Customer Reviews

Worlds of Music: An Introduction to the Music of the World's Peoples, Shorter Version (with CD-ROM)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I don't mean to take the same words of the reviewer Nicholas H. Canale, but he's right. Worlds of Music is an excellent book containing two CDs to introduce you to the music of the world and its relation to the culture the music is found in.

The book contains an introduction which explains musical terms to non-musical people. From there, you're on your own to understand the how these terms apply to odd music cultures. Hopefully you will have a great professor or musically-inclined friend to help you out. Nevertheless, the authors all have Ph.D's in ethnomusicology (or a similar subject) and are very good at presenting information.

The book does indeed cost a pretty penny, but its well worth it. Then again, worth doesn't mean much if you're taking a 'World Music' class at college and don't have a choice. Even still, the situation isn't bleak - the audio examples are great, and you're bound to enjoy at least one foreign music you never considered worth your time before reading Worlds of Music.

The book is interesting and the CDs that accompany the book are perfect with the reading!

I have enjoyed this book a lot. It really goes into the world's music cultures in detail. The CD that comes with the book has some very interesting listens on it.

Overall, an interesting book if you have to get it for your World Music class, as I did.

I used this book over the summer for a college music class, and I was very impressed about the quality of the book since I only paid a penny! The book cost over $100 in my campus bookstore.

I got this book for a Music class and it was very useful, had lots of information about various cultures (American Indian, Indian, African, etc.)

For one, some very important regions (Middle East, for example) are missing from this "World Music" text book. It also seems to be a bit choppy in the efforts to highlight the most relevant areas of regional music. Rather than taking an overview perspective of each region, the author delves fairly in-depth into certain divisions of the specific examples he seems to find most interesting.

Since the book is intended to be an overview, I would have like to have had a systematic approach to each region, and the traditions, influences, instruments and patterns seen in each type of music. It wasn't that easy to follow, although the information provided was interesting. Unfortunately, there's not a lot out there in this subject, so there is little competition.

As with all text books, the price is immoral!

My opinion is this is def. not worth the money. It is a very interesting text, but not worth the amount the writers set out to get.