* It has QR codes which can be scanned to gain access to rare documentations: audio-visuals of Great Andamanese songs and tales"It is fortunate that a scholar with Professor Abbi's tenacity, as well as her scientific credentials, was available and willing to conduct this work... The volume is a superb introduction for the layperson to the wonderful world that Professor Abbi has opened up for us." - Bernard Comrie, Santa Barbara, California. "For two decades now, Abbi has marshalled the full intellectual and strategic weight of her training, disciplinary expertise and socio-cultural capital to document, preserve and share with the world the voices, songs, stories and laughter of the Great Andamanese." - Mark Turin, University of British Columbia, Vancouver. The Andaman Islands -- Great Andaman, Little Andaman, and North Sentinel Islands have been home for milleniums to four tribes: the Great Andamanese, Onge, Jarawa, and Sentinelese. Their languages are known by the same name as that of the tribes. 'Great Andamanese' is a generic term representing ten languages among a family of languages that were once spoken by ten different tribes living in the north, south, and middle of the Great Andaman Islands. These languages were mutually intelligible like a link in a chain. However, today, Great Andamanese is a moribund language of the only-surviving pre-Neolithic tribe, breathing its last breath. When a language is on the verge of extinction, its history, culture, ecological base, knowledge of the biodiversity, ethno-linguistic practices, and the identity of its community -- everything is endangered. This is what prompted Prof. Anvita Abbi to conduct a research study to give life to the lost oral heritage of the vanishing world of the Great Andamanese. Voices from the Lost Horizon is a collection of a number of folk tales and songs of the Great Andamanese. These stories and songs represent the first-ever collection rendered to the Prof. Abbi and her team by the Great Andamanese people in local settings. The compilation comes with audio and video recordings of the stories and songs to retain the originality and orality of the narratives.

A History of the American Musical narrates the evolution of the film musical genre, discussing its influences and how it has come to be defined; the first text on this subject for over two decades, it employs the very latest concepts and research. The most up-to-date text on the subject, with uniquely comprehensive coverage and employing the very latest concepts and research Surveys centuries of music history from the music and dance of Native Americans to contemporary music performance in streaming media Examines the different ways the film musical genre has been defined, what gets counted as a musical, why, and who gets to make that decision The text is written in an accessible manner for general cinema and musical theatre buffs, whilst retaining theoretical rigour in research Describes the contributions made to the genre by marginalized or subordinated identity groups who have helped invent and shape the musical