A groundbreaking work expanding our view of music beyond the Western classical tradition.

In clear and elegant prose, Music of the Common Tongue, first published in 1987, argues that by any reasonable reckoning of the function of music in human life the African American tradition, that which stems from the collision between African and European ways of doing music which occurred in the Americas and the Caribbean during and after slavery, is the major western music of the twentieth century. In showing why this is so, the author presents not only an account of African American music from its origins but also a more general consideration of the nature of the music act and of its function in human life. The two streams of discussion occupy alternate chapters so that each casts light on the other. The author offers also an answer to what the Musical Times called the "seldom posed though glaringly obtrusive" question: "why is it that the music of an alienated, oppressed, often persecuted black minority should have made so powerful an impact on the entire industrialized world, whatever the color of its skin or economic status?"

Successful professional music teachers must not only be knowledgeable in conducting and performing, but also be socially and culturally aware of students, issues, and events that affect their classrooms. This book provides comprehensive overview of social and cultural themes directly related to music education, teacher training, and successful teacher characteristics. New topics in the second edition include the impact of Race to the Top, social justice, bullying, alternative schools, the influence of Common Core Standards, and the effects of teacher and school assessments. All topics and material are research-based to provide a foundation and current perspective on each issue.

This provocative volume of essays is now available in paperback. The contributors to this volume - musicologists, sociologists, cultural theorists - all challenge the view that music occupies an autonomous aesthetic sphere. Recently, socially and politically grounded enterprises such as feminism, semiotics and deconstruction have effected a major transformation in the ways in which the arts and humanities are studied, leading in turn to a systematic investigation of the implicit assumptions underlying the critical methods of the last two hundred years. Influenced by these approaches, the writers here question a prevailing ideology that insists there is a division between music and society and examine the ways in which the two do in fact interact and mediate one another within and across socio-cultural boundaries.

This open access book highlights the importance of visions of alternative futures in music teacher education in a time of increasing societal complexity due to increased diversity. There are policies at every level to counter prejudice, increase opportunities, reduce inequalities, stimulate change in educational systems, and prevent and counter polarization. Foregrounding the intimate connections between music, society and education, this book suggests ways that music teacher education might be an arena for the reflexive contestation of traditions, hierarchies, practices and structures. The visions for intercultural music teacher education offered in this book arise from a variety of practical projects, intercultural collaborations, and cross-national work conducted in music teacher education. The chapters open up new horizons for understanding the tension-fields and possible discomfort that music teacher educators face when becoming change agents. They highlight the importance of collaborations, resilience and perseverance when enacting visions on the program level of higher education institutions, and the need for change in re-imagining music teacher education programs.

A musical practice used for centuries the world over, improvisation too often has been neglected by scholars who dismiss it as either technically undissectible or inexplicably mysterious. At different times and in different cultures, performing music that is not "precomposed" has constituted an artful expression of the performer's individuality (the Baroque); a wild, unthinking form of expression (jazz antagonists); and the best method to train inexperienced musicians to use their instruments (the Middle East). This wide-ranging collection of essays considers musical improvisation from a variety of approaches, including ethnomusicology, education, performance, historical musicology, and music theory. Laying the groundwork for even further research into improvisation, the contributors of this volume delve into topics as diverse as the creative minds of Mozart and Beethoven, the place of improvised musics in Western and non-Western societies, and the development of jazz as a musical and cultural phenomenon.

How can we better understand the past, present and future of Social Action through Music (SATM)? This ground-breaking book examines the development of the Red de Escuelas de Música de Medellín (the Network of Music Schools of Medellín), a network of 27 schools founded in Colombia’s second city in 1996 as a response to its reputation as the most dangerous city on Earth. Inspired by El Sistema, the foundational Venezuelan music education program, the Red is nonetheless markedly different: its history is one of multiple reinventions and a continual search to improve its educational offering and better realise its social goals. Its internal reflections and attempts at transformation shed valuable light on the past, present, and future of SATM. Based on a year of intensive fieldwork in Colombia and written by Geoffrey Baker, the author of El Sistema: Orchestrating Venezuela’s Youth (2014), this important volume offers fresh insights on SATM and its evolution both in scholarship and in practice. It will be of interest to a very varied readership: employees and leaders of SATM programs; music educators; funders and policy-makers; and students and scholars of SATM, music education, ethnomusicology, and other related fields.

A society is the result of interacting individuals, and individuals are also the result of this interaction. This interaction happens through music, among other factors. As such, music constitutes a powerful resource for symbolic interaction, which constitutes the medium and substance of a culture. The importance of music in a society is clearly brought to light in the role that it plays in the three basic parameters of the social logics: identity, social order and the need for exchange. If music is so important to us, it is because, apart from its assigned aesthetic values, it fits closely with the dynamics of each of these three different parameters. These parameters, which are consubstantial to the social nature of the human being, constitute the core of the book as they manifest in musical practices. This publication addresses important issues such as the role of music in shaping identities, how music and social order are intertwined and why music is so relevant in human interaction. The last part of the book explores issues related to the social application of musical research. The volume brings together specialists from different academic disciplines with the same powerful starting point: music is not merely something related to the social, but rather a social life itself, something capable of structuring the social experience.

"In Music, Disability, and Society Alex Lubet identifies the utility of bringing a disability studies perspective to the field of music studies. His book helps to demonstrate not only the significance of disabled people's presence in the history of music, but, even more importantly, the difference that disability makes in the production of the art form itself. The work will help to spur new work in this interdisciplinary arena for years to come."---David Mitchell, Temple University --Book Jacket.

Cited by Soundpost as "remarkable and revolutionary" upon its publication in 1977, Music, Society, Education has become a classic in the study of music as a social force. Christopher Small sets out to examine the social implications of Western classical music, effects that until recently have been largely ignored or dismissed by most musicologists. He strives to view the Western musical tradition "through the mirror of these other musics [Balinese and African] as it were from the outside, and in so doing to learn something of the inner unspoken nature of Western culture as a whole." As series co-editor Robert Walser writes, "By pointing to the complicity of Western culture with Western imperialism, Small challenges us to create a future that is more humane than the past. And by writing a book that enables us to rethink so fundamentally our involvements with music, he teaches us how we might get there."