Bøger i SOAS Studies in Music serien

What is it about the history, geographical position and cultures of the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia that has made music such a potent and powerful agent? This book looks at the complex relationship between music and power across a range of musical genres and countries.

Japanese folk performing arts incorporate a body of entertainments that range from the ritual to the secular. They may be the ritual dances at Shinto shrines performed to summon and entertain deities. This title provides an introductory guide to the major performance types as understood by Japanese scholars.

An examination of the music of the Balinese gender wayang, the quartet of metallophones - gender - that accompanies the Balinese shadow puppet play - wayang kulit. It tackles a number of core ethnomusicological concerns, including the relationship between composition and improvisation, and also highlights issues specific to Balinese music.

Traces the formation the Twelve Muqam, a set of musical suites linked to the Uyghurs, who are one of China's minority nationalities, and culturally Central Asian Muslims.

Analyses a single recording of classical Persian music made by Touraj Kiaras, a distinguished singer, accompanied by four noted instrumentalists. This book presents an analysis that identifies salient structural features, whether of the individual components or of the whole, in a way accessible to the western reader.

In this work, the author examines timba, a contemporary Afrocuban dance music style that has become popular since Cuba's post-Soviet economic crisis, and shows how this music has come to represent the sound of a crisis that is not only economic but also social and political in nature.