Music, Communities, Sustainability, edited thoughtfully by Huib Schippers and Anthony Seeger, traces the genesis, implementation, and development of the influential 2003 UNESCO Convention on Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage and its impact on music practices around the world. With insights from established and emerging scholars who have been there from the early beginnings to those who work with it in communities today, this book tells a riveting story that celebrates the rise in awareness that approaching music as Intangible Cultural Heritage has brought. At the same time, it critiques the discrepancies between ideologies and realities as they emerged across the globe in its first twenty years, and provides perspectives for sound futures for the planet. Gathering such varied perspectives, this essential volume tells a crucial history and expands our understanding of the possibilities and limitations of interventions in music sustainability on a global scale.

Music, Communities, Sustainability, edited thoughtfully by Huib Schippers and Anthony Seeger, traces the genesis, implementation, and development of the influential 2003 UNESCO Convention on Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage and its impact on music practices around the world. With insights from established and emerging scholars who have been there from the early beginnings to those who work with it in communities today, this book tells a riveting story that celebrates the rise in awareness that approaching music as Intangible Cultural Heritage has brought. At the same time, it critiques the discrepancies between ideologies and realities as they emerged across the globe in its first twenty years, and provides perspectives for sound futures for the planet. Gathering such varied perspectives, this essential volume tells a crucial history and expands our understanding of the possibilities and limitations of interventions in music sustainability on a global scale.

Singers generating cultural identity from K-Pop to Beverly Sills Around the world and across time, singers and their songs stand at the crossroads of differing politics and perspectives. Levi S. Gibbs edits a collection built around the idea of listening as a political act that produces meaning. Contributors explore a wide range of issues by examining artists like Romani icon Esma Redžepova, Indian legend Lata Mangeshkar, and pop superstar Teresa Teng. Topics include gendered performances and the negotiation of race and class identities; the class-related contradictions exposed by the divide between highbrow and pop culture; links between narratives of overcoming struggle and the distinction between privileged and marginalized identities; singers’ ability to adapt to shifting notions of history, borders, gender, and memory in order to connect with listeners; how the meanings we read into a singer’s life and art build on one another; and technology’s ability to challenge our ideas about what constitutes music. Cutting-edge and original, Social Voices reveals how singers and their songs equip us to process social change and divergent opinions. Contributors: Christina D. Abreu, Michael K. Bourdaghs, Kwame Dawes, Nancy Guy, Ruth Hellier, John Lie, Treva B. Lindsey, Eric Lott, Katherine Meizel, Carol A. Muller, Natalie Sarrazin, Anthony Seeger, Carol Silverman, Andrew Simon, Jeff Todd Titon, and Elijah Wald

Winner of the American Musical Society's Kinkeldey Award Like many other South American Indian communities, the Suy Indians of Mato Grosso, Brazil, devote a great deal of time and energy to making music, especially singing. In paperback for the first time, Anthony Seeger's Why Suy Sing considers the reasons for the importance of music for the Suy--and by extension for other groups-- through an examination of myth telling, speech making, and singing in the initiation ceremony. Based on over twenty-four months of field research and years of musical exchange, Seeger analyzes the different verbal arts and then focuses on details of musical performance. He reveals how Suy singing creates euphoria out of silence, a village community out of a collection of houses, a socialized adult out of a boy, and contributes to the formation of ideas about time, space, and social identity. This new paperback edition features an indispensable CD offering examples of the myth telling, speeches, and singing discussed, as well as a new afterword that describes the continuing use of music by the Suy in their recent conflicts with cattle ranchers and soybean farmers.

Singers generating cultural identity from K-Pop to Beverly Sills Around the world and across time, singers and their songs stand at the crossroads of differing politics and perspectives. Levi S. Gibbs edits a collection built around the idea of listening as a political act that produces meaning. Contributors explore a wide range of issues by examining artists like Romani icon Esma Redžepova, Indian legend Lata Mangeshkar, and pop superstar Teresa Teng. Topics include gendered performances and the negotiation of race and class identities; the class-related contradictions exposed by the divide between highbrow and pop culture; links between narratives of overcoming struggle and the distinction between privileged and marginalized identities; singers’ ability to adapt to shifting notions of history, borders, gender, and memory in order to connect with listeners; how the meanings we read into a singer’s life and art build on one another; and technology’s ability to challenge our ideas about what constitutes music. Cutting-edge and original, Social Voices reveals how singers and their songs equip us to process social change and divergent opinions. Contributors: Christina D. Abreu, Michael K. Bourdaghs, Kwame Dawes, Nancy Guy, Ruth Hellier, John Lie, Treva B. Lindsey, Eric Lott, Katherine Meizel, Carol A. Muller, Natalie Sarrazin, Anthony Seeger, Carol Silverman, Andrew Simon, Jeff Todd Titon, and Elijah Wald

From one of the most lauded scholars in ethnomusicology comes this enlightening and highly personal narrative on the evolution and current state of the field of ethnomusicology. Surveying the field he helped establish, Bruno Nettl investigates how concepts such as evolution, geography, and history serve as catalysts for advancing ethnomusicological methods and perspectives. This entertaining collection covers Nettl's scholarly interests ranging from Native American to Mediterranean to Middle Eastern contexts while laying out the pivotal moments of the field and conversations with the giants of its past. Nettl moves from reflections on the history of ethnomusicology to evaluations of the principal organizations in the field, interspersing those broader discussions with shorter essays focusing on neglected literature and personal experiences.