The Cultural Study Of Music (Chinese Version) And A Book Review

The Cultural Study of Music is an anthology of new writings that will serve as a basic textbook on music and culture. Increasingly, music is being studied as it relates to specific cultures-not only by ethnomusicologists, but by traditional musicologists as well. Drawing on writers from music, anthropology, sociology, and the related fields, the book both tries to re-define the field, i.e., "What is the relation between music and culture?" and then presents case studies of particular issues in world musics. This book would serve as an introductory textbook for the cultural study of music, an area that is increasingly being taught at the upper-level undergraduate and graduate level. Moreover, it would appeal to scholars in all areas of music, reflecting the latest and most up to date thinking on the complex issues surrounding how music and culture interrelate.The book consists of two parts. Part I is "Music and Culture" in which the new perspective of culture blends into every key factors of musicological study. Part II "Issues and Debates" reviews some hot spot issues in the academic circles and puts forward some new critical viewpoints. Some of the chapters even involve some sensitive political subjects like gender, community, local ethnomusicology, race, diaspora and globalization as well as discussions on such aspects as thick description, listening, experience, emotions and identity.With reference to the development of musicology in the new age and the criticism presented by postmodernist philosophy against structuralism and absolute truth, my book review emphasizes on the two most important fields, historical musicology and ethnomusicology. It includes the vantage points of the authors of the chapters mentioned and indicates the very wish to break away from discourse hegemony and to integrate musicology with cultural pluralism. Finally, a number of difficulties are listed, added with proper solutions.