In recent years black South African music and dance have
become ever more popular in the West, where they are now
widely celebrated as expressions of opposition to
discrimination and repression. Less well known is the
rich history of these arts, which were shaped by several
generations of black artists and performers whose
struggles, visions, and aspirations did not differ fundamentally
from those of their present-day counterparts.
In five detailed case studies Veit Erlmann digs deep to expose the roots of the most important of these performance traditions. He...

For the Tumbuka people of Malawi, traditional medical practices are saturated with music. In this groundbreaking ethnography, Steven M. Friedson explores a health care system populated by dancing prophets, singing patients, and drummed spirits.
Tumbuka healers diagnose diseases by enacting divination trances in which they "see" the causes of past events and their consequences for patients. Music is the structural nexus where healer, patient, and spirit meet it is the energizing heat that fuels the trance, transforming both the bodily and social functioning of the individual. Friedson...

Fiddling for Norway is an engrossing portrait of a fiddle-based folk revival in Norway, one that in many ways parallels contemporary folk institutions and festivals throughout the world, including American fiddling. It is a detailed case study in the politics of culture, the causes and purposes of folk revivals, and the cultivation of music to define identity.
The book begins with an investigation of the people and events important to Norwegian folk fiddling, tracing the history of Norwegian folk music and the growth and diversification of the folk music revival. The narrative takes us to...

With its irresistible dance beat, strong bass line, and straightforward harmonies and lyrics, "zouk" has become wildly popular in the Caribbean, Africa, and Europe. This book complete with a compact disc and numerous illustrations and musical examples provides a thorough introduction to the sound, lyrics, choreography, and social milieu of this vibrant and infectious new music.
"This invigorating reference work and companion CD of the Antilles' sexy "zouk" dance sound will lift readers out of their easy chairs "and" their complacency about the nonreggae aspects of Caribbean pop. . . . ...

Composed of a core set of two drums and two gongs, "p ungmul" is a South Korean tradition of rural folk percussion. Steeped in music, dance, theater, and pageantry, but centrally focused on rhythm, such ensembles have been an integral part of village life in South Korea for centuries, serving as a musical accompaniment in the often overlapping and shifting contexts of labor, ritual, and entertainment.
The first book to introduce Korean drumming and dance to the English-speaking world, Nathan Hesselink s "P ungmul" offers detailed descriptions of its instrumentation, dance formations,...

Kartomi first moves through a culture-specific inspection of several societies in Europe, Asia, and Africa, and then, synthesizing current ethnomusicological trends, proceeds to make a large-scale comparative study of classification schemes and the concepts which govern them.

While the Haitian musical tradition is probably best known for the Vodou-inspired roots music that helped topple the two-generation Duvalier dictatorship, the nation s troubled history of civil unrest and its tangled relationship with the United States is more intensely experienced through its art music, which combines French and German elements of classical music with Haiti's indigenous folk music. "Vodou Nation" examines art music by Haitian and African American composers who were inspired by Haiti s history as a nation created by slave revolt.
Around the time of the United States s...

In Sardinian Chronicles Bernard Lortat-Jacob poetically evokes Sardinian music through a series of encounters with individual musicians and their families. Refusing to separate the music from the world in which it arises, Lortat-Jacob offers twelve vignettes focused on individuals such as Cocco, a chicken farmer who deciphers the shapes of his fowl and the layout of his henhouses in the constellations of a summer sky, and Pietro, a sleep-walking postman who divides his time between mail deliveries and impromptu serenades. These vignettes bring to life an art still very much alive: the...

Although scholars have long been aware of the crucial roles that gender plays in music, and vice versa, the contributors to this volume are among the first to systematically examine the interactions between the two. This book is also the first to explore the diverse, yet often strikingly similar, musics of the areas bordering the Mediterranean from comparative anthropological perspectives.
From Spanish flamenco to Algerian rai, Greek rebetika to Turkish pop music, Sephardi and Berber songs to Egyptian belly dancers, the contributors cover an exceedingly wide range of geographic and...