The Cambridge History of World Music

English | Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2014 | PDF | 877 pages | 9 MB
Scholars have long known that world music was not merely the globalized product of modern media, but rather that it connected religions, cultures, languages and nations throughout world history. The chapters in this History take readers to foundational historical moments – in Europe, Oceania, China, India, the Muslim world, North and South America – in search of the connections provided by a truly world music.

Historically, world music emerged from ritual and religion, labor and life-cycles, which occupy chapters on Native American musicians, religious practices in India and Indonesia, and nationalism in Argentina and Portugal.

The contributors critically examine music in cultural encounter and conflict, and as the critical core of scientific theories from the Arabic Middle Ages through the Enlightenment to postmodernism.

Overall, the book contains the histories of the music of diverse cultures, which increasingly become the folk, popular and classical music of our own era.

- Provides a music-historical reference for students and scholars interested in musics throughout the world, going far beyond the usual histories of Western classical music.
- Includes chapters with in-depth histories of music in major world regions - Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America - as well as individual nations, balancing new theoretical innovation in the historiography in music with specific examples.
- Illustrates historical and contemporary theoretical approaches for the study of music worldwide, and will therefore be extremely valuable as a reference work for students and scholars of music in institutions throughout the world.