Villepastour (Curator of Musical Instruments at The MIM, Phoenix, Arizona) presents this first ever academic study of the Southwestern Nigerian drumming tradition known as Yoruba bata and its linguist
In her prologue Lawson (Brigham Young U.) recounts an early experience in her education in which she heard a professor at UCLA demonstrate music on the pipa, (a type of Chinese lute). He played some p
Since their beginnings in the 1930s, Hindi films and film songs have dominated Indian public culture in India, and have also made their presence felt strongly in many global contexts. Hindi film son
Still today, in South Korea, many people pay for the services of mudang – the intermediaries of Korea's syncretic folk religion. The majority of mudang are called to the profession by gods; their cl
An in-depth study of the Bulgarian harmonic system is long overdue. More than two decades since the Le MystA‥re des Voix Bulgares choir was awarded a Grammy (1990), there is no scholarly study of the
Focussing on music traditions, these essays explore the policy, ideology and practice of preservation and promotion of East Asian intangible cultural heritage. For the first time, Japan, Korea, China
Szczepanski (ethnomusicology, Ohio State U.) draws on her field research in northern China in 2005 and 2006 to analyze the music at a Buddhist monastery. She covers the music of Manjusri's Mountain, m
Alison McQueen Tokita presents a series of case studies that demonstrate the persistence of Japanese sung narratives in a multiplicity of genres over ten centuries, including the way they flourished a
For over a century, drummers have been turning to a variety of percussive traditions as prompts for the creation of new expressive possibilities on the drumset. In this book, Simon Barker sets out in
In the 1970s John Baily conducted extensive ethnomusicological research in Afghanistan, principally in the city of Herat but also in Kabul. Then, with Taraki’s coup in 1978, came conflict, war, and th
DAphA, or dAphA bhajan, is a genre of Hindu-Buddhist devotional singing, performed by male, non-professional musicians of the farmer and other castes belonging to the Newar ethnic group, in the towns
Bands structured around western wind instruments are among the most widespread instrumental ensembles in the world. Although these ensembles draw upon European military traditions that spread globally
Greek Rebetiko from a Psychocultural Perspective: Same Songs Changing Minds examines the ways in which audiences in present-day Greece and Turkey perceive and use the Greek popular song genre rebetiko
The jews-harp is a distinctive musical instrument of international importance, yet it remains one of those musical instruments, like the ocarina, kazoo or even the art of whistling, that travels benea
SamulNori is a percussion quartet which has given rise to a genre, of the same name, that is arguably Koreaa€?s most successful a€?traditionala€? music of recent times. Today, there are dozens of amat
"cgaayat al-maotlaub by Ibn Kurr is the only theoretical text of any substance that can be considered representative of musicological discourse in Cairo during the first half of the fourteenth century
The musical genre of taarab is played for entertainment at weddings and other festive occasions all along the Swahili Coast in East Africa. Taarab contains all the features of a typical 'Indian Ocean'
Migration studies is an area of increasing significance in musicology as in other disciplines. How do migrants express and imagine themselves through musical practice? How does music help them to cons
Stobart (ethnomusicology, Royal Holloway, U. of London, UK) provides an ethnography of the people of Kalankira, a Quechua-speaking community of northern Potosi in the Bolivian Andes. He explores how m
The early-Republican era (1923-1938) was a major period of musical and cultural change in Turkey. Alaturka: Style in Turkish Music is a study of the significance of style in Turkish music and, in part
