Simone Krüger

Facing the Music: Shaping Music Education from a Global Perspective

Tajik ‘Masterpieces’. Harris gives her account as stories within stories. His life-story is told with considerable care, referencing historical people and events. Harris is positioned in the account, as she is introduced to and learns the dutar lute from him, travels with him, and explores his musical knowledge. Finally, Nimrod Baranovitch explores Teng Ge’er in a chapter entitled ‘Compliance, Autonomy, and Resistance of a ‘‘State Artist’’ ’. A pop musician on the state’s payroll, a Mongolian living in Beijing and popular throughout China, Teng Ge’er requires us to rethink the distinction often proposed between state artists and independent artists. It requires us to consider the complexities involved when an artist from a minority group portrays himself (or allows himself to be portrayed) through music. Baranovitch gives only a brief life-story, thereby allocating more space to a discussion of Teng Ge’er’s music and his song lyrics. This comes replete with elements of protest and contentious representation: the singer refuses to be always identified as Mongol and oozes modernity, yet he is regularly photographed in Mongol garb, singing about the rivers, plains and skies of Mongolia. Bringing these seven chapters together is no easy task. Rees’s brief attempt to find overarching trends (11 13) is not entirely successful, and may be unnecessary, since each account stands on its own, and each has its own strengths. Together, they illustrate different facets of the job at hand, moving us from the scholar to the folk singer, from the literati qin to rock and pop, and from Xinjiang to Liverpool. This diversity is probably sufficient, giving voices and identities to the musicians who so often in the past have been invisible within ethnographies, and revealing much about the many different ethnic and cultural backgrounds from which Chinese music emanates.

A Different Voice, A Different Song: Reclaiming Community through the Natural Voice and World Song

Book review Bithell, Caroline. 2014. A Different Voice, A Different Song: Reclaiming Community through the Natural Voice and World Song. New York: Oxford University Press. 351pp. ISBN 978-0-19-935455-9 (pbk.).

World Music, World Circuit: In Conversation with Nick Gold

This interview with internationally acclaimed World Music record producer and World Circuit label owner Nick Gold explores numerous pertinent issues surrounding the birth and successes of the British World Music genre. With thirty years of experience working with ground-breaking World Music artists like Ibrahim Ferrer, Ali Farka Toure, Ruben Gonzalez, Oumou Sangare, Orchestra Baobab, Cheikh Lȏ and Toumani Diabate, Nick’s World Circuit label has produced some of the finest and most successful World Music projects of the last two decades, notably the Grammy-winning Buena Vista Social Club. With personal stories from his own career in World Music, Nick presents a first-hand account of running a World Music label, attending the infamous 1987 pub meeting, ingredients for successful World Music, Buena Vista Social Club and more, with a look towards the future of the World Music industry. Keywords: World Music; music production; music label; Buena Vista Social Club; Ali Farka Toure; Ry Cooder