In A Language of Song, Samuel Charters--one of the pioneering collectors of African American music--writes of a trip to West Africa where he found "a gathering of cultures and a continuing history that lay behind the flood of musical expression he] encountered everywhere . . . from Brazil to Cuba, to Trinidad, to New Orleans, to the Bahamas, to dance halls of west Louisiana and the great churches of Harlem." In this book, Charters takes readers along to those and other places, including Jamaica and the Georgia Sea Islands, as he recounts experiences from a half-century spent following, docume... View More...
This authoritative book, newly revised and updated, presents an introduction to more than a dozen different types of Balinese gamelan, each with its own established tradition, repertoire and social or religious context. There are beautiful color photographs, a sonography and a brief guide to studying and hearing music in Bali will prove indispensable to casual visitors and gamelan aficionados alike. View More...
On assignment in Jamaica for Time magazine in 1976, David Burnett photographed Bob Marley at his Tuff Gong home in Kingston, Jamaica, and then on the start of the seminal Exodus tour. Capturing the legend at an exceptional moment in time, Burnett's work intersects with both the zenith of Marley's career and the traumatic upheaval of his flight from Jamaica after an attempt on his life. For any reggae lover or music history buff, Bob Marley offers a matchless glimpse into the legend's life at home. View More...
Based on exclusive interviews, Breakout tells the often riveting personal stories of fourteen popular musicians--some well known, others not--from Zaire, Ghana, Nigeria and Sierra Leone. The first book on African pop music to look closely at the lives of the musicians themselves, Breakout deals with four African musical genres: soukous, highlife, afro-beat, and palm wine. Amid Africa's deepening economic and political crises of the last two decades, African musicians who developed these genres faced the need to cross cultural boundaries, or break out, and achieve a hit in the international ma... View More...
A stunningly-illustrated interweaving of first person narratives, photographs, cultural commentary and soundscapes, Bright Balkan Morning provides an unprecedented view of settled Romani lives in the Balkans and the unique roles of "Gypsy" instrument players in the region. These Romani instrumentalists from Iraklia, an ancient Greek Macedonian crossroads and market town that is home to about 2,000 Roma, provide the sounds that facilitate parties and rites of passage, performing an essential and highly valued service for their multicultural neighbors. At the heart of the book are ten first-pers... View More...
Driving beats, coursing rhythms, swaying skirts, and swaggering bandleaders playing deep into the sultry night: Latin music is a celebration of life and sensuality, and nowhere are these essential values better reflected than the dazzling record covers that present this music to the world.Cocinando : Fifty Years of Latin Album Cover Art draws together the most beautiful, sexy, colorful, innovative, and creative Latin record covers from all the various genres of Latin music: mambo, salsa, bossa nova, tropiclia, Latin jazz, and rock. Featured are covers by such legendary performers as Joo Gilber... View More...
One of Library Journal's "Best Arts Books of 2020"The definitive biography of Ravi Shankar, one of the most influential musicians and composers of the twentieth century, told with the cooperation of his estate, family, and friendsFor over eight decades, Ravi Shankar was India's greatest cultural ambassador. He was a groundbreaking performer and composer of Indian classical music, who brought the music and rich culture of India to the world's leading concert halls and festivals, charting the map for those who followed in his footsteps. Renowned for playing Monterey Pop, Woodstock, and the Conce... View More...
Indian vocalists trace intricate shapes with their hands while improvising melody. Although every vocalist has an idiosyncratic gestural style, students inherit ways of shaping melodic space from their teachers, and the motion of the hand and voice are always intimately connected. Though observers of Indian classical music have long commented on these gestures, Musicking Bodies is the first extended study of what singers actually do with their hands and voices. Matthew Rahaim draws on years of vocal training, ethnography, and close analysis to demonstrate the ways in which hand gesture is used... View More...
Winner of the Stanner Award from the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders Studies (2006) Aboriginal musicians receive songs both from an eternal realm known as The Dreaming and from the ghosts of deceased ancestors. Songs, Dreamings, and Ghosts is the first book-length study of wangga, a musical and ceremonial genre of Aboriginal people of the Daly Region of Northern Australia. This work is a labor of love, the culmination of nearly 20 years of field work and research by renowned ethnomusicologist Allan Marett, and represents the only comprehensive documentation of a ... View More...
From jazz trumpeters drawing on the noises of warfare in Beirut to female heavy metallers in Alexandria, the Arab culture offers a wealth of exciting, challenging, and diverse musics. The essays in this collection investigate the plethora of compositional and improvisational techniques, performance styles, political motivations, professional trainings, and inter-continental collaborations that claim the mantle of "innovation" within Arab and Arab diaspora music. While most books on Middle Eastern music-making focus on notions of tradition and regionally specific genres, The Arab Avant Garde pr... View More...
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