Michael Tenzer is Professor of Music at the University of British Columbia. He is the author of two previous books, Balinese Music (1991 [1998, 2nd. Ed.]) and Gamelan Gong Kebyar: The Art of Twentieth Century Balinese Music (2000) which received the 34th ASCAP Deems Taylor Award and the Society for Ethnomusicology's Merriam Prize. He edited this book's predecessor, Analytical Studies in World Music (Oxford, 2006). The first western composer to create new music for Balinese groups in Bali, his compositions in diverse genres have been commissioned, performed and acclaimed internationally. In 2009 New World Records released a CD of his music, Let Others Name You.

John Roeder, a Professor at the University of British Columbia, is a music theorist who specializes in explaining music outside the traditional Western canon, especially contemporary art music and world music. He focuses on basic processes of pitch and rhythm, but he has also developed mathematical and computational models of music, and has directed research into the preservation of the digital records of art, government, and science.