Representing African Music: Postcolonial Notes, Queries, Positions

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Acknowledgements Introduction
1. Colonialism's Impact
2. The Archive
3. The Invention of "African Rhythm"
4. Polymeter, Additive Rhythm, and Other Enduring Myths
5. African Music as Text
6. Popular Music Defended Against its Devotees
7. Contesting Difference
8. How Not to Analyze African Music
9. The Ethics of Representation Epilogue References

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The aim of this book is to stimulate debate by offering a critique of discourse about African music. Who writes about African music, how, and why? What assumptions and prejudices influence the presentation of ethnographic data? Even the term "African music" suggests there is an agreed-upon meaning, but African music signifies differently to different people. This book also poses the question then, "What is African music?" Agawu offers a new and provocative look at the history of African music scholarship that will resonate with students of ethnomusicology and post-colonial studies. He offers an alternative "Afro-centric" means of understanding African music, and in doing so, illuminates a different mode of creativity beyond the usual provenance of Western criticism. This book will undoubtedly inspire heated debate--and new thinking--among musicologists, cultural theorists, and post-colonial thinkers. Also includes 15 musical examples.

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Notes: Journal of the Music Library Association

strikingly original.. upset[s] applecarts of convention and dispassionate prose. . . engag[es] readers in thorough, lively, critical debate about African music and Africanist musical scholarship. . .will be required reading for students of ethnomusicology, music theory, and historical musicology for some time

Notes: Journal of the Music Library Association

Kofi Agawu's Representing African Music does an excellent job of engaging readers in a thorough, lively, critical debate about African music and Africanist musical scholarship

International Journal of African Historical Studies

unfailingly intelligent, well informed, and closely argued . . .lucidly and elegantly written. . .stimulating and provocative. . provides an African outlook on controversies that have been primarily covered by scholars in Europe and the United States. . .filled with incisive observations

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