For Prespa Albanians, both at home in Macedonia and in the diaspora, the most opulent, extravagant, and socially significant events of any year are wedding celebrations. Combining photographs, song texts, and vibrant recordings of the music with her own evocative descriptions, ethnomusicologist Jane C. Sugarman focuses her account of Prespa weddings on notions of gendered identity, demonstrating the capacity of singing to generate and transform relations of power within Prespa society.

The field of Music Psychology has grown dramatically in the past 20 years, to emerge from being just a minor topic to one of mainstream interest within the brain sciences. However, until now, there has been no comprehensive reference text in the field. The Oxford Handbook of Music Psychology is a landmark text providing, for the first time ever, a comprehensive overview of the latest developments in this fast-growing area of research. With contributions from over fifty experts in the field, the range and depth of coverage is unequalled. All the chapters combine a solid review of the relevant literature with well-reasoned arguments and robust discussions of the major findings, as well as original insights and suggestions for future work. Written by leading experts, the 52 chapters are divided into 11 sections covering both experimental and theoretical perspectives, each edited by an internationally recognised authority Ten sections each present chapters that focus on specific areas of music psychology: - the origins and functions of music - music perception - responses to music - music and the brain - musical development - learning musical skills - musical performance - composition and improvisation - the role of music in our everyday lives - music therapy and conceptual frameworks In each section, expert authors critically review the literature, highlight current issues, and explore possibilities for the future. The final section examines how in recent years the study of music psychology has broadened to include a range of other scientific disciplines. It considers the way that the research has developed in relation to technological advances, fostering links across the field and providing an overview of the areas where the field needs further development in the future. The Oxford Handbook of Music Psychology will be the essential reference text for students and researchers across psychology and neuroscience.

The Reader's Guide to Music is designed to provide a useful single-volume guide to the ever-increasing number of English language book-length studies in music. Each entry consists of a bibliography of some 3-20 titles and an essay in which these titles are evaluated, by an expert in the field, in light of the history of writing and scholarship on the given topic. The more than 500 entries include not just writings on major composers in music history but also the genres in which they worked (from early chant to rock and roll) and topics important to the various disciplines of music scholarship (from aesthetics to gay/lesbian musicology).

Music Traditions, Cultures, and Contexts is a tribute to the ethnomusicologist Beverley Diamond in recognition of her outstanding scholarly accomplishments. The volume includes essays by leading ethnomusicologists and music scholars as well as a biographical introduction. The book’s contributors engage many of the critical themes in Diamond’s work, including musical historiography, musical composition in historical and contemporary frameworks, performance in diverse contexts, gender issues, music and politics, and how music is nested in and relates to broader issues in society. The essays raise important themes about knowing and understanding musical traditions and music itself as an agent of social, cultural, and political change. Music Traditions, Cultures, and Contexts will appeal to music scholars and students, as well as to a general audience interested in learning about how music functions as social process as well as sound.

Shaped by Japanese Music is an in-depth analysis of the musical world of an individual performer, composer, and teacher. Using an ethnographic approach, this study situates musical analysis in the context of its creation, demonstrating that traditional Japanese music is hardly an archaic song form frozen in the present, but an active sociocultural system that has been reproduced in Japan from the seventeenth century to the present day. The dynamics of this cultural system unfold in the musical experiences of Kikuoka Hiroaki, the leader of a school of nagauta music, who struggled to modernize the art form while trying to maintain the qualities he believed to be fundamental to the tradition. Through the focus on Kikuoka's school, readers will become familiar with conflicts in the recent history of this music, traditional Japanese teaching methods, and the technique of modern composition within a traditional form. Underlying all of these different analyses is the concept of kata (form), a Japanese aesthetic that helps shape musical forms as well as the behaviour of musicians.

Women, the Recited Qur'an, and Islamic Music in Contemporary Indonesia takes readers to the heart of religious musical praxis in Indonesia, home to the largest Muslim population in the world. Anne K. Rasmussen explores a rich public soundscape, where women recite the divine texts of the Qur'an, and where an extraordinary diversity of Arab-influenced Islamic musical styles and genres, also performed by women, flourishes. Based on unique and revealing ethnographic research beginning at the end of Suharto's "New Order" and continuing into the era of "Reformation," the book considers the powerful role of music in the expression of religious nationalism. In particular, it focuses on musical style, women's roles, and the ideological and aesthetic issues raised by the Indonesian style of recitation.

Whether referred to as mermaid, usalka, mami wata, or by some other name, and whether considered an imaginary being or merely a person with extraordinary abilities, the siren is the remarkable creature that has inspired music and its representations from ancient Greece to present-day Africa and Latin America. This book, co-edited by a historical musicologist and an ethnomusicologist, brings together leading scholars and some talented newcomers in classics, music, media studies, literature, and cultural studies to consider the siren and her multifaceted relationships to music across human time and geography.