Please join us for a book party to celebrate the publication of two new music titles by Yale ethnomusicologists Michael Veal and Sarah Weiss. In Dub: Soundscapes and Shattered Songs in Jamaican Reggae, Michael Veal chronicles dub’s development and offers the first thorough analysis of the music itself. Moreover, he examines dub’s social significance in Jamaican culture and explores the “dub revolution” that has crossed musical and cultural boundaries for over thirty years, influencing a wide variety of musical genres around the globe. Paul Gilroy notes, ”Veal’s wise volume has rescued Reggae music at last from the tentacles of exoticism. This is a glorious affirmation of dub’s rebel, Creole spirit.”
Sarah Weiss’s new book is Earlier Java: Aesthetics, Gender and the Music of Wayang in Central Java. This study is the first large-scale treatment of gender issues in Indonesian music. Integrating the analysis of gender and music with that of aesthetics, this study of the musical synergy between the puppeteer and his female accompanist describes the ways in which shifting gender constructions have helped to shape and change Central Javanese music and theatre performance practice while throwing new light on the history of Javanese gender relations and culture, as well as on the aesthetics of Central Javanese shadow-puppet theatre.