Based upon Cantometrics: An Approach to the Anthropology of Music (1976), by Alan Lomax, Songs of Earth: Aesthetic and Social Codes in Music is a contemporary guide to understanding and exploring Cantometrics, the system developed by Lomax and Victor Grauer for analyzing the formal elements of music related to human geography and sociocultural patterning. This carefully constructed cross-cultural study of world music revealed deep-rooted performance patterns and aesthetic...

Ethnomusicologists believe that all humans, not just those we call musicians, are musical, and that musicality is one of the essential touchstones of the human experience. This insight raises big questions about the nature of music and the nature of humankind, and ethnomusicologists argue that to properly address these questions, we must study music in all its geographical and historical diversity. In this Very Short Introduction, one of the foremost ethnomusicologists, Timothy Ri...

Why have all human cultures - today and throughout history - made music? Why does music excite such rich emotion? How do we make sense of musical sound?These are questions that have, until recently, remained mysterious. Now The Music Instinct explores how the latest research in music psychology and brain science is piecing together the puzzle of how our minds understand and respond to music. Ranging from Bach fugues to nursery rhymes to heavy rock, Philip ...

A RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK'Full of delightful nuggets' Guardian online'Entertaining, informative and philosphical ... An essential read' All About History'Extraordinary range ... All the world and more is here' Evening Standard165 million years ago saw the birth of rhythm.66 million years ago came the first melody.

Very Short Introductions: Brilliant, Sharp, Inspiring The world teems with different kinds of music - traditional, folk, classical, jazz, rock, pop - and each type of music tends to come with its own way of thinking. Drawing on a wealth of accessible examples ranging from Beethoven to Chinese zither music, this Very Short Introduction considers the history of music and thinking about music, focussing on its social and cultural dimensions. Nicholas Cook balances the Wester...

"Higgins' love of music and cultural variety is evident throughout. She writes in a relaxed, accessible, sophisticated style…Highly recommended."— ChoiceFrom our first social bonding as infants to the funeral rites that mark our passing, music plays an important role in our lives, bringing us closer to one another. In this book, philosopher Kathleen Marie Higgins investigates this role, examining the features of human perception that enable music's uncanny...

In this ground-breaking work, twenty-three authors investigate and discuss composer Pauline Oliveros' revolutionary practice of Deep Listening. From an education program reaching 47,000 San Francisco school children to electronic dance music (EDM) events held in remote desert locations, from underwater duets with whales to architectural listening, the multifaceted essays in this collection provide compelling depictions of Deep Listening's ability to nurture creative work and promote societ...

The groundbreaking Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music (Continuum; September 2004; paperback original) maps the aural and discursive terrain of vanguard music today. Rather than offering a history of contemporary music, Audio Culture traces the genealogy of current musical practices and theoretical concerns, drawing lines of connection between recent musical production and earlier moments of sonic experimentation. It aims to foreground the various rewirings of musical composit...

This VSI offers readers something no other introduction to folk music does: a cross-cultural, comparative approach, a survey of the basic issues as they have unfolded over time, and specific examples from widely differing sites of how folk musicians themselves, as well as corporations, non-governmental organizations, and governments have made full use of the available resources, older and newer strategies, and multiple agendas that keep the folk music process alive in an increasingly inter...

What is experimental music today? This book offers an up to date survey of this field for anyone with an interest, from seasoned practitioners to curious readers. This book takes the stance that experimental music is not a limited historical event, but is a proliferation of approaches to sound that reveals much about present-day experience. An experimental work is not identifiable by its sound alone, but by the nature of the questions it poses and its openness to the sounding event.

"A ground-breaking study of the songs of the pied butcherbird . . . intellectually engaging and also very entertaining as a fieldwork memoir." — The Music TrustHow and when does music become possible? Is it a matter of biology, or culture, or an interaction between the two? Revolutionizing the way we think about the core values of music and human exceptionalism, Hollis Taylor takes us on an outback road trip to meet the Australian pied butcherbird. Recogniz...

This innovative book, assembled by the editors of the renowned periodical Terra Nova, is the first anthology published on the subject of music and nature. Lush and evocative, yoking together the simplicities and complexities of the world of natural sound and the music inspired by it, this collection includes essays, illustrations, and plenty of sounds and music. The Book of Music and Nature celebrates our relationship with natural soundscapes while posing stimulating questions about that v...