Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World, Volume 10

The Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Popular Music Volume 10 is one of six volumes within the ‘Genre' strand of the series. This volume discusses the genres of Africa and the Middle East in relation to their cultural, historical and geographic origins; technical musical characteristics; instrumentation and use of voice; lyrics and language; typical features of performance and presentation; historical development and paths and modes of dissemination; influence of technology, the music industry and political and economic circumstances; changing stylistic features; notable and influential performers; and relationships to other genres and sub-genres.This and all other volumes of the Encyclopedia are now available through an online version of the Encyclopedia: https://www.bloomsburypopularmusic.com/encyclopedia-work?docid=BPMreferenceEPMOW. A general search function for the whole Encyclopedia is also available on this site. A subscription is required to access individual entries. Please see: https://www.bloomsburypopularmusic.com/for-librarians.

This new book is an invaluable resource for specialists and non-specialists alike. With contributions from leading scholars of the field and covering a comprehensive range of genres and styles, it will be useful to anyone researching or just interested in the popular musics of the Middle East and North Africa. I will certainly be pointing my own students to this text!, No mere reference volume, this is a fascinating and engagingly written introduction to the incredibly rich variety of musical genres of the Middle East and North Africa, from folkloric Bedouin songs to the seamen's anthems of Kuwait to the working class sha'bi of Egypt. Especially impressive is the inclusion of varieties of music from regions often ignored or forgotten, including Azerbaijan, Armenia, and the Arabian Gulf. Learned yet accessible, it is an invaluable resource, and a truly great read.

David Horn was a founding editor of the journal Popular Music and a founding member of IASPM (The International Association for the Study of Popular Music). He was Director of the Institute of Popular Music at the University of Liverpool from 1988 until his retirement in 2002. Together with the blues scholar Paul Oliver he first proposed the idea of EPMOW in the 1980s, and has worked on the project since that time. John Shepherd is Vice-Provost and Associate Vice-President (Academic) and Chancellor’s Professor of Music and Sociology at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. He was from 2007-2012 Carleton’s Dean of Graduate and Postdoctoral Affairs. Dr. Shepherd has been a member of EPMOW’s editorial board since 1990. In 2000, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in recognition of his role “as a leading architect of a post-War critical musicology.”