MU 503: Music of African Diasporas

Conceived as an introduction to a vast, immensely rich and diverse set of repertories, this book explores the sounding forms of Sub-Saharan African music. Aimed at a general musical readership, it describes the major dimensions of African music and the values upon which they are built.

This entertaining history of Cuba and its music begins with Spain's first encounters with Africa and continues through the era of Miguelito Valdés, Arsenio Rodriguez, Benny Moré, and Pérez Prado. It offers a behind-the-scenes examination of music from a Cuban point of view.

Composed over a decade and a half and originally delivered to audiences in Europe, Africa, and the US, these lectures celebrate African musical creativity by illuminating selected compositional techniques, key influences, and dominant scholarly themes.

Rock It Come Over is the most extensive study of Jamaican folk music yet published. It is also an examination of the roots of that music and a record of the folk heritage that is, in spite of many efforts, rapidly retreating before the pressures of life today.

A guide to the cultural festivals, traditional culture, musical forms, dances, instruments, music education, government institutions concerned with music, and copyright mechanisms in Belize, the Bahamas, Jamaica, St. Kitts & Nevis, Antigua and Barbado, Montserrat, Dominica, St. Lucia, Barbados, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Grenada, Trinidad & Tobago, and Guyana.

The Brazilian Sound [is] an encyclopedic survey of Brazilian popular music that ranges over samba, bossa nova, MPB, jazz and instrumental music and tropical rock, as well as the music of the Northeast.

Javier F. León and Helena Simonett curate a collection of essential writings from the last twenty-five years of Latin American music studies. Chosen as representative, outstanding, and influential in the field, each article appears in English translation. A detailed new introduction by León and Simonett both surveys and contextualizes the history of Latin American ethnomusicology, opening the door for readers energized by the musical forms brought and nurtured by immigrants from throughout Latin America.

As the largest nation in Latin America, Brazil is home to some of the most celebrated music in the world. Music in Brazil covers a wide spectrum of this music, including samba, bossa nova, Tropicália, and MPB (Música Popular Brasileira); regional traditional and popular music; Brazilian rock, rap, and electronica; and such genres as sertaneja (similar to country-and-western music) and brega (sentimental pop).

This survey of the music of black Americans begins with the arrival in 1619 of the first black men in the English colonies. It discusses the work of black composers and performers, the role of the black churches in the North, theatrical activities, the songs of work and play, the development of jazz, and art music.