(Peeters 1988)

Written by one of the best-known academic writers on African music, On African Music is a collection of seven essays addressing various techniques, influences, and scholarly approaches to African music. After a concise introduction spelling out the rationale for the book, successive chapters develop answers to questions such as: How does a "minimalist impulse" animate creativity in Africa, and does "Western minimalism" differ from "African minimalism"? How do we explain the prevalence of iconic effects in African expressive forms? How has (European) tonality functioned as a "colonizing force" in African music? Why is the (written) art music of the continent talked about so little when it has been in existence since the middle of the nineteenth century? How might the discipline of music theory be rejuvenated by "aid" from Africa? What are the strengths and limitations of ethnotheory as a methodology? Who is who in theorizations of African rhythm, and how might we explain the shape of the existing archive? This book thus deals with analytical and interpretive issues, the politics of scholarship, and salient features of African music. Laced with provocative viewpoints on each page, On African Music should appeal not only to readers curious about the structural underpinnings of African music but also to those who wish to reflect critically and philosophically on how we study and write about the music of the continent, how we might approach its global status with a firm understanding from the inside, and what our priorities might be in promoting an empowering cosmopolitan discourse.

Popular music studies is a rapidly expanding field with changing emphases and agendas. The music industry has changed in recent years, as has governmental involvement in popular music schemes as part of the culture industry. The distinction between the major record labels and the outsider independents has become blurred over time. Popular music, as part of this umbrella of the culture industry, has been progressively globalized and globalizing. The tensions within popular music are now no longer between national cultural identity and popular music, but between the local and the global. This four volume collection examines the changing status of popular music against this background. Simon Frith examines the heritage of popular music, and how technology has changed not only the production but the reception of this brand of sound. The collection examines how the traditional genres of rock, pop and soul have broken down and what has replaced them, as well as showing how this proliferation of musical styles has also splintered the audience of popular music.

Popular music studies is a rapidly expanding field with changing emphases and agenda. This is a multi-volume resource for this area of study

The dawn of music semiology showcases the work of ten leading musicologists inspired by the work of Jean-Jacques Nattiez. Reflecting the energy and diversity of the young field of music semiology, chapters in this volume discuss music and gesture, the psychology of music, and the role of ethnotheory, and offer new research on topics as diverse as modeling folk polyphony, spatialization in the Darmstadt repertoire, Schenker's theory of musical content, and modernism from Wagner to Boulez.

The aim of this book is to stimulate debate by offering a critique of discourse about African music. Who writes about African music, how, and why? What assumptions and prejudices influence the presentation of ethnographic data? Even the term "African music" suggests there is an agreed-upon meaning, but African music signifies differently to different people. This book also poses the question then, "What is African music?" Agawu offers a new and provocative look at the history of African music scholarship that will resonate with students of ethnomusicology and post-colonial studies. He offers an alternative "Afro-centric" means of understanding African music, and in doing so, illuminates a different mode of creativity beyond the usual provenance of Western criticism. This book will undoubtedly inspire heated debate--and new thinking--among musicologists, cultural theorists, and post-colonial thinkers. Also includes 15 musical examples.

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.

Heritage work has had a uniquely wide currency in Africa's politics. Secure within the pages of books, encoded in legal statutes, encased in glass display cases and enacted in the panoply of court ritual, the artefacts produced by the heritage domain have become a resource for government administration, a library for traditionalists and a marketable source of value for cultural entrepreneurs. The Politics of Heritage in Africa draws together disparate fields of study - history, archaeology, linguistics, the performing arts and cinema - to show how the lifeways of the past were made into capital, a store of authentic knowledge that political and cultural entrepreneurs could draw from. This book shows African heritage to be a mode of political organisation, a means by which the relics of the past are shored up, reconstructed and revalued as commodities, as tradition, as morality or as patrimony.

Informed by her in-depth ethnomusical knowledge, the result of detailed fieldwork, Mans’s book is about musical worlds and how we as people inhabit them. The book asserts that an understanding of our musical worlds can be a transformative educational tool that could have a significant role to play in multicultural music and arts education. She explores the way in which musical expression, with its myriad cultural variations, reveals much about identity and cultural norms, and shows how particular musical sounds are aesthetically related to these norms. The author goes further to suggest that similar systems can be detected across cultures, while each world remains colored by a distinctive soundscape. Mans also looks at the way each cultural soundscape is a symbolic manifestation of a society’s collective cognition, sorting musical behavior and sounds into clusters and patterns that fulfill each society’s requirements. She probes the fact that in today’s globalized and mobile world, as people move from one society to another, cross-cultural acts and hybrids result in a number of new aesthetics. Finally, in addition to three personal narratives by musicians from different continents, the author has invited scholars from diverse specializations and locations to comment on different sections of the book, opening up a critical dialogue with voices from different parts of the globe. Musical categorization, identity, values, aesthetic evaluation, creativity, curriculum, assessment and teacher education are some of the issues tackled in this manner.