Maori music records and analyses ancient Maori musical tradition and knowledge, and explores the impact of European music on this tradition. Mervyn McLean draws on diverse written and oral sources gathered over more than 30 years of scholarship and field work that yielded some 1300 recorded songs, hundreds of pages of interviews with singers, and numerous eye-witness accounts. The work is illustrated throughout with photos and music examples.

This book is the best introduction available to Maori music &– the instruments played, the songs and dance styles and what they were used for, performance, composition, teaching, etc. Based on 30 years of fieldwork that yielded 1300 recorded songs and hundred of pages of interviews and eyewitness accounts, this is a classic book.

This classic study of indigenous Polynesian music, conducted in the 1960s, includes a survey of traditional songs in different styles that embody the fundamental values of Maori culture in New Zealand. Musical transcriptions, Maori texts, English translations, and extensive notes on more than 50 traditional Maori songs are included. Common ceremonial songs are represented, including elaborate laments, love songs, war chants, songs of welcome, and witty occasional songs.

During the past two decades, there has emerged a growing need to reconsider the objects, axioms and perspectives of writing music history. A certain suspicion towards Francois Lyotard’s grand narratives, as a sign of what he diagnosed as our ’postmodern condition’, has become more or less an established and unquestioned point of departure among historians. This suspicion, at its most extreme, has led to a radical conclusion of the ’end of history’ in the work of postmodern scholars such as Jean Baudrillard and Francis Fukuyama. The contributors to Critical Music Historiography take a step back and argue that the radical view of the ’impossibility of history’, as well as the unavoidable ideology of any history, are counter-productive points of departure for historical scholarship. It is argued that metanarratives in history are still possible and welcome, even if their limitations are acknowledged. Foucault, Lyotard and others should be taken into account but systematized viewpoints and methods for a more critical and multi-faceted re-evaluation of the past through research are needed. As to the metanarratives of music history, they must avoid the pitfalls of evolutionism, hagiography, and teleology, all hallmarks of traditional historiography. In this volume the contributors put these methods and principles into practice. The chapters tackle under-researched and non-conventional domains of music history as well as rethinking older historiographical concepts such as orientalism and nationalism, and consequently introduce new concepts such as occidentalism and transnationalism. The volume is a challenging collection of work that stakes out a unique territory for itself among the growing body of work on critical music history.

Centring the voices of Indigenous scholars at the intersection of music and education, this co-edited volume contributes to debates about current colonising music education research and practices, and offers alternative decolonising approaches that support music education imbued with Indigenous perspectives. This unique collection is far-ranging, with contributions from Chile, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Malaysia, India, South Africa, Kenya, and Finland. The authors interrogate and theorise research methodologies, curricula, and practices related to the learning and teaching of music. Providing a meeting place for Indigenous voices and viewpoints from around the globe, this book highlights the imperative that Indigenisation must be Indigenous-led. The book promotes Indigenous scholars’ reconceptualisations of how music education is researched and practised, with an emphasis on the application of decolonial ways of being. The authors provocatively demonstrate the value of power-sharing and eroding the gaze of non-Indigenous populations. Pushing far beyond the concepts of Western aesthetics and world music, this vital collection of scholarship presents music in education as a social and political action, and shows how to enact Indigenising and decolonising practices in a wide range of music education contexts.

First published in 1998. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.