This classic ethnomusicological survey provides as a valuable guide to African music. The essays review a broad swath of genres and topics, including court songs and music history, musical instruments in different traditions, and the connection between Islam and African music. Contributors are Lois Ann Anderson, John Blacking, Philip J. C. Dark, David M. Dixon, Akin Euba, John D. Fage, Matthew Hill, A. M. Jones, Percival R. Kirby, J. H. Kwabena Nketia, Gilbert Rouget, David K. Rycroft, and Klaus P. Wachsmann.
The richness, variety, and complexity of the culture of the Hausa city-states are illustrated in microcosm in Glossary of Hausa Music and Its Social Contexts, in which several hundred Hausa...
Containing details of 390 L.P. and E.P. recordings, African Music on LP: An Annotated Discography contributed to the scholarship of African music at a time when very little had been written. Organized by record label and arranged in alphabetical order, Allen P. Merriam assesses the stylistic characteristics of each recording, providing new insights on the subject and the recording industry at the time of publication. African Music on LP also contains 18 indexes cross-referencing each of the records.
by Don Meyer, Chris White, Kate Carter and Brad Jungwirth
To celebrate the 125th anniversary, this album offers 18 pieces of “souvenir music” from the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. The tracks have little to do with the music actually heard at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition; instead, the music on this album capitalized on the Fair craze in Chicago and across the country. Along with buttons, medals, brochures, postcards, and other memorabilia that flooded the market, this sheet music offered a musical “souvenir” of one’s time at the Fair. Some of these pieces were made popular in local theaters, either played by orchestras or performed by popular singers on the vaudeville stage. Others were simply meant to be taken home and played on the parlor piano. They provide a glimpse into the way the visitors understood and remembered this profound experience.
Aspects of Orality and Formularityin Gregorian Chant is a milestone publication in the study of medieval monophonic music. In its movement away from the concept of chants as products and toward the idea of chants as processes, it will markedly change accepted ways of thinking about this musical form.
A swing note is, to the listener of the rhythm, an unexpected note, and it is the spark of life in jazz and its relatives. Whether playing the standards or the most experimental piece, it is how a musician handles these notes—fearlessly or safely—that determines the fate of the performance. Howard Reich’s critical writing is similarly unexpected and fearless, and Let Freedom Swing is a collection of the articles from the past three decades that best capture this spirit.
Edited by Enrique Arias, Susan M. Filler and William V. Porter
by Jeffrey Wasson
A collection of thirteen original essays by leading musicologists that honor the memory of John F. Ohl, musical scholar and founder of Northwestern University's Department of Music.
Thirty years after his death, Fritz Reiner's contribution--as a conductor, as a teacher (of Leonard Bernstein, among others), and as a musician--continues to be reassessed. Music scholar and long-time friend Philip Hart has written the definitive biography of this influential figure.
"Classical music today is in deep trouble." With these disturbing words, Samuel Lipman introduces us to his own testimony on the current condition of music-and of our culture itself. His bold essays passionately defend the best in this culture against what Lipman sees as its growing banalization and politicization. Lipman's expertise in music is unmistakable, but he writes with the general reader in mind-lucidly, nontechnically, arrestingly.
Never before available in English, this classic work is a major contribution to the art and technique of violin playing and an important document in the history of performance practice.
