Music, Time and Place : Essays in Comparative Musicology

Contents: 1. Introduction. I. Time and Rhythm: 2. Metre and Tal in North Indian music. 3. Two gat forms for the Sitar: a case study in the rhythmic analysis of North Indian music. 4. Culture, cognition and additive rhythm: A comparative case study. 5. Free rhythm: ethnomusicology and the study of music without Metre. 6. Experiencing Indian music. 7. In time with the music: the significance of entrainment for music research. II. Early sound recordings: 8. Ethnographic wax cylinders at the British library national sound archive: a brief history and description of the collection. 9. A.H. Fox strangways and The Music of Hindostan: revisiting historical field recordings. III. Beyond the east-west divide: 10. Rock to Raga: The many lives of the Indian guitar. 11. "You can't fuse yourself": contemporary British-Asian music and the musical expression of identity. 12. From difference to fusion: constructions of Indian and western music. 13. Sound and symbol? The Indian in music. 14. Towards a theory of musical meaning (in India and elsewhere). 15. Comparing music, comparing musicology. Glossary. Original publication details. References. Notes. Index.

"Music, time and place is a collection of interlinked essays which deal with a wide range of issues concerning both Indian and Western music and musical thought. The essays are organised in three main sections. The first, 'Time and rhythm', discusses a number of interrelated questions concerning the organisation of music in time. The next section concerns the history of comparative musicology, early sound recording, particularly A.H. Fox Strangways' classic book the music of Hindostan. Finally, in 'Beyond the East-west divide', Clayton address the histories of Indian music in the west and western music in India, and questions some commonly-held notions of essential difference. The essays make significant and original contributions across a wide range of contemporary musicological debates." (jacket)