In clear and elegant prose, Music of the Common Tongue, first published in 1987, argues that by any reasonable reckoning of the function of music in human life the African American tradition, that which stems from the collision between African and European ways of doing music which occurred in the Americas and the Caribbean during and after slavery, is the major western music of the twentieth century. In showing why this is so, the author presents not only an account of African American music from its origins but also a more general consideration of the nature of the music act and of its function in human life. The two streams of discussion occupy alternate chapters so that each casts light on the other. The author offers also an answer to what the Musical Times called the "seldom posed though glaringly obtrusive" question: "why is it that the music of an alienated, oppressed, often persecuted black minority should have made so powerful an impact on the entire industrialized world, whatever the color of its skin or economic status?"

Cited by Soundpost as "remarkable and revolutionary" upon its publication in 1977, Music, Society, Education has become a classic in the study of music as a social force. Christopher Small sets out to examine the social implications of Western classical music, effects that until recently have been largely ignored or dismissed by most musicologists. He strives to view the Western musical tradition "through the mirror of these other musics [Balinese and African] as it were from the outside, and in so doing to learn something of the inner unspoken nature of Western culture as a whole." As series co-editor Robert Walser writes, "By pointing to the complicity of Western culture with Western imperialism, Small challenges us to create a future that is more humane than the past. And by writing a book that enables us to rethink so fundamentally our involvements with music, he teaches us how we might get there."

Extending the inquiry of his early groundbreaking books, Christopher Small strikes at the heart of traditional studies of Western music by asserting that music is not a thing, but rather an activity. In this new book, Small outlines a theory of what he terms "musicking," a verb that encompasses all musical activity from composing to performing to listening to a Walkman to singing in the shower. Using Gregory Bateson's philosophy of mind and a Geertzian thick description of a typical concert in a typical symphony hall, Small demonstrates how musicking forms a ritual through which all the participants explore and celebrate the relationships that constitute their social identity. This engaging and deftly written trip through the concert hall will have readers rethinking every aspect of their musical worlds.

Traditionally, music and language have been treated as different psychological faculties. This duality is reflected in older theories about the lateralization of speech and music in that speech functions were thought to be localized on the left and music functions on the right hemisphere. But with the advent of modern brain imaging techniques and the improvement of neurophysiological measures to investigate brain functions an entirely new view on the neural and psychological underpinnings of music and speech has evolved. The main point of convergence in the findings of these new studies is that music and speech functions have many aspects in common and that several neural modules are similarly involved in speech and music. There is also emerging evidence that speech functions can benefit from music functions and vice versa. This new research field has accumulated a lot of new information and it is therefore timely to bring together the work of those researchers who have been most visible, productive, and inspiring in this field and to ask them to present their new work or provide a summary of their laboratory's work.

Music Studies and Its Moment of Truth: Leading Change through America’s Black Music Roots presents a new framework for racial justice discourse in the context of music studies and education. Centering on Black American Music, the book issues challenges to both the conventional music studies paradigm and decades-old reform efforts. While Black American Music ranks high among America’s contributions to world culture, and offers musicians powerful tools for musical practice and understanding, this musical legacy remains remarkably marginalized even in activist conversations. The author argues that this reflects lingering and unexamined racist patterns that persist even among the most fervent voices for anti-racist interventions, and addresses the need for a higher-order activist framework within music studies. Delving further into the transformative changes needed to pursue racial justice, the short pieces collected in this book discuss topics including a shift from multicultural ideology to a transcultural model of musical pluralism, analysis of the multi-tiered nature of musical racism, the whitewashing of music studies activism, K-12 music teacher education as the locus for paradigmatic change and the potential for a transformed model of music studies to catalyze an overarching revolution in creativity and consciousness in both education and society at large. Critiquing the failures of progressive reform efforts and conventional reaction, this book argues that major changes are needed to the discourse on racism in music studies, and envisions new paradigms for the future.

Whose Music? combines historical, musicological, and sociological materials and styles of analysis in ways that connect to the field of sociology. The analyses of social class systems presented here speak in translatable ways to analyses of musical forms. Not only that, both are connected to an understanding of the organizations through which works are distributed to their audiences. Perhaps most importantly for the contemporary reader, this book depicts the part of the process by which dominant class groups justify their domination--cultural and otherwise.