In Sardinian Chronicles Bernard Lortat-Jacob poetically evokes Sardinian music through a series of encounters with individual musicians and their families. Refusing to separate the music from the world in which it arises, Lortat-Jacob offers twelve vignettes focused on individuals such as Cocco, a chicken farmer who deciphers the shapes of his fowl and the layout of his henhouses in the constellations of a summer sky, and Pietro, a sleep-walking postman who divides his time between mail deliveries and impromptu serenades. These vignettes bring to life an art still very much alive: the music of villages with an oral tradition, sung or played in the company of others. Through his sensitive portraits of music makers and their families, Lortat-Jacob overcomes some of the epistemological and methodological dilemmas facing his field today, while also giving the general reader a sense of the multiple and idiosyncratic ways that music is involved in everyday life. With a foreword by Michel Leiris and a compact disc containing samples of the music being discussed, this book constitutes a breakthrough in ethnomusicology that will also interest many in Mediterranean studies and European anthropology.

The aim of this study is to increase understanding of folk music within an historical, European framework, and to show the genre as a dynamic and changing art form. The book addresses a plethora of questions through its detailed examination of a wide range of music from vastly different national and cultural identities. It attempts to elucidate the connections between, and the varying development of, the music of peoples throughout Europe, firstly by examining the ways in which scholars of different ideological and artistic ambitions have collected, studied and performed folk music, then by investigating the relationship between folk and popular music. Jan Ling is Professor of Musicology at Göteborg University, Sweden.

Superior study by expert combines discussion of design and construction with detailed history of the evolution of instruments from earliest times to present. 75 illustrations, 25 musical examples, 16 fingering charts.

The Highland bagpipe, widely considered 'Scotland's national instrument', is one of the most recognized icons of traditional music in the world. It is also among the least understood. But Scottish bagpipe music and tradition - particularly, but not exclusively, the Highland bagpipe - has enjoyed an unprecedented surge in public visibility and scholarly attention since the 1990s. A greater interest in the emic led to a diverse picture of the meaning and musical iconicism of the bagpipe in communities in Scotland and throughout the Scottish diaspora. This interest has led to the consideration of both the globalization of Highland piping and piping as rooted in local culture. It has given rise to a reappraisal of sources which have hitherto formed the backbone of long-standing historical and performative assumptions. And revivalist research which reassesses Highland piping's cultural position relative to other Scottish piping traditions, such as that of the Lowlands and Borders, today effectively challenges the notion of the Highland bagpipe as Scotland's 'national' instrument. The Highland Bagpipe provides an unprecedented insight into the current state of Scottish piping studies. The contributors – from Scotland, England, Canada and the United States – discuss the bagpipe in oral and written history, anthropology, ethnography, musicology, material culture and modal aesthetics. The book will appeal to ethnomusicologists, anthropologists, as well as those interested in international bagpipe studies and traditions.

Originally published in 1975, and written by an authority on Scottish music, this book traces the evolution of the bagpipe whilst also narrating the fortunes of the ‘Great Highland Bagpipe’ itself. Exploring history and archaeology of civilizations as far removed from the Scottish Highlands as Egypt and Mesopotamia, Greece and Rome this book offers a unique full-length history of one of the world’s most interesting and ancient musical instruments. Appendices list the bagpipes of other countries and the materials used in the instrument’s manufacture as well as a comprehensive bibliography.

Speak the Culture: Italy offers a rich and engaging insight into the events, people and movements that have shaped Italy and the Italians. A guidebook can show you where to go, a phrase-book what to say, but only Speak the Culture: Italy will lead you to the nation's soul. The Italian character is complex, contradictory, alluring and infinitely variable: heirs to the greatest empire of the ancient world but almost ungovernable; cradle of western civilization as well as the Mafia; maestros of modern design, mired in old-fashioned bureaucracy; epicentre of the Catholic Church and exemplars of la dolce vita. Where do you start? Giotto? Caravaggio? Murky Etruscan tombs or the mighty Roman Pantheon? Speak the Culture: Italy sifts through a sprawling 3,000 year saga and makes sense of it, dissecting architecture, music, food, art, literature, cinema, family and much more. Culture is covered in its broadest sense, extending into every aspect of Italian life--food and drink, religion, politics, sport, manners, character and so on. While the Italian peninsula has its ancient history, it's been a unified nation for less than 150 years. Lo Stivale, or the famous Boot, is young: the nuances of strong, surviving regional identities are important and revealed. Taken as a whole, Speak the Culture: Italy gives you an insight into what it means to be Italian, but it's also a book to dip into, to learn, for instance, about Giuseppe Verdi, Sophia Loren or Umberto Eco. Easily read and beautifully illustrated, this, the fourth in the Speak the Cultureseries, offers an intimate understanding of Italian life and culture for new residents, second home-owners, holidaymakers, business travelers, students and lovers of Italy everywhere.

The aulos, an extinct musical instrument consisting of a cylindrical-bore pipe with finger holes and a double reed for a mouthpiece, was a very popular wind instrument during antiquity (c.1000 BC-AD 600). Through a comprehensive analysis of written, archaeological, and iconographic sources, this book presents a holistic view of this musical instrument, its past, and its consequential history. This study is further substantiated by ethnographic data from Sardinia and Egypt, where the launeddas and the arghul were explored respectively. A new understanding of the history of the aulos is presented through the establishment of parallels between past and contemporary music-related practices.