Designed as a tribute to Robert Garfias, who has conducted field work in more cultures than any other living ethnomusicologist, this volume explores the originating encounter in field work of ethnomusicologists with the musicians and musical traditions they study. The nineteen contributors provide case studies from nearly every corner of the world, including biographies of important musicians from the Philippines, Turkey, Lapland, and Korea; interviews with, and reports of learning from, musicians from Ireland, Bulgaria, Burma, and India; and analyses of how traditional musicians adapt to the encounter with modernity in Japan, India, China, Turkey, Afghanistan, Morocco, and the United States. The book also provides a window into the history of ethnomusicology since all the contributors have had a relationship with the University of Washington, home to one of the oldest programs in ethnomusicology in the United States. Inspired by the example of Robert Garfias, they are all indefatigable field researchers and among the leading authorities in the world on their particular musical cultures. The contributions illustrate the core similarities in their approach to the discipline of ethnomusicology and at the same time deal with a remarkably wide range of perspectives, themes, issues, and theoretical questions. Readers should find this collection of essays a fascinating, indeed surprising, glimpse into an important aspect of the history of ethnomusicology.

Explaining that musicality is an essential touchstone of the human experience, a concise introduction to the study of the nature of music, its community and its cultural values explains the diverse work of today's ethnomusicologists and how researchers apply anthropological and other social disciplines to studies of human and cultural behaviors. Original.

Designed as a tribute to Robert Garfias, who has conducted field work in more cultures than any other living ethnomusicologist, this volume explores the originating encounter in field work of ethnomusicologists with the musicians and musical traditions they study. The nineteen contributors provide case studies from nearly every corner of the world, including biographies of important musicians from the Philippines, Turkey, Lapland, and Korea; interviews with, and reports of learning from, musicians from Ireland, Bulgaria, Burma, and India; and analyses of how traditional musicians adapt to the encounter with modernity in Japan, India, China, Turkey, Afghanistan, Morocco, and the United States. The book also provides a window into the history of ethnomusicology since all the contributors have had a relationship with the University of Washington, home to one of the oldest programs in ethnomusicology in the United States. Inspired by the example of Robert Garfias, they are all indefatigable field researchers and among the leading authorities in the world on their particular musical cultures. The contributions illustrate the core similarities in their approach to the discipline of ethnomusicology and at the same time deal with a remarkably wide range of perspectives, themes, issues, and theoretical questions. Readers should find this collection of essays a fascinating, indeed surprising, glimpse into an important aspect of the history of ethnomusicology.

We are surrounded by new musical encounters today as never before, and the experience of musics from elsewhere is progressively affecting all arenas of the human conscience. Yet why is it that Western listeners expect a certain cultural and ethnic 'authenticity' or 'otherness' from visiting artists in world music, while contemporary musicians in Western music are no longer bound by such restraints? Should we feel uncomfortable when sacred rites from Asia or Africa are remade for Westerners as musical entertainment? As these thorny questions suggest, the great flood of world musics and of their agents into our most immediate cultural environment is not a simple matter of expanding global musical exchange. Instead, complex processes are at work involving the growth of intercontinental tourism, the development of new technologies of communication and our perceptions both of ourselves and of the new musical others now around us. Elegantly tracing the dimensions of these new musical encounters, Laurent Aubert considers the impact of world musics on our values, our habits and our cultural practices. His discussions of key questions about our contemporary music culture widen conventional ethnomusicological perspectives to consider not only the nature of Western society as a 'global village' but also the impact of current Western demands on the future of world musics and their practitioners.

In this vivid musical ethnography, Timothy Rice documents and interprets the history of folk music, song, and dance in Bulgaria over a seventy-year period of dramatic change. From 1920 to 1989, Bulgaria changed from a nearly medieval village society to a Stalinist planned industrial economy to a chaotic mix of capitalist and socialist markets and cultures. In the context of this history, Rice brings Bulgarian folk music to life by focusing on the biography of the Varimezov family, including the musician Kostadin and his wife Todora, a singer. Combining interviews with his own experiences of learning how to play, sing and dance Bulgarian folk music, Rice presents one of the most detailed accounts of traditional, aural learning processes in the ethnomusicological literature. Using a combination of traditionally dichotomous musicological and ethnographic approaches, Rice tells the story of how individual musicians learned their tradition, how they lived it during the pre-Communist era of family farming, how the tradition changed with industrialization brought under Communism, and finally, how it flourished and evolved in the recent, unstable political climate. This work—complete with a compact disc and numerous illustrations and musical examples—contributes not only to ethnomusicological theory and method, but also to our understanding of Slavic folklore, Eastern European anthropology, and cultural processes in Socialist states.

'Performing Ethnomusicology' is the first book to deal exclusively with creating, teaching, & contextualizing academic world music performing ensembles. 16 essays discuss the problems of public performance & the pragmatics of pedagogy & learning processes.