Synopsis
Worlds of Music is a unique introduction to ethnomusicology, the ideal text with which to experience and understand the meanings of music in the lives of diverse human communities. Writing about cultures they have studied at first hand, the authors describe and analyze the indigenous musics of Africa, North and South America, Eastern Europe, India, Indonesia, and Japan. They also show how ethnomusicologists "get inside" a culture to document its music. Free from excessive jargon and assuming no formal musical background, Worlds of Music conveys the excitement of ethnomusicology by focusing in depth on the music of a small number of representative groups; looks at music both on its own terms and as a human activity in diverse historical, social, and cultural contexts; features fascinating biographies and oral histories of musicians in diverse cultures; includes many original photographs, drawings, and transcriptions of musical examples; and encourages active student involvement by showing how a beginner may document, play, and even build the instruments used in the music of another culture.
About the Author
Jeff Todd Titon is Professor of Music, Emeritus, at Brown University, where he directed the Ph.D. program in ethnomusicology from 1986 to 2013. He received a Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of Minnesota, where he studied ethnomusicology with Alan Kagan, cultural anthropology with Pertti Pelto, and musicology with Johannes Riedel. He founded the ethnomusicology program at Tufts University, where he taught from 1971 to 1986. From 1990 to 1995 he served as the editor of Ethnomusicology, the journal of the Society for Ethnomusicology. He has done ethnographic fieldwork in North America on religious folk music, blues music, and old-time fiddling, with support from the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. For two years, he was the guitarist in the Lazy Bill Lucas Blues Band, a group that appeared at the 1970 Ann Arbor Blues Festival. He founded and directed an old-time, Appalachian, string-band ethnomusicology ensemble at Tufts (1981-1986) and then at Brown (1986-2013). He is the author or editor of eight books, including Early Downhome Blues, which won the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award, Give Me This Mountain, Powerhouse for God, and the Oxford Handbook of Applied Ethnomusicology. A documentary photographer and filmmaker as well as author, he is considered a pioneer in applied ethnomusicology, phenomenological ethnography, and ecomusicology. His most recent research may be tracked on his blog at sustainablemusic.blogspot.com.
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