The No-Nonsense Guide to World Music (No-Nonsense Guides) - Softcover

Gray, Louise

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1906523126 ISBN 13: 9781906523121

Publisher: New Internationalist, 2009

Synopsis

"World music" is an awkward phrase. Used to describe the hugely multifaceted nature of a range of typically non-English-language popular music from the world over, it's a tag that throws up as many problems as it does solutions.

Louise Gray's The No-Nonsense Guide to World Music attempts to go behind the phrase to explore the reasons for the contemporary interest in world music, who listens to it, and why. Through chapters that focus on specific areas of music, such as rembetika, fado, trance music, and new folk, Gray explores the genres that have emerged from marginalized communities, music in conflict zones, and music as escapism.

In this unique guide, which combines the seduction of sound with politics and social issues, the author makes the case for music as a powerful tool able to bring individuals together.

Louise Gray is a writer and editor whose work on music and performing arts has appeared in the New Internationalist, The Wire, The Independent on Sunday, the Guardian, and Art Review. She co-edited Sound and the City (British Council, 2007), a book exploring the changing soundworld of China.

About this title

About the Author

Music columnist for New Internationalist for many years, Louise Gray is a London-based writer and editor whose work on music and performing arts has appeared in many broadsheets and magazines, including The Wire, The Independent on Sunday, The Guardian and Art Review. She also co-edited Sound and the City (British Council, 2007), a book exploring the changing soundworld of China.

Review

"A mapping of the world's rich and ever-changing musical landscape ... fascinating and thoroughly informative." Jocelyn Pook, composer "At a mere 45,000 words, the concision of this aptly titled No-Nonsense Guide is one of its most admirable qualities. Yet the work is in no way slight, for Gray packs in more cogent argument and intelligent observation than less disciplined writers manage in tomes of two or three time the length." Nigel Williamson, journalist "Louise Gray confronts with unflinching intelligence, insight, fairness, and a keen awareness of how politics, cultural and contextual differences, fantasies and more prosaic expectations must be taken into account before this remarkable story can be fully understood." David Toop, musician, author and sound curator "Gray has well-tuned political antennae, and, unlike many writers on World Music, has some broad sense of what is currently going on beyond the confines of the latest record label press release, including an awareness of radical and experimental work." Clive Bell, The Wire "In the course of a handful of pages, Gray's perceptive grasp of shared experiences smoothly takes us from Tuvan throat singers to Steve Reich via alan Lomax, Robert Johnson and Tinariwen. Contrivance is avoided." Nige Tassell, music journalist

About this edition

• Publisher: New Internationalist
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 1906523126
• ISBN 13: 9781906523121
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 144