'World music' emerged as an invention of the West from encounters with other cultures. This book draws readers into a remarkable range of these historical encounters, in which music had the power to evoke the exotic and to give voice to the voiceless. In the course of the volume's eight chapters the reader witnesses music's involvement in the modern world, but also the individual moments and particular histories that are crucial to an understanding of music's diversity. World Music is wide-ranging in its geographical scope, yet individual chapters provide in-depth treatments of selected music cultures and regional music histories. The book frequently zooms in on repertoires and musicians - such as Bob Marley, Bartok, and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan - and attempts to account for world music's growing presence and popularity at the beginning of the twenty-first century. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
Film music is as old as cinema itself. Years before synchronized sound became the norm, projected moving images were shown to musical accompaniment, whether performed by a lone piano player or a hundred-piece orchestra. Today film music has become its own industry, indispensable to the marketability of movies around the world. Film Music: A Very Short Introduction is a compact, lucid, and thoroughly engaging overview written by one of the leading authorities on the subject. After opening with a fascinating analysis of the music from a key sequence in Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs, Kathryn Kalinak introduces readers not only to important composers and musical styles but also to modern theoretical concepts about how and why film music works. Throughout the book she embraces a global perspective, examining film music in Asia and the Middle East as well as in Europe and the United States. Key collaborations between directors and composers--Alfred Hitchcock and Bernard Herrmann, Akira Kurosawa and Fumio Hayasaka, Federico Fellini and Nino Rota, to name only a few--come under scrutiny, as do the oft-neglected practices of the silent film era. She also explores differences between original film scores and compilation soundtracks that cull music from pre-existing sources. As Kalinak points out, film music can do many things, from establishing mood and setting to clarifying plot points and creating emotions that are only dimly realized in the images. This book illuminates the many ways it accomplishes those tasks and will have its readers thinking a bit more deeply and critically the next time they sit in a darkened movie theater and music suddenly swells as the action unfolds onscreen. About the Series: Combining authority with wit, accessibility, and style, Very Short Introductions offer an introduction to some of life's most interesting topics. Written by experts for the newcomer, they demonstrate the finest contemporary thinking about the central problems and issues in hundreds of key topics, from philosophy to Freud, quantum theory to Islam.
This stimulating Very Short Introduction to music invites us to really think about music and the values and qualities we ascribe to it. The world teems with different kinds of music-traditional, folk, classical, jazz, rock, pop-and each type of music tends to come with its own way of thinking. Drawing on a wealth of accessible examples ranging from Beethoven to Chinese zither music, Nicholas Cook attempts to provide a framework for thinking about all music. By examining the personal, social, and cultural values that music embodies, the book reveals the shortcomings of traditional conceptions of music, and sketches a more inclusive approach emphasizing the role of performers and listeners. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
The Psychology of Music: A Very Short Introduction seeks to answer fundamental questions of enduring interest, such as "What is musicality?" and "How does music move us?" In doing so, it reveals what happens when science attempts to confront some of the deepest questions about music.
Explaining that musicality is an essential touchstone of the human experience, a concise introduction to the study of the nature of music, its community and its cultural values explains the diverse work of today's ethnomusicologists and how researchers apply anthropological and other social disciplines to studies of human and cultural behaviors. Original.
'World music' emerged as an invention of the West from encounters with other cultures. This book draws readers into a remarkable range of these historical encounters, in which music had the power to evoke the exotic and to give voice to the voiceless. In the course of the volume's eight chapters the reader witnesses music's involvement in the modern world, but also the individual moments and particular histories that are crucial to an understanding of music's diversity. World Music is wide-ranging in its geographical scope, yet individual chapters provide in-depth treatments of selected music cultures and regional music histories. The book frequently zooms in on repertoires and musicians - such as Bob Marley, Bartok, and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan - and attempts to account for world music's growing presence and popularity at the beginning of the twenty-first century. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
The term 'world music' encompasses both folk and popular music across the globe, as well as the sounds of cultural encounter and diversity, sacred voices raised in worship, local sounds, and universal values. It emerged as an invention of the West from encounters with other cultures, and holds the power to evoke the exotic and give voice to the voiceless. Today, in both sound and material it has a greater presence in human societies than ever before. The politics of which world music are a part - globalization, cosmopolitanism, and nationalism - play an increasingly direct role in societies throughout the world, but are at the same time also becoming increasingly controversial. In this new edition of his Very Short Introduction, Philip Bohlman considers questions of meaning and technology in world music, and responds to the dramatically changing political world in which people produce and listen to world music. He also addresses the different ways in which world music is created, disseminated, and consumed, as the full reach of the internet and technologies that store and spread music through the exchange of data files spark a revolution in the production and availability of world music. Finally, Bohlman revises the way we think of the musician, as an increasingly mobile individual, sometimes because physical borders have fallen away, at other times because they are closing. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
Nicholas Cook explores the nature of music, how we think about it, its social and cultural dimensions, and its history. He discusses the many musical traditions across the world and the interactions between them. He also considers performance, how composers create music, and the position of music in today's globalized society.
In recent decades, world music styles have been making increasing inroads into Western popular music, music theater, choral concerts, and even concert hall performances. So You Want to Sing World Music is an essential compendium of these genres and provides technical approaches to singing non-Western styles. Matthew Hoch gathers a cohort of expert performers and teachers to address singing styles from across the globe, including Tuvan throat singing, Celtic pop and traditional Irish singing, South African choral singing, Brazilian popular music genres, Hindustani classical singing, Native American vocal music, Mexican mariachi, Lithuanian sutartinės, Georgian polyphony, Egyptian vocal music, Persian āvāz, and Peking opera. Additional chapters offer resources for soloists and choral directors as well as primers on voice science, vocal health, and audio enhancement technology. The So You Want to Sing series is produced in partnership with the National Association of Teachers of Singing. Like all books in the series, So You Want to Sing World Music features online supplemental material on the NATS website. Please visit www.nats.org to access style-specific exercises, audio and video files, and additional resources.
Excursions in World Music is a comprehensive introductory textbook to the musics of the world, creating a panoramic experience for students by engaging the many cultures around the globe, and highlighting the sheer diversity to be experienced in the world of music. At the same time, the text illustrates the often profound ways through which a deeper exploration of these many different communities can reveal overlaps, shared horizons, and common concerns in spite of, and because of, this very diversity. The new eighth edition features six brand new chapters, including chapters on Japan, Sub-Saharan Africa, China and Taiwan, Europe, Maritime Southeast Asia, and Indigenous Peoples. General updates have been made to other chapters, replacing visuals and updating charts/statistics. Another major addition to the eighth edition is the publication of a companion Reader, entitled Critical Themes in World Music. Each chapter in the Reader is designed to introduce students to a theoretical concept or thematic area within ethnomusicology and illustrate its possibilities by pointing to case studies drawn from at least three chapters in Excursions in World Music. Chapters include the following topics: Music, Gender, and Sexuality; Music and Ritual; Coloniality and "World Music"; Music and Space; Music and Diaspora; Communication, Technology, Media; Musical Labor, Musical Value; and Music and Memory. Instructors can use this resource as a primary or secondary path through the materials, either assigning chapters from the textbook and then digging deeper by exploring a chapter from the Reader, or starting with a Reader chapter and then moving into the musical specifics offered in the textbook chapters. Having available both an area studies and a thematic approach to the materials offers important flexibility to instructors and also provides students with additional means of engaging with the musics of the world. A companion website with a new test bank and fully updated instructor’s manual is available for instructors. Numerous resources are posted for students, including streamed audio listening, additional resources (such as links to YouTube videos or websites), a musical fundamentals essay (introducing concepts such as meter, melody, harmony, form, etc.), interactive quizzes, and flashcards. PURCHASING OPTIONS Textbook and Reader Package (Paperback): 9781138354630 Textbook Only (Hardback): 9781138359369 Textbook Only (Paperback): 9781138359390 Textbook Only (eBook): 9780429433757 Reader Only (Hardback): 9781138354562 Reader Only (Paperback): 9781138354609 Reader Only (eBook): 9780429424717 **VISIT THE COMPANION WEBSITE** www.routledgetextbooks.com/textbooks/9781138359390