(Part 2) Best ethnic & international music books according to redditors
We found 77 Reddit comments discussing the best ethnic & international music books. We ranked the 46 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the products ranked 21-40. You can also go back to the previous section.
![Hip Hop in America: A Regional Guide [2 volumes]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51CbyfdEsBL.jpg)
Ciro Scotto - The Structural Role of Distortion in Hard Rock and Heavy Metal
Paula Virtala, Minna Huotilainen, Esa Lilja, Juha Ojala, and Mari Tervaniemi - Distortion and Western Music Chord Processing
Steven Waksman - Instruments of Desire: The Electric Guitar and the Shaping of Musical Experience (Musicological, but discusses Hendrix specifically.)
Wired for Sound: Engineering and Technologies in Sonic Cultures, ed. Paul Greene and Thomas Porcello
Birds often don't sing clean notes, and you shouldn't think of birdsong as tonal in the way we do with music, but a fair number of people think that we may have derived what we think of as notes from them. If you record a large enough set of samples, you will find that many of our notes line up with theirs, and mimicking birds is almost certainly as old as music itself. This is especially true of the pentatonic scale.
I'll second Adorno. I haven't read it, but this looks to be the definitive collection of his work on music theory: https://www.amazon.com/Essays-Music-Theodor-Adorno/dp/0520231597
Just be careful about what he has to say on jazz.
I'd recommend Pops by Terry Teachout.
Also, Subversive Sounds, while not an biography per se, talks a good deal about Armstrong while contextualizing the careers of early jazz musicians within the social atmosphere of early 20th century New Orleans.
Sukiyaki isn't the real name of this song. It was called Ue o Muite Arukou which means something in the effects of Looking UP When I Walk. It was given the name Sukiyaki to appeal to Westerners more.
It should also be noted that this happened in the early 1960s. Why not before? Of course, we can point a finger to the anti-Japanese sentiments of the 1940s. You could also point a finger to the fact that until 1952, Asians had been banned from immigrating to the US. However, it wasn't until 1960 that JAL (Japanese Airlines) finally announced a route connecting Japan to the US. Before that, travelers had to come by boat. With the advent of the jetliner, Japanese musicians could startcoming to the US - Hawaii and California mostly - to play to Japanese populations there.
If anyone's interested, this is a pretty good read on the topic although it's a little dry.
Try checking out Worlds of Music.
I have this book sitting on my shelf from a class I took years ago. I can't speak too much to the quality of the book as I really did not like the class (and honestly don't remember using the book that much), but taking a quick glance at it now seems like it might fit your interests. In this "shorter version," the sections are:
Each of these is written by a different scholar who seems to be a specialist in that particular area (based on a quick glance at the author bios). It also seems to have received good reviews on Amazon, and with the low prices on this particular edition, it might be worth checking out.
I'd recommend Diccionario de la Música Cubana by Helio Orovio (translated as Cuban Music From A to Z). Orovio was a Cuban musicologist, considered by many Cuban musicians the most knowledgeable person on the subject.
Edit: Found it @ amazon
Oh my FUCKING God, this is worse than the persistence of anti-black racism. We have destroyed the Native American culture enough as it is. Are we just gonna turn our backs on Teddy Roosevelt's legacy while we're at it?
These kids should check out The Indians' Book as well as the 'Good' Book.
Folk music:
This music is not based on chord progressions and such type of accompaniment was introduced like last century in arrangements. If anything, they used drones for tonic and dominant pitches and that's it.
Get a book with folklore songs and learn some music.
(Stravinsky used such anthology sourcing the melodies in some of his works, despite denying this, but musicologists later found all of his sources, wow.)
After you learn enough songs, you will start spotting common melodic motives and motions.
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https://www.amazon.com/Russian-Song-Book-Dover-Collections/dp/0486261182/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=russian+folk+songs&qid=1565505024&s=books&sr=1-1
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https://www.amazon.com/Russian-Folk-Songs-Musical-History-ebook/dp/B00FF9PWTK/ref=sr_1_4?keywords=russian+folk+songs&qid=1565505024&s=books&sr=1-4
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Art music: anything goes, copy the style of some Russian composer you like...
My instructor started me out on "Folksongs and Ballads Popular in Ireland" for exactly that purpose. There are four volumes and I bought the first two: https://www.amazon.com/Folksongs-Ballads-Popular-Ireland-Vol/dp/0946005001 They've been useful to me.
Additionally, there's an app I found on iTunes store you might find helpful as you learn notes on the mando fretboard: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/fret-trainer-learn-fretboard/id1279576225?mt=8
Finally, just remember lines: E-G-B-D-F, spaces F-A-C-E.
This book taught me everything I know: http://www.amazon.com/MIDI-For-Musicians-Craig-Anderton/dp/0825610508
https://www.amazon.com/Old-Time-String-Songbook-Hally-Stephenson/dp/0825601797
Buy this book
Maybe Cristopher Dunn can help you.
PT: http://editoraunesp.com.br/catalogo/9788571399341,brutalidade-jardim
EN:
Brutality Garden: Tropicalia and the Emergence of a Brazilian Counterculture https://www.amazon.com.br/dp/0807849766/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_W06LDbZWJ3JCH
Not every culture relies solely on "western medicine" and some of it is fairly effective at healing.
Check out http://www.amazon.com/Healing-Sounds-Malaysian-Rainforest-Comparative/dp/0520082818 for a really interesting look at an alternative medicine system involving song and dance.
Get em this. "Hip Hop in America: A Regional Guide [2 volumes]" by Mickey Hess
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0313343217/ref=cm_sw_r_udp_awd_IGg5tb01FXXXB
It's largely a result of the Soviet era and their ass backwards policies regarding music and culture. It's true that after Stalin died in 1953 there was a partial thaw of a lot of the extraordinarily conservative policies that stifled composers like Shostakovich and Prokofiev, but a lot of the fear of branching out remained. Not many people realize that in the twenties there was actually a pretty solid amount of experimentalism as folks were trying to get the hang of what the cultural climate would be, and Stalin's policies didn't take place until the thirties. If you can find it at a nearby university or something, I highly recommend The Music of the Repressed Russian Avant-Grade, 1900-1929 as a good starting place.
Basically, they're still working on bouncing back from super-conservative policies.
I ended up doing some additional searches online and ended up settling on this: https://www.amazon.com/Arrest-Music-Politics-Expressive-Cultures/dp/0253217180
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If I remember to I will let you know how it is!
I agree with the other comments here about listening (both recordings and getting to as many live performances as you can) being the most important thing. Since you sound a bit more of an academic I thought I'd also offer a suggestion on a written text you might find interesting, especially considering your phrase: "performance practices and improv"
https://www.amazon.com/Saying-Something-Improvisation-Interaction-Ethnomusicology/dp/0226534782
"Saying Something" by Ingrid Monson. Fantastic work regarding what it really means to improvise in jazz, as a language and cultural thing as well as the strictly musical thing.