Asia or inter-Asia has been an emerging field of study since the 1990s, and new ways of examining historical as well as socio-cultural aspects of the region has been called for. One of the advocation has been placing the ‘location of utterance’ in Asia not the west in the center of Asian discourses. Furthermore, the need for provocative approaches, such as ‘integrated’ as well as ‘dialogic’ has been expecially emphasized by scholars from countries that have been deeply affected by colonialism and imperialism. However, lack of primary sources which resulted in thin scholarship in the region hinders the invigorating research in East Asian Music. Under this circumstances, a group of researchers in diverse fields, including music, area studies (especially China, Japan, & Taiwan), computer science, library science, and copyright Law, integratedly and dialogically built the East Asian Music Database, called EMDB 1 and II, since 2011 to present a vast array of primary sources of East Asia. It has been a new challenge for scholars in Korea.
Therefore, this paper deals with practical as well as philosophical challenges in building music database with a large quantity. Two most important concepts, ‘integrated’ and ‘dialogic’ approaches, so effective in both establishing and interpreting East Asian Music is introduced. In addition, two specific features unique to the EMDB, a chronological overview of the four nations included in the database will be explained, ‘Keyword Search’ design that reveals the relationship between and among composers with similar musical trends, as in many ‘isms’ in the 20th century western music is also presented. At the end, the future direction in Asian Music Research in terms of using Music database is concisely stated.