How was Africa seen by the West during the colonial period? How do Europeans and Americans conceive of Africa in today's postcolonial era? Such questions have preoccupied anthropologists, historians, and literary scholars for years. But few have asked the reverse: how did--and do--Africans see Europe and the United States? Fewer still have wondered how Western images of Africa and African representations of the West might mirror one another. In a detailed study spanning from the late nineteenth century to the present, renowned anthropologist and ethnomusicologist Veit Erlmann examines the...
How was Africa seen by the West during the colonial period? How do Europeans and Americans conceive of Africa in today's postcolonial era? Such questi...
First popularized by Ladysmith Black Mambazo and Paul Simon, the a cappella music known as "isicathamiya" has become internationally celebrated as one of South Africa's most vibrant and distinct performance traditions. But Ladysmith Black Mambazo is only one of hundreds of choirs that perform "nightsongs" during weekly all-night competitions in South Africa's cities. Veit Erlmann provides the first comprehensive interpretation of "isicathamiya" performance practice and its relation to the culture and consciousness of the Zulu migrant laborers who largely compose its choirs. In songs and...
First popularized by Ladysmith Black Mambazo and Paul Simon, the a cappella music known as "isicathamiya" has become internationally celebrated as one...
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...
In recent years black South African music and dance have become ever more popular in the West, where they are now widely celebrated as express...
Hearing Cultures is a timely examination of the elusive, often evocative, and sometimes cacophonous auditory sense. It answers such intriguing questions as: Did people in Shakespeare's time hear differently from us? In what way does technology affect our ears? Why do people in Egypt increasingly listen to taped religious sermons? Why did Enlightenment doctors believe that music was an essential cure? What happens acoustically in cross-cultural first encounters? The ear, as much as the eye, nose, mouth and hand, defines experience. This book shows how sound offers a refreshing new...
Hearing Cultures is a timely examination of the elusive, often evocative, and sometimes cacophonous auditory sense. It answers such intrigui...
Hearing has traditionally been regarded as the second sense -- as somehow less rational and less modern than the first sense, sight. Reason and Resonance explodes this myth by reconstructing the process through which the ear came to play a central role in modern culture and rationality.
For the past four hundred years, hearing has been understood as involving the sympathetic resonance between the vibrating air and various parts of the inner ear. But the emergence of resonance as the centerpiece of modern aurality also coincides with the triumph of a new type of epistemology...
Hearing has traditionally been regarded as the second sense -- as somehow less rational and less modern than the first sense, sight. Reason and ...
Hearing has traditionally been regarded as the second sense -- as somehow less rational and less modern than the first sense, sight. Reason and Resonance explodes this myth by reconstructing the process through which the ear came to play a central role in modern culture and rationality.
For the past four hundred years, hearing has been understood as involving the sympathetic resonance between the vibrating air and various parts of the inner ear. But the emergence of resonance as the centerpiece of modern aurality also coincides with the triumph of a new type of epistemology...
Hearing has traditionally been regarded as the second sense -- as somehow less rational and less modern than the first sense, sight. Reason and ...
