This dynamic book takes readers on a vivid exploration into the major musical cultures of the world by first presenting a lively vignette of a musical occasion, and then placing that occasion in the context of a general description of the society and musical culture. Each chapter features a specific area of the world, written by a scholar who is a specialist in that particular geographical area. Featuring the musical cultures of such fascinating lands as India, the Middle East, Indonesia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin America, it covers older rural and classical musical traditions—as well as newer urban-popular forms within a given society. For anyone who appreciates music—and is listening for a good understanding of each culture's ideas of what music is, what its powers are, how it relates to other aspects of life, and how it reflects important things about its people and their view of the world.
BRUNO NETTL studied at Indiana University, has taught at the University of Illinois since 1964 and has done field work in Iran (where he studied the Persian setar), among the Blackfoot people of Montana, and in South India, and is the author of The Study of Ethnomusicology, Blackfoot Musical Thought: Comparative Perspectives, and Heartland Excursions: Ethnomusicological Reflections on Schools of Music.
CHARLES CAPWELL, a Harvard Ph.D., did field research among the Bauls of Bengal, India, and in Calcutta (where he also studied sarod), and he has studied Muslim popular music in Indonesia. He is the author of Musci of the Bauls of Bengal and of numerous articles on aspects of south Asian musical culture, and has been on the faculty of the University of Illinois since 1976, where he also supervises the gamelan program.
ISABEL WONG studied at Brown University and teaches Chinese and other East Asian music at the University of Illinois. She has done research on a large variety of music of her native China, including music drama, urban popular music, politics and music, and the history of musical scholarship in Chinese culture. More recently she has devoted herself also to the study of Chinese-American musical culture.
THOMAS TURINO studied at the University of Texas and has taught at the University of Illinois since 1987. After extensive field research in Peru, he published Moving Away from Silence, about the musical culture of the Aymara in a variety of contexts. In 1992-93 he lived for a year in Zimbabwe, where he did research on village music and musical nationalism. He is an expert performer on the African Mbira and founder of the Peruvian panpipe ensemble at Illinois.
PHILIP BOHLMAN studied at the University of Illinois and has been, since 1987, at the University of Chicago. He has done fieldwork in ethnic communities in Wisconsin, Chicago, and Pittsburgh, as well as Israel, Germany, and Austria. He is the author of The Land Where Two Streams Flow and The Study of Folk Music in the Modern World. Among his recent interests is the study of music in the pilgrimages of various religions.
