Download or read book African Polyphony and Polyrhythm written by Simha Arom and published by Éditions de la Maison des sciences de l'homme, Paris. This book was released on 1991 with total page 706 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An original approach to the understanding of the complete and sophisticated patterns of polyphony and polyrhythm of African music.
Download or read book African Polyphony Polyrhythm written by Simha Arom and published by . This book was released on with total page 660 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book On African Music written by Agawu and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2023 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Popular Music written by Simon Frith and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book African Rhythm written by Victor Kofi Agawu and published by CUP Archive. This book was released on 1995 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: . An accompanying compact disk enables the reader to work closely with the sound of African speech and song discussed in the book.
Download or read book Celebrating Flamenco s Tangled Roots written by K. Meira Goldberg and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2022-01-18 with total page 492 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays poses a series of questions revolving around nonsense, cacophony, queerness, race, and the dancing body. How can flamenco, as a diasporic complex of performance and communities of practice frictionally and critically bound to the complexities of Spanish history, illuminate theories of race and identity in performance? How can we posit, and argue for, genealogical relationships within and between genres across the vast expanses of the African—and Roma—diaspora? Neither are the essays presented here limited to flamenco, nor, consequently, are the responses to these questions reduced to this topic. What all the contributions here do share is the wish to come together, across disciplines and subject areas, within the academy and without, in the whirling, raucous, and messy spaces where the body is free—to celebrate its questioning, as well as the depths of the wisdom and knowledge it holds and sometimes reveals.
Download or read book How Musical is Man written by John Blacking and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 1973 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This important study in ethnomusicology is an attempt by the author -- a musician who has become a social anthropologist -- to compare his experiences of music-making in different cultures. He is here presenting new information resulting from his research into African music, especially among the Venda. Venda music, he discovered is in its way no less complex in structure than European music. Literacy and the invention of nation may generate extended musical structures, but they express differences of degree, and not the difference in kind that is implied by the distinction between 'art' and 'folk' music. Many, if not all, of music's essential processes may be found in the constitution of the human body and in patterns of interaction of human bodies in society. Thus all music is structurally, as well as functionally, 'folk' music in the sense that music cannot be transmitted of have meaning without associations between people. If John Blacking's guess about the biological and social origins of music is correct, or even only partly correct, it would generate new ideas about the nature of musicality, the role of music in education and its general role in societies which (like the Venda in the context of their traditional economy) will have more leisure time as automation increases.
Download or read book Concert Music Rock and Jazz Since 1945 written by Elizabeth West Marvin and published by University Rochester Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents various interdisciplinary articles to bridge the gulf between classical and popular music.
Download or read book Ligeti s Laments Nostalgia Exoticism and the Absolute written by Amy Bauer and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-05 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When the Hungarian composer Gyrgy Ligeti passed away in June 2006, he was widely feted as being one of the greatest composers of our time. His complete published works were recorded during his lifetime and his music continues to inspire a steady stream of performances and scholarship. Ligeti's Laments provides a critical analysis of the composer's works, considering both the compositions themselves and the larger cultural implications of their reception. Bauer both synthesizes and challenges the prevailing narratives surrounding the composer's long career and uses the theme of lament to inform a discussion of specific musical topics, including descending melodic motives, passacaglia and the influence of folk music. But Ligeti 'laments' in a larger sense; his music fuses rigour and sensuality, tradition and the new and influences from disparate high and low cultures, with a certain critical and ironic distance, reflected in his spoken commentary as well as in the substance of his music. The notions of nostalgia, exoticism and the absolute are used to relate works of different eras and genres, along with associated concepts of allegory, melancholy, contemporary subjectivity and the voice.
Download or read book Polyphonic Minds written by Peter Pesic and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2022-09-13 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An exploration of polyphony and the perspective it offers on our own polyphonic brains. Polyphony—the interweaving of simultaneous sounds—is a crucial aspect of music that has deep implications for how we understand the mind. In Polyphonic Minds, Peter Pesic examines the history and significance of “polyphonicity”—of “many-voicedness”—in human experience. Pesic presents the emergence of Western polyphony, its flowering, its horizons, and the perspective it offers on our own polyphonic brains. When we listen to polyphonic music, how is it that we can hear several different things at once? How does a single mind experience those things as a unity (a motet, a fugue) rather than an incoherent jumble? Pesic argues that polyphony raises fundamental issues for philosophy, theology, literature, psychology, and neuroscience—all searching for the apparent unity of consciousness in the midst of multiple simultaneous experiences. After tracing the development of polyphony in Western music from ninth-century church music through the experimental compositions of Glenn Gould and John Cage, Pesic considers the analogous activity within the brain, the polyphonic “music of the hemispheres” that shapes brain states from sleep to awakening. He discusses how neuroscientists draw on concepts from polyphony to describe the “neural orchestra” of the brain. Pesic’s story begins with ancient conceptions of God’s mind and ends with the polyphonic personhood of the human brain and body. An enhanced e-book edition allows the sound examples to be played by a touch.
Download or read book The African Imagination in Music written by Kofi Agawu and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-02-02 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Composing the Music of Africa written by Malcolm Floyd and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-12-17 with total page 397 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1999, this volume explores the great diversity of music created by African communities is reflected in this book, which discusses the ways in which a wide range of musical forms are composed and performed from Egypt to South Africa and from Ghana to Kenya. As two composers explain here, this diversity provides much inspiration for western contemporary composition. Particular attention is paid to the contexts generate musical creativity. Ceremonies and festivals celebrating birth, death, marriage or rites of passage provide the impetus for much composition and performance, enabling young people to pick up, early on, some of the techniques and styles of which they then become the new exponents. The book also looks at the role played by formal music education programmes and bodies such as the South African Music Rights Organization and the South African Broadcasting Corporation in fostering musical activity, as well as the contribution of composers to the social and political changes that have dominated South African life in recent years.
Download or read book Ethnomusicology written by Jennifer Post and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-03-01 with total page 524 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ethnomusicology: A Research and Information Guide is an annotated bibliography to books, recordings, videos, and websites in the field of ethnomusicology. The book is divided into two parts. Part One is organized by resource type in categories of greatest concern to students and scholars. It includes handbooks and guides; encyclopedias and dictionaries; indexes and bibliographies; journals; media sources; and archives. It also offers annotated entries on the basic literature of ethnomusicological history and research. Part Two provides a list of current publications in the field that are widely used by ethnomusicologists. Multiply indexed, this book serves as an excellent tool for librarians, researchers, and scholars in sorting through the massive amount of new material that has appeared in the field over the last decades.
Download or read book Experiencing Rhythm written by Jenny Fuhr and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2014-07-18 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How is “rhythm” experienced? What role does “rhythm” play in musicians’ search for a collective musical identity? These questions are answered in this book on the fascinating blend of musical styles and influences within contemporary Malagasy music. Madagascar is the fourth largest island in the world, “the footprint between Africa and Asia,” with a history marked by many waves of migration. Over the centuries, a wide range of styles of music, of instruments and of dance have become a part of the island’s musical palette. Despite this and the resulting diversity of regional musical particularities, musicians claim there is one element they all share: a common rhythmical base. To explore this claim and the meaning of “rhythm” in the Malagasy context, Jenny Fuhr makes use of her dual role as musician and researcher. Self-reflexive field research combined with learning to play and perform Malagasy music enables a profound intercultural dialogue. This book shows how her intense involvement in music-making and a constant dialogue between musical experiences and discourses opens up new paths of understanding. In doing so, it challenges prevalent Western analytical perspectives on music and demonstrates the need for a more performance-based approach to ethnomusicology.
Download or read book Past and Present Lithuanian Polyphonic Sutartin s Songs written by Daiva Račiūnaitė-Vyčinienė and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2024-02-27 with total page 644 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sutartinės, the especially ancient form of, often sacred, Lithuanian music, is enjoying a renaissance, mostly in Lithuania’s cities. Since UNESCO recognized these unique dissonant sounds originating from Lithuania’s Aukštaitija ‘Uplands’ ethnographic region as part of our Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2010, in-depth studies have flourished. This book presents the latest analogies discovered in distant examples of the genesis and ethnogenesis of foreign folk music examples, not only in neighboring lands but as far away as the Ainu subculture of Japan. It presents the latest findings and analyses of the hymns once said to be conveyed by laumės, mythical beings later demoted to witches during this music’s demise. This study supplements perceptions from Lithuanian and foreign ethno-musicologists with data from ethnology, archaeology, linguistics and other sciences and areas of scholarship, and thereby encourages even more studies in this field.
Download or read book Composing the Music of Africa written by Malcolm Floyd and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-12-17 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1999, this volume explores the great diversity of music created by African communities is reflected in this book, which discusses the ways in which a wide range of musical forms are composed and performed from Egypt to South Africa and from Ghana to Kenya. As two composers explain here, this diversity provides much inspiration for western contemporary composition. Particular attention is paid to the contexts generate musical creativity. Ceremonies and festivals celebrating birth, death, marriage or rites of passage provide the impetus for much composition and performance, enabling young people to pick up, early on, some of the techniques and styles of which they then become the new exponents. The book also looks at the role played by formal music education programmes and bodies such as the South African Music Rights Organization and the South African Broadcasting Corporation in fostering musical activity, as well as the contribution of composers to the social and political changes that have dominated South African life in recent years.
Download or read book Everywhere Being Is Dancing written by Robert Bringhurst and published by Catapult. This book was released on 2009-05-01 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this companion volume to The Tree of Meaning, Robert Bringhurst collects twenty essays under the subversive principle that "everything is related to everything else." His studies build upon this sense of basic connection, and involve the work of poets, musicians, and philosophers as varied as Ezra Pound, John Thompson, Don McKay, Empedokles, Parmenides, Aristotle, Skaay, Plato, George Clutesi, Elizabeth Nyman, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Dennis Lee, and Glenn Gould. The value Bringhurst places on the process of translation, the dialogue between one language and another, and the sheer experience of witnessing translation by reading and hearing poems, stories, and songs in their original languages is another strong presence in this collection. Accompanying the English narrative are passages in Tlingit, Haida, Chinese, Greek, German, Cree, and Russian, for readers who want to find the patterns and taste some of the vocabulary for themselves, for those interested in meeting the languages partway.
