for Music and Interdisciplinary Practices presents six articles examining how music interacts with these dimensions across contemporary opera, interdisciplinary composition, popular song, inclusive education, ethnographic practice, and classroom pedagogy. Collectively, these contributions reinforce the journal’s commitment to music as an artistic, cultural, social, and intellectual practice.

The issue begins with Daniel Serrano’s study of Salvotore Sciarrino’s II canto s’attrista, perché?, which analyzes how earlier musical genres and topics are reinterpreted within a contemporary operatic context. By examining the military march and the tempo notturno, the article demonstrates how historical materials can reappear in transformed forms, influencing dramaturgy, intensifying atmosphere, and guiding the listener’s perception of dramatic action. Dhorn Taksinwarajan subsequently broadens the inquiry into perception through an interdisciplinary investigation of music, magic, and illusion. His article prompts readers to reflect on how listening is influenced by expectation, deception, and the shifting boundary between what is heard, seen, and believed.

The following articles turn toward music as a site of ethical and social imagination. Thet Htar San and colleagues examine popular song in post-independence Myanmar, showing how love, affect, and musical structure participate in cultural sovereignty and postcolonial identity. Yoonil Auh and colleagues continue this ethical concern by studying inclusive music pedagogy in South Korea, arguing for a deeper understanding of access, belonging, and justice. Their work challenges music education to move beyond participation as presence toward participation as recognition, authorship, and cultural legitimacy.

Rachelle Ann D. Labasan’s article brings the issue into the lived sound world of the Gaddang marching band in Solano, Nueva Vizcaya. Framed through the idea of the gift, the study reveals how musical performance sustains obligation, reciprocity, kinship, and social cohesion. Closing the issue, Rujikarn Weerapong and Natsarun Tissadikun present the development of the “Stop It” card game as a learning medium for students. Their article reminds us that pedagogical innovation often begins with careful attention to how learners engage, participate, and find pleasure in understanding music.

Read together, these articles demonstrate the breadth of inquiry that PULSE aims to support. Music appears in the forms of historical residue, perceptual experiment, ethical discourse, inclusive practice, communal exchange, and educational design. Each article offers a distinct point of entry, yet all share a concern with how music becomes meaningful through the relations among sound and memory, people and place, learning and justice, and tradition and creative transformation. We are pleased to present this issue to our readers and hope it opens further conversations across music, scholarship, and practice.

The Pulse Editorial Team