Rhythm and Transforms

Rhythm and Transforms
Author: William Arthur Sethares
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 341
Release: 2007-08-06
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 1846286409

Rhythm and Transforms is a book that explores rhythm in music, its structure and how we perceive it. The book will be bought by engineers interested in acoustic signal processing as well as musicians, composers and computer scientists. Anyone interested in the scientific basis of music from psychologists to the designers of electronic musical instruments will be interested in this book.

Drum Gahu

Drum Gahu
Author: David Locke
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 1998
Genre: Dance music
ISBN: 9780786652822

West African Rhythms for Drumset

West African Rhythms for Drumset
Author: Royal Hartigan
Publisher: Alfred Music Publishing
Total Pages: 116
Release: 1995
Genre: Music
ISBN: 9780897247320

With Freeman Kwazdo Donkor and Abraham Adzenyah. Based on four Ghanaian rhythmic groups (Sikyi, Adowa, Gahu and Akom), this book and CD will provide drumset players with a "new" vocabulary based on some of the oldest and most influential rhythms in the world. A groundbreaking presentation!

More Hands On!

More Hands On!
Author: Lynne Jessup
Publisher: Art Path Press
Total Pages: 53
Release: 2009-10
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1928875033

This is a beginning book of percussion pieces designed to assist the teacher in providing a hands on experience with the sounds of African percussion ensembles. The collection is based on authentic pieces of music, however ho attempt has been made to notate the improvisation and variation that are inherent in African Drumming . As with any oral tradition even within a recognized piece of music, there are changes and variations so that no one version is the “correct “ one. A CD is included with the book.

Representing African Music

Representing African Music
Author: Kofi Agawu
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2014-04-23
Genre: Music
ISBN: 1317794052

The aim of this book is to stimulate debate by offering a critique of discourse about African music. Who writes about African music, how, and why? What assumptions and prejudices influence the presentation of ethnographic data? Even the term "African music" suggests there is an agreed-upon meaning, but African music signifies differently to different people. This book also poses the question then, "What is African music?" Agawu offers a new and provocative look at the history of African music scholarship that will resonate with students of ethnomusicology and post-colonial studies. He offers an alternative "Afro-centric" means of understanding African music, and in doing so, illuminates a different mode of creativity beyond the usual provenance of Western criticism. This book will undoubtedly inspire heated debate--and new thinking--among musicologists, cultural theorists, and post-colonial thinkers. Also includes 15 musical examples.

Masters of the Sabar

Masters of the Sabar
Author: Patricia Tang
Publisher: Temple University Press
Total Pages: 228
Release: 2007
Genre: Music
ISBN: 9781592134212

A fascinating study of Senegalese masters of the sabar drum.

Performing Ethnomusicology

Performing Ethnomusicology
Author: Ted Solis
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 332
Release: 2004-08-13
Genre: Music
ISBN: 0520937171

Performing Ethnomusicology is the first book to deal exclusively with creating, teaching, and contextualizing academic world music performing ensembles. Considering the formidable theoretical, ethical, and practical issues that confront ethnomusicologists who direct such ensembles, the sixteen essays in this volume discuss problems of public performance and the pragmatics of pedagogy and learning processes. Their perspectives, drawing upon expertise in Caribbean steelband, Indian, Balinese, Javanese, Philippine, Mexican, Central and West African, Japanese, Chinese, Middle Eastern, and Jewish klezmer ensembles, provide a uniquely informed and many-faceted view of this complicated and rapidly changing landscape. The authors examine the creative and pedagogical negotiations involved in intergenerational and intercultural transmission and explore topics such as reflexivity, representation, hegemony, and aesthetically determined interaction. Performing Ethnomusicology affords sophisticated insights into the structuring of ethnomusicologists' careers and methodologies. This book offers an unprecedented rich history and contemporary examination of academic world music performance in the West, especially in the United States. "Performing Ethnomusicology is an important book not only within the field of ethnomusicology itself, but for scholars in all disciplines engaged in aspects of performance—historical musicology, anthropology, folklore, and cultural studies. The individual articles offer a provocative and disparate array of threads and themes, which Solís skillfully weaves together in his introductory essay. A book of great importance and long overdue."—R. Anderson Sutton, author of Calling Back the Spirit Contributors: Gage Averill, Kelly Gross, David Harnish, Mantle Hood, David W. Hughes, Michelle Kisliuk, David Locke, Scott Marcus, Hankus Netsky, Ali Jihad Racy, Anne K. Rasmussen, Ted Solís, Hardja Susilo, Sumarsam, Ricardo D. Trimillos, Roger Vetter, J. Lawrence Witzleben

The Art of Mbira

The Art of Mbira
Author: Paul F. Berliner
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 620
Release: 2019-12-24
Genre: Music
ISBN: 022662868X

Growing out of the collaborative research of an American ethnomusicologist and Zimbabwean musician, Paul F. Berliner’s The Art of Mbira documents the repertory for a keyboard instrument known generally as mbira. At the heart of this work lies the analysis of the improvisatory processes that propel mbira music’s magnificent creativity. In this book, Berliner provides insight into the communities of study, performance, and worship that surround mbira. He chronicles how master player Cosmas Magaya and his associates have developed their repertory and practices over more than four decades, shaped by musical interaction, social and political dynamics in Zimbabwe, and the global economy of the music industry. At once a detailed exposition of the music’s forms and practices, it is also an indispensable historical and cultural guide to mbira in a changing world. Together with Berliner and Magaya's compendium of mbira compositions, Mbira’s Restless Dance, The Art of Mbira breaks new ground in the depth and specificity of its exploration of an African musical tradition, and in the entwining of the authors’ collaborative voices. It is a testament to the powerful relationship between music and social life—and the rewards of lifelong musical study, performance, and friendship.

Tony Allen

Tony Allen
Author: Tony Allen
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 238
Release: 2013-09-27
Genre: Music
ISBN: 0822377098

Tony Allen is the autobiography of legendary Nigerian drummer Tony Allen, the rhythmic engine of Fela Kuti's Afrobeat. Conversational, inviting, and packed with telling anecdotes, Allen's memoir is based on hundreds of hours of interviews with the musician and scholar Michael E. Veal. It spans Allen's early years and career playing highlife music in Lagos; his fifteen years with Fela, from 1964 until 1979; his struggles to form his own bands in Nigeria; and his emigration to France. Allen embraced the drum set, rather than African handheld drums, early in his career, when drum kits were relatively rare in Africa. His story conveys a love of his craft along with the specifics of his practice. It also provides invaluable firsthand accounts of the explosive creativity in postcolonial African music, and the personal and artistic dynamics in Fela's Koola Lobitos and Africa 70, two of the greatest bands to ever play African music.

The Garland Handbook of African Music

The Garland Handbook of African Music
Author: Ruth M. Stone
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 923
Release: 2010-04-02
Genre: Music
ISBN: 1135900000

The Garland Handbook of African Music is comprised of essays from The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music: Volume 1, Africa, (1997). Revised and updated, the essays offer detailed, regional studies of the different musical cultures of Africa and examine the ways in which music helps to define the identity of this particular area. Part One provides an in-depth introduction to Africa. Part Two focuses on issues and processes, such as notation and oral tradition, dance in communal life, and intellectual property. Part Three focuses on the different regions, countries, and cultures of Africa with selected regional case studies. The second edition has been expanded to include exciting new scholarship that has been conducted since the first edition was published. Questions for Critical Thinking at the end of each major section guide and focus attention on what musical and cultural issues arise when one studies the music of Africa -- issues that might not occur in the study of other musics of the world. An accompanying audio compact disc offers musical examples of some of the music of Africa.