This volume brings together a group of analytical chapters exploring traditional genres and styles of world music, capturing a vibrant and expanding field of research. These contributors, drawn from the forefront of researchers in world music analysis, seek to break down barriers and build bridges between scholarly disciplines, musical repertoires, and cultural traditions. Covering a wide range of genres, styles, and performers, the chapters bring to bear a variety of methodologies, including indigenous theoretical perspectives, Western music theory, and interdisciplinary techniques rooted in the cognitive and computational sciences. With contributors addressing music traditions from Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas, this volume captures the many current directions in the analysis of world music, offering a state of the fi eld and demonstrating the expansion of possibilities created by this area of research.

The way rhythm is taught in Western classrooms and music lessons is rooted in a centuries-old European approach that favors metric levels within a grand symmetrical grid. Swinglines encourages readers to experience rhythms, even gridded ones, as freewheeling affairs irrespective of the metric hierarchy. It shows that rhythms traditionally framed as "deviations" and "non-isochronous" have their own identities. They are coherent products of precise musical thought and action. Rather than situating them in the neither-here-nor-there, author Fernando Benadon takes a more inclusive view, one where isochrony and metric grids are shown as particular cases within the universe of musical time.

Made in Puerto Rico: Studies in Popular Music serves as a comprehensive introduction to the history, culture, and musicology of 20th and 21st century popular music in Puerto Rico. The essays in this volume, written by both local experts and leading scholars, contextualize under-researched areas of Puerto Rican popular music-making in relation to ideologies, aesthetics, and symbolism, and propose new ways of thinking about Puerto Rican musical cultures. A groundbreaking introduction to Puerto Rican musical culture, the volume covers the major figures, styles, and social contexts of popular music in Puerto Rico, while also going beyond conventional narratives. Rather than simply providing histories of key genres, these insightful essays focus on the ways in which Puerto Rican musicians reimagine their distinctive musical language as it transmutes from local practices into global expressions. Offering both a survey of Puerto Rican popular music and pathways into deeper critical inquiry, Made in Puerto Rico is an essential resource for scholars and students of music and of Puerto Rican, Caribbean, Latin American, and African Diaspora Studies.

Popular Music Theory and Analysis: A Research and Information Guide uncovers the wealth of scholarly works dealing with the theory and analysis of popular music. This annotated bibliography is an exhaustive catalog of music-theoretical and musicological works that is searchable by subject, genre, and song title. It will support emerging scholarship and inquiry for future research on popular music.

An in-depth study of the Bulgarian harmonic system is long overdue. More than two decades since the Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares choir was awarded a Grammy (1990), there is no scholarly study of the captivating sounds of Bulgarian vertical sonorities. Kalin Kirilov traces the gradual formation of a unique harmonic system that developed in three styles of Bulgarian music: village music from the 1930s to the 1990s, wedding music from the 1970s to 2000, and choral arrangements (obrabotki) - creations of the socialist period (1944-1989), popularized by Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares. Kirilov classifies the different approaches to harmony and situates them in their historical and cultural contexts, establishing new systems for analysis. In the process, he introduces a new system for the categorization of scales. Kirilov argues that the ready-made concepts that are frequently forced onto Bulgarian music - ‘westernization’, ‘socialist’ or ‘Middle Eastern influence’, are not only outdated but also too vague to be of use in understanding the sophisticated modal and harmonic systems found in Bulgarian music. As an insider who has performed, composed and arranged this music for 30 years, Kirilov is uniquely qualified to interpret it for an international audience.

Designed to address the many challenges that first-year undergraduate music students often encounter, The First-Year Music Major: Strategies for Success provides concrete approaches that will help anyone embarking on a degree in music develop the knowledge and skills needed to complete their first year successfully. The chapters demystify the path of majoring in music, and address key topics including: Planning a road map for the degree Developing needed musical, academic, professional, practice, and performance skills Building financial, mental, and physical well-being strategies Written by a group of experienced professors and advisors in roles across the faculty of music, this book offers a comprehensive resource for first-year music students that will help them develop foundational skills to pursue music degrees and careers. An online e-resource accompanies the book, providing downloadable worksheets and materials referenced in the chapters. Rooted in research and extensive practical experience, The First-Year Music Major is suited to use both in introductory music courses and by individual students and advisors.

First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

In The African Imagination in Music, noted music scholar Kofi Agawy offers a fresh introduction to the vast, immensely rich and diverse set of repertoires that comprise the sound worlds of Sub-Saharan African music. Agawu introduces readers to the basic elements of African music and to the values upon which they are built. He then explores the key dimensions and resources of African music, including the place of music in society, musical instruments, the relationship between language and music, rhythm, melody, form, harmony and finally, appropriations of African music by musicians around the world. Written in an accessible styles, The African Imagination in Music is poised to renew interest in Black African music, and to engender discussion of its creative underpinnings by Africanists, ethnomusicologists, music theorists and musicologists. -- from back cover.