The book is an outline of the Armenian duduk, a cylindrical double-reed aerophone made of apricot-wood, and its relation to the Armenian identity. It attempts to deepen our understanding of musical instruments not only through an examination of musical and constructional features, but also through the application of a sociocultural framework which allows a theorization of the idea of the instrument as social being. The discussion is centered on the different contexts in which the duduk is played. These are divided into two categories: solo and ensemble. Solo duduk performance includes the...

Is the music world clinging to an outdated school of thought in ethnomusicology? Nercessian shows how the theory of cultural relativism continues to detrimentally pervade ethnomusicological thought, and then offers a solution that may better serve musical study in today's more globalized world. At the heart of cultural relativism, which seeks to avoid imposing the standards of an outside culture on a work, is the emic-etic dichotomy, which delineates the perspective of the outsider and that of the culture of origin. Nercessian points out that in our increasingly globalized society, cultures...