"Percussion" is an attempt--in the author's words--to make sense of "senseless beating," to grasp how rhythm makes sense in music and society. Both a scholar and a former professional drummer, John Mowitt forges a striking encounter between cultural studies and new musicology that seeks to lay out the "percussive field" through which beating--specifically the backbeat that defines early rock-and-roll--comes to matter for raced, urban subjects.
For Mowitt, percussion is both an experience of embodiment--making contact in and on the skin--and a provocation for critical theory itself. In delimiting the percussive field, he plays drumming off against the musicological account of the beat, the sociological account of shock and the psychoanalytical account of fantasy. In the process he touches on such topics as the separation of slaves and drums in the era of the slave trade, the migration of rural blacks to urban centers of the North, the practice and politics of "rough music," the links between interpellation and possession, the general strike, beating fantasies, and the concept of the "skin ego."
"Percussion" makes a fresh and provocative contribution to cultural studies, new musicology, the history of the body and critical race theory. It will be of interest to students of cultural studies and critical theory as well as readers with a serious interest in the history of music, rock-and-roll and drumming.

The 1903 Mrdang aur Tabla Vadanpaddhati is a revelatory text that has never been translated or analysed. It is a manual for playing the two most important drums of North Indian (Hindustani) music, the pakhavaj (mrdang) and the tabla. Owing to its relative obscurity, it is a source that has never been discussed in the literature on Hindustani music. Its author, Gurudev Patwardhan, was Vice Principal of V.D. Paluskar's first music school in Lahore from its inception in 1901 to 1908. Professor James Kippen provides the first translation of this immensely important text and examines its startling implications for rhythmic and metric theory. It is the earliest work on Indian drumming to contain a notation sufficiently precise to allow definitive reconstruction. The compositions are of considerable musical interest, for they can be readily realized on the tabla or pakhavaj. Kippen sets the work and objectives of the original author in the context of a rich historical, social and political background. By also discussing radical differences in the second edition of 1938, published by Gurudev's nephew, the vocalist Vinayakrao Patwardhan, Kippen illuminates the process by which 'tabla theory' was being created in the early 20th century. Both Patwardhans were enthusiastic supporters of Paluskar's nationalist imperatives, and active participants in his drive to institutionalize music, codify and publish notations of it, and promote a modern, Hindu vision of India wherein its identity could once again be linked to a glorious golden age in distant antiquity.

Alfred's Drum Method has been combined with a pair of sticks and a practice pad to make the ultimate starter kit for aspiring drummers. This title is available in SmartMusic.