Music Grooves

by Charles Keil, Steven Feld

A unique collaboration between two of the most challenging voices studying music today, this volume explores the dual themes of musical participation and musical mediation. A number of the authors' most important essays, thoroughly revised and updated, are introduced and framed by dialogues that supply additional context, introduce retrospective concerns, and reveal previously unseen connections. This format expresses the authors' desire for a more reflexive, experimental discourse on music and society and invites readers to join their conversations. Music Grooves ranges from jazz, blues, polka, soul, rock, world beat, rap, karaoke, and other familiar genres to major scholarly debates in music theory and popular culture studies. The authors cover vital issues in media studies, ethnomusicology, popular culture studies, anthropology, and sociology, while discussing musics from America, Greece, Cuba, Africa, and Papua New Guinea and artists as diverse as James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Li'l Wally Jagiello, Bo Diddley, Walt Solek, Madonna, Paul Simon, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, and Billie Holiday.

Genres: Music, Nonfiction

412 pages, Paperback

First published January 26, 1994

Reviews

[Will Lashley · Rating 4 out of 5]

The awesome Charles Keil and Steven Feld published this collection "Music Grooves: Essays And Dialogues" in 1994. I read it fifteen years ago but still think about the ideas in it quite a bit, and was reminded of it recently when I had a rambling conversation with a rock drummer from Hampshire about the sound environment of the New Forest, psychoacoustics, groove-as-composition, and Acoustic Ecology. Keil brings a fresh perspective to music like polka and the blues, and music as participation. Feld is more concerned with the physical "footprint" of sound recording (listen to his Smithsonian Folkways Recordings CD "Voices of the Rainforest" of the rainforest dwelling Bosavi people of the the Southern Highlands province of Papua New Guinea, or the slightly less conceptual "Rainforest Soundwalks: Ambiences of Bosavi Papua New Guinea").

If rhythm is your thing, this book provides a great deal of food for thought.