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The musical human: without a doubt, this vision of the human species as naturally musical has become the most enduring legacy John Blacking bequeathed to ethnomusicology. The contributions in this volume have been written by people who worked closely with or have been inspired by John Blacking. Each essay draws upon distinct aspects of Blacking's writings but complements them with quite different sets of sources. This volume provides fresh assessments of Blacking's work, taking up his challenge to push the boundaries of ethnomusicology into new territories.
Voices of the Magi explores the popular Catholic musical ensembles of southeastern Brazil known as folias de reis (companies of kings). Composed predominantly of low-income workers, the folias reenact the journey of the Wise Men to Bethlehem and back to the Orient, as they roam from house to house, singing to bless the families they visit in exchange for food and money. These gifts, in turn, are used to prepare a festival on Kings' Day, January 6, to which all who contributed are invited. Focusing on urban folias, Suzel Ana Reily shows how participants use the ritual journeys and musical performances of the folias to create sacred spheres distinct from, yet intimately related to, their everyday world. Reily calls this practice "enchantment" and argues that it allows the folia communities to temporarily make the social ideals of mutual reciprocity and equality embodied in their religious beliefs a reality. The contrast between their ritual experiences and the daily lives of these impoverished workers, in turn, reinforces the religious convictions of these devotees of the music of the Magi.
Bands structured around western wind instruments are among the most widespread instrumental ensembles in the world. Although these ensembles draw upon European military traditions that spread globally through colonialism, militarism and missionary work, local musicians have adapted the brass band prototype to their home settings, and today these ensembles are found in religious processions and funerals, military manoeuvres and parades, and popular music genres throughout the world. Based on their expertise in ethnographic and archival research, the contributors to this volume present a series of essays that examine wind band cultures from a range of disciplinary perspectives, allowing for a ...
The Oxford Handbook of Music and World Christianities investigates music's role in everyday practice and social history across the diversity of Christian religions and practices around the globe. The volume explores Christian communities in the Americas, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia as sites of transmission, transformation, and creation of deeply diverse musical traditions. The book's contributors, while mostly rooted in ethnomusicology, examine Christianities and their musics in methodologically diverse ways, engaging with musical sound and structure, musical and social history, and ethnography of music and musical performance. These broad materials explore five themes: music and mis...
The guitar is one of the most evocative instruments in the world. It features in music as diverse as heavy metal, blues, indie and flamenco, as well as Indian classical music, village music making in Papua New Guinea and carnival in Brazil. This cross-cultural popularity makes it a unique starting point for understanding social interaction and cultural identity. Guitar music can be sexy, soothing, melancholy or manic, but it nearly always brings people together and creates a common ground even if this common ground is often the site of intense social, cultural, economic and political negotiation and contest.This book explores how people use guitars and guitar music in various nations across ...
Wind bands are common around the world, and the small Mediterranean island of Malta is no exception. Their abundance in Malta testifies to the popularity of the wind band tradition among the locals. It is central to everyday life, particularly during the village feast, which is synonymous with Maltese bands. These ensembles are not made up merely of performers and musical instruments but encapsulate a rich and intricate tradition embedded in the local community. This book describes the history and development of Maltese wind bands, social and political values, the Maltese march, entertainment, and the recording industry. Chapters demonstrate how local communality, partisan political division and rivalry, foreign influences, continuation of past practices as well as the introduction of new ones, and other interests have coalesced to shape the contemporary Maltese wind band tradition.
The Cultural Study of Music is an anthology of new writings that serves as a basic textbook on music and culture. Increasingly, music is being studied as it relates to specific cultures--not only by ethnomusicologists, but by traditional musicologists as well. Drawing on writers from music, anthropology, sociology, and the related fields, the book both defines the field--i.e., "What is the relation between music and culture?"--and then presents case studies of particular issues in world musics.
WINNER OF THE 2019 SOCIETY OF ETHNOMUSICLOGY ELLEN KOSKOFF PRIZE FOR EDITED COLLECTIONS The Routledge Companion to the Study of Local Musicking provides a reference to how, cross-culturally, musicking constructs locality and how locality is constructed by the musicking that takes place within it, that is, how people engage with ideas of community and place through music. The term "musicking" has gained currency in music studies, and refers to the diverse ways in which people engage with music, regardless of the nature of this engagement. By linking musicking to the local, this book highlights the ways in which musical practices and discourses interact with people's everyday experiences and understandings of their immediate environment, their connections and commitment to that locality, and the people who exist within it. It explores what makes local musicking "local." By viewing musicking from the perspective of where it takes place, the contributions in this collection engage with debates on the processes of musicking, identity construction, community-building and network formation, competitions and rivalries, place and space making, and local-global dynamics.
Scholars have long known that world music was not merely the globalized product of modern media, but rather that it connected religions, cultures, languages and nations throughout world history. The chapters in this History take readers to foundational historical moments – in Europe, Oceania, China, India, the Muslim world, North and South America – in search of the connections provided by a truly world music. Historically, world music emerged from ritual and religion, labor and life-cycles, which occupy chapters on Native American musicians, religious practices in India and Indonesia, and nationalism in Argentina and Portugal. The contributors critically examine music in cultural encounter and conflict, and as the critical core of scientific theories from the Arabic Middle Ages through the Enlightenment to postmodernism. Overall, the book contains the histories of the music of diverse cultures, which increasingly become the folk, popular and classical music of our own era.
The critical importance of past for the present--of music histories in local and global forms--asserts itself. The history of world music, as each chapter makes clear, is one of critical moments and paradigm shifts.