Excursions in World Music

by Bruno Nettl (Editor), Charles Capwell (Editor), Isabel K. F. Wong (Editor)

Explore the relationship between music and society around the world This comprehensive introductory text creates a panoramic experience for beginner students by exposing them to the many musical cultures around the globe. Each chapter opens with a musical encounter in which the author introduces a key musical culture. Through these experiences, students are introduced to key musical styles, musical instruments, and performance practices. Students are taught how to actively listen to key musical examples through detailed listening guides. The role of music in society is emphasized through chapters that focus on key world cultural groups. MyMusicLab does no come automatically packaged with this text. To purchase MyMusicLab, please visitwww.MyMusicLab.com or you can purchase a valuepack of the text + MyMusicLab (VP 020521777X, VP 9780205217779) Teaching and Learning Experience Personalize Learning - The new MyMusicLabdelivers proven results in helping students succeed, provides engaging experiences that personalize learning, and comes from a trusted partner with educational expertise and a deep commitment to helping students and instructors achieve their goals. Improve Active Listening- Excursions contains detailed listening guides that take students through the key elements in each performance. Through MyMusicLab, these guides are now integrated with streaming audio for a truly integrated listening experience. Full streaming audio for most music examples is found through MyMusicLab. Engage Students- Each chapter opens with a musical encounter in a different musical culture. Through this experience, students are inspired to study more deeply the musical cultures of each area of the world. Support Instructors- Supported by the best instructor resources on the market, including MyMusicLab, ClassPrep for digital images, and Teaching with MyMusicLab PowerPoint.

Genres: Music, Textbooks, Nonfiction

364 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2004

About the author

Bruno Nettl is professor emeritus of music and anthropology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. An internationally renowned musicologist, he is both a founder and past president of the Society for Ethnomusicology and the author of many books.

Reviews

[QianJunYu]

Terrible book, terrible content, the authors are not good. They did not do good Ever since they publish their first edition of this book. They did not do good Ever since they start their work at university of Illinois or even back in university of Michigan

[Kim Browers]

I was assigned this book as part of my undergrad studies in 1998. I decided, upon forming a Near-Eastern music ensemble this year, to go back and re-read this in its entirety. My goal was to see if there was more detailed information about maqamat or cultural terms for musical ideas from the Middle East, North Africa, and Baltic regions. I found the material to be already outdated by the 90's when it was written, finding most of the fieldwork or examples were from the 1970's. That was disappointment #1. Disappointment #2 was that much of the terminology, instrumentation naming, and styles were barely touched on, or were using terms that were Anglicized or simply no longer employed. I did learn a bit about Chinese and Japanese music that I didn't know from before, but that's because I knew essentially nothing!

And disappointment #3 was that there is supposed to be an audio recording companion to this text, which was missing. I wanted to look at the discography, but none of the artists are credited by name, and not even song names were used. They use things like "karnatic song". That's not even remotely useful if you're using this as a launch point for primary music sources.

In summary, there wasn't enough technical/ethnic background to make this interesting for even intermediate-level studies of Ethnomusicology, but you would require some background knowledge or training to follow some of the nuances of music theory (meters, phrasing, AABB, etc.).

Overall, I wouldn't recommend this as a course book nor as layperson reading, as it fell short in both arenas.

[Michael]

Nettl was a visiting lecturer when I was in college and I took his ethnomusicology course, for which this was assigned reading. It recently popped up in a box of old materials from college and I reread some of the chapters. The pieces are designed for a beginning reader and don't delve into great detail. There are separate sections on a variety of ethnomusicologies - Japanese, Native American, etc. Puzzlingly all of Sub-Saharan Africa is represented by one section about an mbira performance. I thought the piece by Nettl on music in prerevolutionary Iran was the most interesting, with another good one the piece on ethnic communities in the United States.

[Nancy]

Had to read it for a college course. It was not riveting, but I learned some good info.

[Laura]

Textbook. Not bad.