Customer Reviews

MusicHound World: The Essential Album Guide (Musichound Essential Album Guides)

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Continuing in the spirit of MusicHound's other musical overviews, the World directory is obviously a work of love by its authors and editor (bravo to all!) For someone like myself, who is eager for a guide to the vast expanse of music beyond the typical labels we Westerners feel compelled to use, the MusicHound World Directory offers the reader (and soon-to-be-listener) an immense variety of directions in which to go to discover people and places where passion and music create new dimensions. An authoritative and endlessly readable resource! Bon voyage!

This book is really disappointing. While it looks massive, and weighs a ton, MUSIC HOUND's WORLD is missing so many essential figures. Look at Brazil, they have a section on DAUDE (a relatively minor artist), but have NOTHING on giants of Samba such as PAULINHO DA VIOLA and MARTINHO DA VILA. ANNA VISSI (Greece), VLADIMIR VYSOTSKY (Russia), and countless others are omitted, while an equal number of bizarre names such as VINX are here. They seem more interested in people like Linda Ronstadt and Shakira's contribution to world music that actually putting together a guide about the movers and shakers. Even the bios that they do feature are for the most part, re-hashed press releases. This guide is useless, and a waste of paper.

El termino world music con que los americanos engloban toda la musica que suena algo "diferente" es tan amplio que hace casi imposible englobarla en un libro que tenga una armonia en su criterio de seleccion. Por otra parte las calificaciones, omisiones y extensiones dadas a cada interprete son totalmente subjetivas. Salvo esto la seleccion es buena con especial enfasis en la musica africana, asiatica,y para mi gusto demasiada anglofila ( celta,irlandesa,etc) La latina esta representada muy parcialmente con grandes omisiones, y peca de errores de origen y estilo. Cuenta con una buen indice por paises y un adecuado muestrario de los considerados los mejores albunes de cada interprete. Posee los accesos a mail de la mayoria y nos permite conocer artistas ignotos para el occidente para poder profundizar a nuestro gusto. Para mi la mejor seleccion global de la World music. He seguido sus recomendaciones y no me ha defraudado ALTAMENTE RECOMENDABLE EN ESPECIAL POR LA POBREZA DE ESTE TIPO DE MATERIAL QUE SE PUEDE ENCONTRAR HOY ( una buena combinacion con otro punto de vista es : Global Pop : World music, World markets.)
VALE AMPLIAMENTE SU COSTO

Marvellous, thorough, enjoyable, and resourceful book. It's indispensable from a world music fan's point of view, plus I use it for my work in music and media.