Abstract
Applying Karnatic Rhythmical Techniques to Western Music
by Rafael Reina. New York: Routledge, 2017; https://www.routledge.com/products/isbn/9781472451507
Rafael Reina’s goal with this book is extraordinarily ambitious: to provide a comprehensive guide to a rhythmic system that is not only innately complex but also completely alien to the worldview and experience of his audience. I admit experiencing a certain level of surprise, then, when I discovered that he achieved this goal without exception. Following a brief but skillful introduction, Reina provides a logical and perfectly organized series of examples and exercises that begin with the most basic foundations of the tala system. Twenty-five chapters later, the reader is prepared for the full application of South Indian Karnatic (sometimes spelled Carnatic) techniques to seven different Western pieces, including works by Messiaen, Stravinsky, Ligeti, and others. Especially when combined with the audio tracks and other resources (e.g., a Karnatic metronome) provided online, this book provides a complete and all-inclusive guide to the application of Karnatic rhythm techniques to Western music.
As more and more contemporary classical and jazz compositions incorporate Karnatic devices, a solid foundation in these concepts becomes less and less optional in a thorough conservatory education. This book is the first to establish a methodology for that training.
Whether used by an instructor behind the scenes to infuse a basic understanding of these concepts into a more general aural skills sequence or used as the sole textbook in a special topics course in Karnatic music, this book has the potential to dramatically influence the interpretation of complex contemporary classical and jazz music in the next generation of performers.
In addition to the bookshelves of theory/aural skills and studio performance faculty, this landmark volume also has the potential to become a vibrant new source of creative ideas for composers. It is an essential addition to the training of 21st-century musicians.
Director of bands and music education,
Wesley College,
Dover, Delaware;
Doc: The Story of a Birmingham Jazz Man
by Frank “Doc” Adams and Burgin Mathews. Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 2012; www.uapress.ua.edu
This delightful volume is a transcribed oral history about jazz clarinetist, saxophonist, music teacher, and bandleader Frank E. “Doc” Adams Sr. (1928–2014). The book’s coauthor is Burgin Mathews, a high school English teacher in Alabama who compiled and organized the text. Burgin’s interviews with Adams, a founding member of the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame, were taped in 2011. Interested readers can find substantial information about both coauthors on the Internet (see, e.g., http://www.bhamwiki.com/w/Frank_Adams).
This story of an important African-American musician was carefully compiled by Mathews, who taped many interviews and transferred them to written format for this book. The photographs are beautifully done.
Adams, whose parents were college graduates, earned a bachelor’s degree from Howard University in Washington, D.C., as well as a master’s from Samford University in Homewood, Alabama, and a doctorate in education at the University of Alabama. He spent many years as a teacher and performer. He was a true master—disciplined, sensitive, and highly intelligent. Adams even played as a substitute with Duke Ellington in his youth as well as with the famous black musician Sun Ra, a jazz composer, bandleader, piano and synthesizer player, and poet known for his experimental music.
The volume discusses integration, the civil rights movement, and Adams’s relationships with many musicians. Adams taught for more than forty years in the Birmingham Public Schools, twenty-seven of them at Lincoln School, which he attended, and where he later served as music supervisor. His love for teaching shines through the pages of this book, which serves equally as a fine volume for teachers, musicians, and the general reader. “Doc” did things right.
I found that I have much in common with this lifetime musician and highly recommend this book for the professional library of any music teacher, especially those who enjoy playing or teaching jazz.
Assistant professor of music, retired,
University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point;
Recently Published . . .
Valuing Music in Education: A Charles Fowler Reader
Edited with Critical Commentary by Craig Resta (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017);
bit.ly/ValuingMusicinEducation
“I was not satisfied as a teacher with merely passing on the culture. I wanted a role in creating it. The classroom is not just a place for learning about yesterday, but a laboratory for inventing tomorrow.” —Charles B. Fowler
Craig Resta, an associate professor of music education at Ohio’s Kent State University, has assembled a collection of writings by Charles Fowler, one of America’s prime advocates for arts education. Fowler, perhaps best known for the book Strong Arts, Strong Schools, devoted much of his forty-five-year career to promoting the idea that music was critical to the development of young people, and that music study had positive effects on both our schools and society. The book includes fifty articles from Musical America on music and arts education, along with contextual introductions by Resta providing importance and usefulness to current practice. Major sections are Music Pedagogy and Schooling; Advocacy and Arts Education Policy; Arts, Culture, and Community; Music Education and Professional Reform; and Diversity and Pluralism in Music Education.
These are timeless issues of creativity and culture in the classroom, school funding, reform and policy, assessment and pedagogy, and equality and pluralism in music education. The works are both research-based and practical, and helpful for many of the most fundamental concerns in school-based advocacy and scholarly inquiry today. These articles and commentary can also serve as concise and powerful advocacy pieces for teachers, administrators, schools boards, and community members alike. Valuing Music in Education is ideal for everyone who understands the vital role of music teaching and learning in schools and society.
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