Worlds of Music, Shorter Version

Jeff Todd Titon is Professor of Music, Emeritus, at Brown University, where he directed the Ph.D. program in ethnomusicology from 1986 to 2013. He received a Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of Minnesota, where he studied ethnomusicology with Alan Kagan, cultural anthropology with Pertti Pelto, and musicology with Johannes Riedel. He founded the ethnomusicology program at Tufts University, where he taught from 1971 to 1986. From 1990 to 1995 he served as the editor of Ethnomusicology, the journal of the Society for Ethnomusicology. He has done ethnographic fieldwork in North America on religious folk music, blues music, and old-time fiddling, with support from the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. For two years, he was the guitarist in the Lazy Bill Lucas Blues Band, a group that appeared at the 1970 Ann Arbor Blues Festival. He founded and directed an old-time, Appalachian, string-band ethnomusicology ensemble at Tufts (1981-1986) and then at Brown (1986-2013). He is the author or editor of eight books, including Early Downhome Blues, which won the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award, Give Me This Mountain, Powerhouse for God, and the Oxford Handbook of Applied Ethnomusicology. A documentary photographer and filmmaker as well as author, he is considered a pioneer in applied ethnomusicology, phenomenological ethnography, and ecomusicology. His most recent research may be tracked on his blog at sustainablemusic.blogspot.com.

No background or training in music? No problem. This shorter version of WORLDS OF MUSIC: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE MUSIC OF THE WORLD'S PEOPLES is written to make music accessible to all. Using a case-study approach, the text presents explorations of music from several cultures from around the world. The authors -- all working ethnomusicologists -- base their discussions of music-cultures on their own fieldwork and give you a true sense of both the music and culture that created it. The recordings that accompany the book (available online) include authentic recordings from the authors' fieldwork and work hand in hand with the text, giving you access to a wide range of music-cultures.