Ethnomusicology and World Music

A Global Journey introduces students to the diversity of musical expression around the world. It takes the reader across the globe to experience cultural traditions that challenge the ear, the mind, and the spirit. It presents a systematic study of varied traditions in a non-technical language accessible to any enthusiast of world music and culture.

Using a case-study approach, the text presents in-depth explorations of music from several cultures around the world. The authors, all working ethnomusicologists, base their discussions of music-cultures on their own fieldwork and give students a true sense of both the music and culture that created it. Editor Jeff Todd Titon's opening chapter introduces students to ethnomusicology and relates each chapter's music to the fundamentals of music in a worldwide context, while the final chapter invites students to undertake a fieldwork research project that increases their understanding of music in daily life. Authentic recordings from the authors' fieldwork are keyed to the text and available online, giving students access to a wide range of music-cultures.

The Rough Guide to World Music spans the music of seventy different countries and regions - everything from salsa to soukous, cajun to calypso, rai to qawwali. The detailed coverage brings together more than sixty expert contributors, whose feature articles take in the music to be seen and heard live around the globe, as well as on record. Major pieces are backed up by interviews with the key groups and artists, translations of lyrics, and extensive reviews and discographies.

Jennifer C. Post is Assistant Professor of Music at Middlebury College; she has previously served as a Music Librarian and continues to hold the title of the Curator of the Helen Hartness Flanders Ballad Collection at Middlebury. She compiles the "Current Bibliography" and "Current Theses and Dissertations" lists published tri-yearly in the journal Ethnomusicology . She is the author of numerous articles for music encyclopedias and journals.