Musics Lost and Found
Song Collectors and the Life and Death of Folk Tradition
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Boydell & Brewer Ltd
Published:15th Oct '21
Should be back in stock very soon
This ground-breaking book is the first in-depth global study of the role played in musical history by song collectors. This is the first in-depth global study about song collectors, music's unsung heroes. They include the Armenian priest who sacrificed his life to preserve the folk music which the Turks were trying to erase in the 1915 Genocide; the prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp who secretly noted down the songs of doomed Jewish inmates; the British singer who went veiled into Afghanistan to learn, record and perform the music the Taliban wanted to silence. Some collectors have been fired by political idealism - Bartok championing Hungarian peasant music, the Lomaxes bringing the blues out of Mississippi penitentiaries, and transmitting them to the world. Many collectors have been priests - French Jesuits noting down labyrinthine forms in eighteenth-century Beijing, English vicars tracking songs in nineteenth-century Somerset. Others have been wonderfully colourful oddballs. Today's collectors are striving heroically to preserve endangered musics, whether rare forms of Balinese gamelan, the wind-band music of Chinese villages, or the sophisticated polyphony of Central African Pygmies. With globalisation, urbanisation and Westernisation causing an irreversible erosion of the world's musical diversity, Michael Church suggests we may be seeing folk music's 'end of history'. Old forms are dying as the conditions for their survival - or replacement - disappear; the death of villages means the death of village musical culture. This ground-breaking book is the sequel to the author's award-winning The Other Classical Musics, and it concludes with an inventory of the musics now under threat, or already lost for ever.
Musics Lost and Found is a valuable introduction to the pioneering figures who have been brave enough to depart from the flow to recognize, gather and preserve traditional musics around the world before it disappeared. -- Simon Broughton * Songlines Magazine *
Critic Michael Church's new book highlights those who have worked to save a music tradition from extinction. -- Michael White * Camden New Journal *
Musics Lost and Found makes an engaging diachronic introduction to fieldworkers, and the musics they documented, in societies around the world.... More digestible than the New Grove and Garland encyclopedias, sections in the two New Grove Ethnomusicology volumes, or even The Rough Guide to World Music, this book leads audiences to a wealth of traditions.... [C]overs an impressive amount of ground. -- Stephen Jones, ethnomusicologist
An important new study. -- Fiona Maddocks * The Observer *
[A] fascinating and moving study of folk-song collectors from the 18th century to the present day, from all around the world.... One of the virtues of Church's book is that he doesn't confine himself to accredited ethnographers or academic collectors working for grand institutions. He gives equal weight to enterprising record companies...as well as amateur enthusiasts like [Paul] Bowles. -- Ivan Hewett * The Daily Telegraph *
[An] appealing account of folk song collectors around the world.... Church is a convincing and passionate advocate both for folk song and its enthusiasts, and the breadth of this colourful and absorbing book is commendable. Three stars. -- Kate Wakeling * BBC Music Magazine *
There is a cinematic sweep to Church's history of the world's song collectors...but there is also an urgent message, as traditional folk music faces the threat of an erosion of musical diversity. -- Richard Fairman * The Financial Times *
Engrossing... its chapters range beguilingly across the globe and the centuries -- Jim Gilchrist * The Scotsman *
Church's volume proves compulsively readable. It is in no way limited to musically conversant readers, thanks to its mixture of informed yet approachable prose and, most of all, a cavalcade of extraordinary characters.... If the book errs in any way, it is simply that it leaves you wanting more. -- Jessica Duchen * i-paper *
Michael Church's important book is a fitting and timely tribute to those who have toiled to preserve folk music, and a wake-up call to us to continue to preserve it. -- Ronald Corp * The Church Times *
A uniquely ambitious book. -- Tom Service * BBC Radio 3, Music Matters *
Highly recommended. * THE INDEPENDENT *
Journalist Michael Church, an esteemed British music critic, makes a serious effort to investigate and help preserve surviving folk music in many parts of the world. [A] carefully researched study.... His coverage encompasses Western European, Eastern European, Asian, Native American, African, and Middle Eastern musicians.... Church's engaging writing style makes this work accessible to a broad audience. -- D. Arnold * CHOICE *
In a world of globalization, industrialization, and Westernization, this book is a reminder about how precious are the sound recordings of past performances that will never be heard in person again. * American Record Guide *
Church's great strength is on the role of small specialist record labels in recirculating and popularizing folk musics, and is similarly appreciative of the role of folk-life festivals. -- Paul Cowdell * Folklore *
ISBN: 9781783276073
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: 542g
312 pages