Product Description

The Cultural Study of Music is an anthology of new writings that will serve as a basic textbook on music and culture. Increasingly, music is being studied as it relates to specific cultures-not only by ethnomusicologists, but by traditional musicologists as well. Drawing on writers from music, anthropology, sociology, and the related fields, the book both defines the field-i.e., "What is the relation between music and culture?"-and then presents case studies of particular issues in world musics. This book would serve as an introductory textbook for the cultural study of music, an area that is increasingly being taught at the upper-level undergraduate and graduate level. Plus it would appeal to scholars in all areas of music, reflecting the latest and most up to date thinking on the complex issues surrounding how music and culture interrelate.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #244526 in Books
• Published on: 2003-01-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 376 pages

Review
The strength of the text is its breadth of analysis: the essays are brief, pithy, and thought-provoking. Recommended.
–C.A. Muller, University of Pennsylvania, Choice, Sept. 2003

The strength of the text is its breadth of analysis: the essays are brief, pithy, and thought-provoking. Recommended.
–C.A. Muller, University of Pennsylvania, Choice, Sept. 2003

Customer Reviews

excellent stuff!
for some this book is very tough (see other reviews), but I found it startlingly good - well edited, insightful and covering a wide range of materials ad concepts in the field. It's interetsing that those who don't like it are usually those who also don't like the critical turn in musicology. Choose your sides!!!

what a nightmare!!
This book was one of the worst reading experiences I've had. I can't imagine how the information in this book could be useful in any way. The contributors are long-winded and never really say anything substantial, probably due to poor editing. STAY AWAY!!

Superficial, poorly edited, stale.
The postgraduate seminar that I take part in choose this text because we hoped that it would offer a taste of various aspects of the cultural study of music that we weren't already familiar with, we hoped that it would make a good starting point for interesting discussions on issues in contemporary music and musicology. We were wrong! This book is superficial at best. A large part of every discussion was spent complaining about the poor quality of the scholarship or the hatchet job the editors have obviously done on the articles. Most of the ideas in this book are stale and much better discussions occur in other publications. It's disappointing to see authors of Lawrence Kramer's quality in a collection this bad, his was one of many articles in which simple ideas became confusing because of poor editing. This attempt to make musicology bite size fails miserably. The only useful thing about this collection is the list of further reading at the end of each article.