Världsmusik

The most abstract, playful and confounding of reggae subgenres, dub is a vital component of sound system culture that has wielded disproportionate influence. Emerging as an underground phenomenon in Kingston during the early 1970s, dub was wrought by sonic alchemists such as King Tubby, Lee 'Scratch' Perry, Prince Jammy and Scientist, conjuring musical mutations at the mixing desk. Dub reached other lands through the Jamaican diaspora and as Lloyd 'Bullwackie' Barnes furthered the form in New York, Dennis Bovell, Mad Professor and Adrian Sherwood conjured their own dub masterworks in London, Jah Shaka and his acolytes subsequently helping dub to achieve global reach. Widely adopted by post-punk producers and later a crucial influence on the underground dance music scenes of several continents, dub indelibly changed the techniques and aesthetics of music production with far-reaching effects; it's no exaggeration to say that without dub, there would be no hip-hop or house music.Dub is made from studio trickery, its auteurs fashioning something new by subtraction rather than addition, reversing standard recording techniques. It is a music of absence and deception, a ghostly sonic doppelganger with bass primacy and torpedoed song structures, full of holes and unexpected twists. The evolution of dub marks the birth of the remix and the emergence of the studio as an instrument in itself, a place where songs can be pulled apart and given wild reshaping, rendering a disembodied new form that is often cosmic and typically jagged. Dub's progression is also inseparable from the troubled history of post-colonial Jamaica, blighted by caustic Cold War interventions, attendant gang culture and communal breakdowns. Through first-hand testimony with dub's most noteworthy creatives, David Katz's monumental forensic history of an astounding subgenre that sounds like the future five decades after its inception stands as the authoritative book on a musical art form that continues to fascinate, generation after generation.

The most abstract, playful and confounding of reggae subgenres, dub is a vital component of sound system culture that has wielded disproportionate influence. Emerging as an underground phenomenon in Kingston during the early 1970s, dub was wrought by sonic alchemists such as King Tubby, Lee 'Scratch' Perry, Prince Jammy and Scientist, conjuring musical mutations at the mixing desk. Dub reached other lands through the Jamaican diaspora and as Lloyd 'Bullwackie' Barnes furthered the form in New York, Dennis Bovell, Mad Professor and Adrian Sherwood conjured their own dub masterworks in London, Jah Shaka and his acolytes subsequently helping dub to achieve global reach. Widely adopted by post-punk producers and later a crucial influence on the underground dance music scenes of several continents, dub indelibly changed the techniques and aesthetics of music production with far-reaching effects; it's no exaggeration to say that without dub, there would be no hip-hop or house music.Dub is made from studio trickery, its auteurs fashioning something new by subtraction rather than addition, reversing standard recording techniques. It is a music of absence and deception, a ghostly sonic doppelganger with bass primacy and torpedoed song structures, full of holes and unexpected twists. The evolution of dub marks the birth of the remix and the emergence of the studio as an instrument in itself, a place where songs can be pulled apart and given wild reshaping, rendering a disembodied new form that is often cosmic and typically jagged. Dub's progression is also inseparable from the troubled history of post-colonial Jamaica, blighted by caustic Cold War interventions, attendant gang culture and communal breakdowns. Through first-hand testimony with dub's most noteworthy creatives, David Katz's monumental forensic history of an astounding subgenre that sounds like the future five decades after its inception stands as the authoritative book on a musical art form that continues to fascinate, generation after generation.

'A masterwork' - Roger SteffensPeter Tosh: the rude boy, the radical,the Rasta. A founding member of The Wailers and a compelling recording artistin his own right, Tosh was much more than Bob Marley's bandmate. Anuncompromising firebrand, he was Jamaica's most controversial star.In this, the very first and definitivebiography of Tosh, esteemed reggae journalist John Masouri explores one ofreggae's most extraordinary stories. This story ended in violence in 1987, whenTosh was brutally murdered. In the aftermath, rumours swirled about hisinvolvement in Kingston's criminal underworld.Steppin' Razor draws on hundreds ofinterviews with those who knew Peter Tosh best, including Bunny Wailer andother close associates. Tracing Tosh's recording career from The Wailers tointernational acclaim, Masouri details his encounters with Eric Clapton and JoeCocker and his volatile relationships with Bob Marley and Lee 'Scratch' Perry.Tosh's darker side is also revealed - from his fascination with the occult to,in unprecedented detail, the events surrounding his tragic, untimely andmysterious death.

Wide-ranging, irreverent and humorous, packed with fascinating - and sometimes tragic - details on lands and people who are rarely heard from.Princes Amongst Men is the only book to provide an overview of Gypsy music across the Balkans, documenting remarkable artistry in former Yugoslavia, Romania and Bulgaria. It is also the only travelogue available through terrain many consider to be Europe's 'Badlands', covering ghettoes and villages, railways and motorways, weddings and funerals, festivals and dive bars.No other writer has emulated the spirit of Jack Kerouac on the Balkan roads, in search of adventure, artistry and romance.

Krautrock is not a music genre. Krautrock is a way of life. Its sonic diversity and global reach belie the common culture from where it emerged. This is a band-by-band history.In May 1945, the Allies defeated Nazi Germany, putting an end to the European front of World War II and the Third Reich. In the immediate aftermath, German youth were tasked to create their own culture. Krautrock is this unlikely success story, as hundreds of bands—including Kraftwerk and Can—seemed to sprout overnight in the early 1970s, forging a unique and experimental sound that was different than American or British rock. The major innovation of krautrock is not only its motorik beat, the steady click-click of Can’s Jaki Liebezeit or monolithic stomp-stomp of Neu!’s Klaus Dinger, but also how the musicians relate to each other. In krautrock, no musician is given more focus than any other, and listening to these bands is to witness interplay common in jazz music. Thus, krautrock represents German politics reflected in music: a dictatorship replaced by democracy.Krautrock explores the history and methodology of the genre, charting its influences and innovations, its more mainstream acts (like Faust, Kraftwerk, and Can) as well as the less universally known (including Harmonia, Popol Vuh, Embryo, and Ash Ra Tempel), and how the genre developed in post-war Germany and what it means to today's listeners.

Pressure Drop chronicles reggae's most tumultuous and influential decade. Beginning in 1970 and unfolding both in Britain and Jamaica, reggae flourished against a backdrop of political upheaval, gang warfare, Black Nationalism, racial and class discrimination and grinding poverty.The music that developed as rocksteady and early reggae gave birth to deejays, dub, rockers, lovers rock, early dancehall and 2 Tone was by turns brutal and revelatory. Including an extensive analysis of the decade's major singles and albums, Pressure Drop includes eyewitness accounts and experiences of the decade from the likes of Burning Spear, Chris Blackwell, Gregory Isaacs, Bunny Wailer, Jimmy Cliff, Black Uhuru, U-Roy, Lee 'Scratch' Perry, Augustus Pablo, Toots and the Maytals, Desmond Dekker, Sly & Robbie, Dennis Bovell, Don Letts and members of the Specials, as well as first-hand anecdotes of Bob Marley and Peter Tosh.

Includes a new chapter on John Cage.Alex Ross’s award-winning international best-seller, ‘The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century’, has become a contemporary classic, establishing him as one of our most popular and acclaimed cultural historians; this is his much anticipated next book on the subject of music.In ‘Listen To This’ Alex Ross, the music critic for the New Yorker, looks both backwards and forwards in time, capturing essential figures and ideas in classical music history, as well as giving an alternative view of recent pop music that emphasizes the power of the individual musical voice.After relating his first encounter with classical music, Ross vibrantly sketches canonical composers such as Schubert, Verdi and Brahms; gives us in-depth interviews wth modern pop masters such as Bjork and Radiohead; and introduces us to music students at a Newark high school and to indie-rock hipsters in Beijing. In his essay ‘Chacona, Lamento, Walking Blues’, Ross brilliantly retells hundreds of years of music history – from Renaissance dance to Led Zeppelin – through a few iconic bass lines of celebration and lament.Whether his subject is Mozart or Bob Dylan, Ross writes in a style at once erudite and lively, showing how music expresses the full complexity of the human condition. He explains how pop music can achieve the status of high art and how classical music can become a vital part of the wider contemporary culture. Witty, passionate and brimming with insight, ‘Listen to This’ teaches us to listen more closely.

In Listen to This, the award-winning music critic and author of The Rest is Noise, Alex Ross looks forward and backward in musical culture: capturing essential figures in classical music history, as well as giving an alternative view of recent pop music.From his own first encounter with classical music to vibrant sketches of Schubert, Verdi and Brahms; from in-depth interviews with modern pop masters such as Björk and Radiohead to the lives of a high school’s music students, Ross shows how music can express the full complexity of human experience. He explains how pop music can achieve the status of high art and how classical music can become a vital part of wider contemporary culture.Witty, passionate and brimming with insight, Listen to This teaches us to listen more closely.

In Listen to This, Alex Ross, the music critic for The New Yorker, looks both backward and forward in time, capturing essential figures and ideas in classical-music history as well as giving an alternative view of recent pop music that emphasizes the power of the individual musical voice in whatever genre.In Listen to This, Alex Ross will combine a selection of his New Yorker essays with new material that will serve as an introduction to some basic classical-music concepts and figures and will give an alternative view of recent pop music. It will demonstrate the essential equality of great musical creators in whatever genre.It begins with ''Listen To This'', his most famous New Yorker essay, an autobiographical account of his early passion for classical music and belated discovery of pop music in college. It sets forth the themes of the book as a whole: how classical music can become a vital part of wider contemporary culture, how it can survive and even prosper in the face of proclamations of its decline.There follows a new essay tracing the history of the chacona, a dance form based on a descending bass line, which originated as an erotic Afro-Caribbean dance in the sixteenth century, then migrated to Europe and inspired such Baroque masterpieces as Bach''s Chaconne in D minor, and later found echoes in the bass lines both of twentieth-century classical masterpieces and African-American blues. Led Zeppelin''s ''Dazed and Confused'' and Bob Dylan''s ''Simple Twist of Fate'', among other songs, extend the principle. This chapter develops, in a less personal way, the themes of ''Listen to This'', and serves as a kind of whirlwind tour of five centuries of music history. Third in the introductory section is ''The Record Effect,'' an account of technology''s impact on pop and classical music.

Musics of the World offers a rich and inviting introduction to music from around the globe, exploring a diverse array of traditions and genres in depth while helping students develop skills for approaching new music in their lives. Clear, accessible introductory chapters give students a solid overview of ethnomusicology, setting the stage for eighteen geographically focused chapters that ground students in a region''s cultural context before exploring what makes each place musically unique. Throughout, videos, timed musical tracks, definitions, color photographs, recipes, and discussion questions provide a variety of avenues through which to engage with the music and cultures at hand.

Music is one of the most distinctive cultural characteristics of Latin American countries. But, while many people in the United States and Europe are familiar with musical genres such as salsa, merengue, and reggaet?n, the musical manifestations that young people listen to in most Latin American countries are much more varied than these commercially successful ones that have entered the American and European markets. Not only that, the young people themselves often have little in common with the stereotypical image of them that exists in the American imagination. Bridging this divide between perception and reality, Music and Youth Culture in Latin America brings together contributors from throughout Latin America and the US to examine the ways in which music is used to advance identity claims in several Latin American countries and among Latinos in the US. From young Latin American musicians who want to participate in the vibrant jazz scene of New York without losing their cultural roots, to Peruvian rockers who sing in their native language (Quechua) for the same reasons, to the young Cubans who use music to construct a post-communist social identification, this volume sheds new light on the complex ways in which music provides people from different countries and social sectors with both enjoyment and tools for understanding who they are in terms of nationality, region, race, ethnicity, class, gender, and migration status. Drawing on a vast array of fields including popular music studies, ethnomusicology, sociology, and history, Music and Youth Culture in Latin America is an illuminating read for anyone interested in Latin American music, culture, and society.

During the decades leading up to 1910, Portugal saw vast material improvements under the guise of modernization while in the midst of a significant political transformation - the establishment of the Portuguese First Republic. Urban planning, everyday life, and innovation merged in a rapidly changing Lisbon. Leisure activities for the citizens of the First Republic began to include new forms of musical theater, including operetta and the revue theater. These theatrical forms became an important site for the display of modernity, and the representation of a new national identity. Author João Silva argues that the rise of these genres is inextricably bound to the complex process through which the idea of Portugal was presented, naturalized, and commodified as a modern nation-state. Entertaining Lisbon studies popular entertainment in Portugal and its connections with modern life and nation-building, showing that the promotion of the nation through entertainment permeated the market for cultural goods. Exploring the Portuguese entertainment market as a reflection of ongoing negotiations between local, national, and transnational influences on identity, Silva intertwines representations of gender, class, ethnicity, and technology with theatrical repertoires, street sounds, and domestic music making. An essential work on Portuguese music in the English language, Entertaining Lisbon is a critical study for scholars and students of musicology interested in Portugal, and popular and theatrical musics, as well as historical ethnomusicologists, cultural historians, and urban planning researchers interested in the development of material culture.

During the decades leading up to 1910, Portugal saw vast material improvements under the guise of modernization while in the midst of a significant political transformation - the establishment of the Portuguese First Republic. Urban planning, everyday life, and innovation merged in a rapidly changing Lisbon. Leisure activities for the citizens of the First Republic began to include new forms of musical theater, including operetta and the revue theater. These theatrical forms became an important site for the display of modernity, and the representation of a new national identity. Author Jo?o Silva argues that the rise of these genres is inextricably bound to the complex process through which the idea of Portugal was presented, naturalized, and commodified as a modern nation-state. Entertaining Lisbon studies popular entertainment in Portugal and its connections with modern life and nation-building, showing that the promotion of the nation through entertainment permeated the market for cultural goods. Exploring the Portuguese entertainment market as a reflection of ongoing negotiations between local, national, and transnational influences on identity, Silva intertwines representations of gender, class, ethnicity, and technology with theatrical repertoires, street sounds, and domestic music making. An essential work on Portuguese music in the English language, Entertaining Lisbon is a critical study for scholars and students of musicology interested in Portugal, and popular and theatrical musics, as well as historical ethnomusicologists, cultural historians, and urban planning researchers interested in the development of material culture.

Istanbul is home to a multimillion dollar transnational music industry, which every year produces thousands of digital music recordings, including widely distributed film and television show soundtracks. Today, this centralized industry is responding to a growing global demand for Turkish, Kurdish, and other Anatolian ethnic language productions, and every year, many of its top-selling records incorporate elaborately orchestrated arrangements of rural folksongs. What accounts for the continuing demand for traditional music in local and diasporic markets? How is tradition produced in twenty-first century digital recording studios, and is there a "digital aesthetics" to contemporary recordings of traditional music?In Digital Traditions: Arrangement and Labor in Istanbul's Recording Studio Culture, author Eliot Bates answers these questions and more with a case study into the contemporary practices of recording traditional music in Istanbul. Bates provides an ethnography of Turkish recording studios, of arrangers and engineers, studio musicianship and digital audio workstation kinesthetics. Digital Traditions investigates the moments when tradition is arranged, and how arrangement is simultaneously a set of technological capabilities, limitations and choices: a form of musical practice that desocializes the ensemble and generates an extended network of social relations, resulting in aesthetic art objects that come to be associated with a range of affective and symbolic meanings. Rich with visual analysis and drawing on Science & Technology Studies theories and methods, Digital Tradition sets a new standard for the study of recorded music. Scholars and general readers of ethnomusicology, Middle Eastern studies, folklore and science and technology studies are sure to find Digital Traditions an essential addition to their library.

Istanbul is home to a multimillion dollar transnational music industry, which every year produces thousands of digital music recordings, including widely distributed film and television show soundtracks. Today, this centralized industry is responding to a growing global demand for Turkish, Kurdish, and other Anatolian ethnic language productions, and every year, many of its top-selling records incorporate elaborately orchestrated arrangements of rural folksongs. What accounts for the continuing demand for traditional music in local and diasporic markets? How is tradition produced in twenty-first century digital recording studios, and is there a "digital aesthetics" to contemporary recordings of traditional music?In Digital Traditions: Arrangement and Labor in Istanbul's Recording Studio Culture, author Eliot Bates answers these questions and more with a case study into the contemporary practices of recording traditional music in Istanbul. Bates provides an ethnography of Turkish recording studios, of arrangers and engineers, studio musicianship and digital audio workstation kinesthetics. Digital Traditions investigates the moments when tradition is arranged, and how arrangement is simultaneously a set of technological capabilities, limitations and choices: a form of musical practice that desocializes the ensemble and generates an extended network of social relations, resulting in aesthetic art objects that come to be associated with a range of affective and symbolic meanings. Rich with visual analysis and drawing on Science & Technology Studies theories and methods, Digital Tradition sets a new standard for the study of recorded music. Scholars and general readers of ethnomusicology, Middle Eastern studies, folklore and science and technology studies are sure to find Digital Traditions an essential addition to their library.

Istanbul is home to a multimillion dollar transnational music industry, which every year produces thousands of digital music recordings, including widely distributed film and television show soundtracks. Today, this centralized industry is responding to a growing global demand for Turkish, Kurdish, and other Anatolian ethnic language productions, and every year, many of its top-selling records incorporate elaborately orchestrated arrangements of rural folksongs. What accounts for the continuing demand for traditional music in local and diasporic markets? How is tradition produced in twenty-first century digital recording studios, and is there a "digital aesthetics" to contemporary recordings of traditional music?In Digital Traditions: Arrangement and Labor in Istanbul''s Recording Studio Culture, author Eliot Bates answers these questions and more with a case study into the contemporary practices of recording traditional music in Istanbul. Bates provides an ethnography of Turkish recording studios, of arrangers and engineers, studio musicianship and digital audio workstation kinesthetics. Digital Traditions investigates the moments when tradition is arranged, and how arrangement is simultaneously a set of technological capabilities, limitations and choices: a form of musical practice that desocializes the ensemble and generates an extended network of social relations, resulting in aesthetic art objects that come to be associated with a range of affective and symbolic meanings. Rich with visual analysis and drawing on Science & Technology Studies theories and methods, Digital Traditions sets a new standard for the study of recorded music. Scholars and general readers of ethnomusicology, Middle Eastern studies, folklore and science and technology studies are sure to find Digital Traditions an essential addition to their library.

As the Soviet Union stood on the brink of collapse, thousands of Bukharian Jews left their homes from across the predominantly Muslim cities of Central Asia, to reestablish their lives in the United States, Israel and Europe. Today, about thirty thousand Bukharian Jews reside in New York City, settled into close-knit communities and existing as a quintessential American immigrant group. For Bukharian immigrants, music is an essential part of their communal self-definition, and musicians frequently act as cultural representatives for the group as a whole. Greeted with Smiles: Bukharian Jewish Music and Musicians in New York explores the circumstances facing new American immigrants, using the music of the Bukharian Jews to gain entrance into their community and their culture. Author Evan Rapport investigates the transformation of Bukharian identity through an examination of corresponding changes in its music, focusing on three of these distinct but overlapping repertoires - maquom (classical or "heavy" music), Jewish religious music and popular music. Drawing upon interviews, participant observation and music lessons, Rapport interprets the personal perspectives of musicians who serve as community leaders and representatives. By adapting strategies acquired as an ethno-religious minority among Central Asian Muslim neighbors, Bukharian musicians have adjusted their musical repertoire in their new American home. The result is the creation of a distinct Bukharian Jewish American identity-their musical activities are changing the city's cultural landscape while at the same time providing for an understanding of the cultural implications of Bukharian diaspora. Greeted with Smiles is sure to be an essential text for ethnomusicologists and scholars of Jewish and Central Asian music and culture, Jewish-Muslim interaction and diasporic communities.

As the Soviet Union stood on the brink of collapse, thousands of Bukharian Jews left their homes from across the predominantly Muslim cities of Central Asia, to reestablish their lives in the United States, Israel and Europe. Today, about thirty thousand Bukharian Jews reside in New York City, settled into close-knit communities and existing as a quintessential American immigrant group. For Bukharian immigrants, music is an essential part of their communal self-definition, and musicians frequently act as cultural representatives for the group as a whole.Greeted with Smiles: Bukharian Jewish Music and Musicians in New York explores the circumstances facing new American immigrants, using the music of the Bukharian Jews to gain entrance into their community and their culture. Author Evan Rapport investigates the transformation of Bukharian identity through an examination of corresponding changes in its music, focusing on three of these distinct but overlapping repertoires - maqom (classical or "heavy" music), Jewish religious music and popular party (or "light") music.Drawing upon interviews, participant observation and music lessons, Rapport interprets the personal perspectives of musicians who serve as community leaders and representatives. By adapting strategies acquired as an ethno-religious minority among Central Asian Muslim neighbors, Bukharian musicians have adjusted their musical repertoire in their new American home. The result is the creation of a distinct Bukharian Jewish American identity-their musical activities are changing the city''s cultural landscape while at the same time providing for an understanding of the cultural implications of Bukharian diaspora. Greeted with Smiles is sure to be an essential text for ethnomusicologists and scholars of Jewish and Central Asian music and culture, Jewish-Muslim interaction and diasporic communities.

Moving back through Dewey, Heidegger, Nietzsche, and Rousseau, the lineage of Western music education finds its origins in Plato and Pythagoras. Yet theories not rooted in the ancient Greek tradition are all but absent. A Way of Music Education provides a much-needed intervention, integrating ancient Chinese thought into the canon of music education in a structured, systematized, and philosophical way. The book's three central sources - the Yijing (The Book of Changes), Confucianism, and Daoism - inform author C. Victor Fung's argument: that the human being exists as an entity at the center of an organismic world in which all things and events, including music and music education, are connected. Fung ultimately proposes a new educational philosophy based on three key ideas in Chinese thought: change, balance, and liberation. A unique work, A Way of Music Education offers a universal approach engrained in a specific and ancient cultural tradition.

Moving back through Dewey, Heidegger, Nietzsche, and Rousseau, the lineage of Western music education finds its origins in Plato and Pythagoras. Yet theories not rooted in the ancient Greek tradition are all but absent. A Way of Music Education provides a much-needed intervention, integrating ancient Chinese thought into the canon of music education in a structured, systematized, and philosophical way. The book's three central sources - the Yijing (The Book of Changes), Confucianism, and Daoism - inform author C. Victor Fung's argument: that the human being exists as an entity at the center of an organismic world in which all things and events, including music and music education, are connected. Fung ultimately proposes a new educational philosophy based on three key ideas in Chinese thought: change, balance, and liberation. A unique work, A Way of Music Education offers a universal approach engrained in a specific and ancient cultural tradition.

Moving back through Dewey, Heidegger, Nietzsche, and Rousseau, the lineage of Western music education finds its origins in Plato and Pythagoras. Yet theories not rooted in the ancient Greek tradition are all but absent. A Way of Music Education provides a much-needed intervention, integrating ancient Chinese thought into the canon of music education in a structured, systematized, and philosophical way. The book''s three central sources - the Yijing (The Book of Changes), Confucianism, and Daoism - inform author C. Victor Fung''s argument: that the human being exists as an entity at the center of an organismic world in which all things and events, including music and music education, are connected. Fung ultimately proposes a new educational philosophy based on three key ideas in Chinese thought: change, balance, and liberation. A unique work, A Way of Music Education offers a universal approach engrained in a specific and ancient cultural tradition.

Musics of the World offers a rich and inviting introduction to music from around the globe, exploring a diverse array of traditions and genres in depth while helping students develop skills for approaching new music in their lives. Clear, accessible introductory chapters give students a solid overview of ethnomusicology, setting the stage for eighteen geographically-focused chapters that ground students in a region's cultural context before exploring what makes each place musically unique. Throughout, videos, timed musical tracks, definitions, color photographs, recipes, and discussion questions provide a variety of avenues through which to engage with the music and cultures at hand.

In a tradition extending from the medieval era to the early twentieth century, visually disabled Japanese women known as goze toured the Japanese countryside as professional singers and contributed to the vitality of rural musical culture. The goze sang unique narratives (many requiring several hours to perform) as well as a huge repertory of popular ballads and short songs, typically accompanied by a three-stringed lute known as the shamisen. During the Edo period (1600-1868) goze formed guild-like occupational associations and created an iconic musical repertory. They were remarkably successful in fighting discrimination accorded to women, people with physical disabilities, the poor, and itinerants, using their specialized art to connect directly to the commoner public. The best documented goze lived in Echigo province in the Japanese northwest. Although their activities peaked in the nineteenth century, some women continued to tour until the middle of the twentieth. The last active goze survived until 2005. In Goze: Blind Women and Musical Performance in Traditional Japan, author Gerald Groemer argues that goze activism was primarily a matter of the agency of performance itself. Groemer shows that the solidarity goze achieved with the rural public through narrative and music was based on the convergence of the goze's desire to achieve social autonomy and the wish of lower-class to mitigate the cultural deprivation to which they were otherwise so often subject. It was this correlation of emancipatory interests that allowed goze to flourish and attain a degree of social autonomy. Far from being pitied as helpless victims, goze were recognized as masterful artisans who had succeeded in transforming their disability into a powerful social tool and who could act as agents of widespread cultural development.As the first full-length scholarly work on goze in English, this book is sure to prove an invaluable resource to scholars and students of Japanese culture, Japanese music, ethnomusicology, and disability studies worldwide.

In a tradition extending from the medieval era to the early twentieth century, visually disabled Japanese women known as goze toured the Japanese countryside as professional singers and contributed to the vitality of rural musical culture. The goze sang unique narratives (many requiring several hours to perform) as well as a huge repertory of popular ballads and short songs, typically accompanied by a three-stringed lute known as the shamisen. During the Edo period (1600-1868) goze formed guild-like occupational associations and created an iconic musical repertory. They were remarkably successful in fighting discrimination accorded to women, people with physical disabilities, the poor, and itinerants, using their specialized art to connect directly to the commoner public. The best documented goze lived in Echigo province in the Japanese northwest. Although their activities peaked in the nineteenth century, some women continued to tour until the middle of the twentieth. The last active goze survived until 2005. In Goze: Blind Women and Musical Performance in Traditional Japan, author Gerald Groemer argues that goze activism was primarily a matter of the agency of performance itself. Groemer shows that the solidarity goze achieved with the rural public through narrative and music was based on the convergence of the goze's desire to achieve social autonomy and the wish of lower-class to mitigate the cultural deprivation to which they were otherwise so often subject. It was this correlation of emancipatory interests that allowed goze to flourish and attain a degree of social autonomy. Far from being pitied as helpless victims, goze were recognized as masterful artisans who had succeeded in transforming their disability into a powerful social tool and who could act as agents of widespread cultural development.As the first full-length scholarly work on goze in English, this book is sure to prove an invaluable resource to scholars and students of Japanese culture, Japanese music, ethnomusicology, and disability studies worldwide.

In a tradition extending from the medieval era to the early twentieth century, visually disabled Japanese women known as goze toured the countryside as professional singers. An integral part of rural musical culture, the goze sang unique narratives of their own making and a significant repertory of popular ballads and short songs. Goze activities peaked in the nineteenth century, and some women continued to tour well into the middle of the twentieth. The last active goze lived until 2005.In Goze: Women, Musical Performance, and Visual Disability in Traditional Japan, Gerald Groemer examines the way of life, institutions, and songs of these itinerant performers. Groemer shows that the solidarity and success goze achieved with the rural public through narrative and music was based on the convergence of the goze''s desire for a degree of social and economic autonomy with the audience''s wish to mitigate the cultural deprivation it so often experienced. Goze recognized audiences as a stimulus for developing repertories and careers; the public in turn recognized goze as masterful artisans who acted as powerful agents of widespread cultural development.As the first full-length scholarly work on goze in English, this book is an invaluable resource to scholars and students of Japanese culture, Japanese music, ethnomusicology, and disability studies worldwide.

The world of Sub-Saharan African music is immensely rich and diverse, containing a plethora of repertoires and traditions. In The African Imagination in Music, renowned music scholar Kofi Agawu offers an introduction to the major dimensions of this music and the values upon which it rests. Agawu leads his readers through an exploration of the traditions, structural elements, instruments, and performative techniques that characterize the music. In sections that focus upon rhythm, melody, form, and harmony, the essential parts of African music come into relief. While traditional music, the backbone of Africa's musical thinking, receives the most attention, Agawu also supplies insights into popular and art music in order to demonstrate the breadth of the African musical imagination. Close readings of a variety of songs, including an Ewe dirge, an Aka children's song, and Fela's 'Suffering and Smiling' supplement the broader discussion. The African Imagination in Music foregrounds a hitherto under-reported legacy of recordings and insists on the necessity of experiencing music as sound in order to appreciate and understand it fully. Accordingly, a Companion Website features important examples of the music discussed in detail in the book. Accessibly and engagingly written for a general audience, The African Imagination in Music is poised to renew interest in Black African music and to engender discussion of its creative underpinnings by Africanists, ethnomusicologists, music theorists and musicologists.

The world of Sub-Saharan African music is immensely rich and diverse, containing a plethora of repertoires and traditions. In The African Imagination in Music, renowned music scholar Kofi Agawu offers an introduction to the major dimensions of this music and the values upon which it rests. Agawu leads his readers through an exploration of the traditions, structural elements, instruments, and performative techniques that characterize the music. In sections that focus upon rhythm, melody, form, and harmony, the essential parts of African music come into relief. While traditional music, the backbone of Africa's musical thinking, receives the most attention, Agawu also supplies insights into popular and art music in order to demonstrate the breadth of the African musical imagination. Close readings of a variety of songs, including an Ewe dirge, an Aka children's song, and Fela's 'Suffering and Smiling' supplement the broader discussion. The African Imagination in Music foregrounds a hitherto under-reported legacy of recordings and insists on the necessity of experiencing music as sound in order to appreciate and understand it fully. Accordingly, a Companion Website features important examples of the music discussed in detail in the book. Accessibly and engagingly written for a general audience, The African Imagination in Music is poised to renew interest in Black African music and to engender discussion of its creative underpinnings by Africanists, ethnomusicologists, music theorists and musicologists.

The world of Sub-Saharan African music is immensely rich and diverse, containing a plethora of repertoires and traditions. In The African Imagination in Music, renowned music scholar Kofi Agawu offers an introduction to the major dimensions of this music and the values upon which it rests. Agawu leads his readers through an exploration of the traditions, structural elements, instruments, and performative techniques that characterize the music. In sections that focus upon rhythm, melody, form, and harmony, the essential parts of African music come into relief. While traditional music, the backbone of Africa''s musical thinking, receives the most attention, Agawu also supplies insights into popular and art music in order to demonstrate the breadth of the African musical imagination. Close readings of a variety of songs, including an Ewe dirge, an Aka children''s song, and Fela''s ''Suffering and Smiling'' supplement the broader discussion. The African Imagination in Music foregrounds a hitherto under-reported legacy of recordings and insists on the necessity of experiencing music as sound in order to appreciate and understand it fully. Accordingly, a Companion Website features important examples of the music discussed in detail in the book. Accessibly and engagingly written for a general audience, The African Imagination in Music is poised to renew interest in Black African music and to engender discussion of its creative underpinnings by Africanists, ethnomusicologists, music theorists and musicologists.