The Oxford Handbook of Music Revival - Paperback

by Caroline Bithell (Editor), Juniper Hill (Editor)

Revival movements aim to revitalize traditions perceived as threatened or moribund by adapting them to new temporal, spatial, and social contexts. While many of these movements have been well-documented in Western Europe and North America, those occurring and recurring elsewhere in the world have received little or no attention. Particularly under-analyzed are the aftermaths of revivals: the new infrastructures, musical styles, performance practices, subcultural communities, and value systems that grow out of these movements.

The Oxford Handbook of Music Revival fills this gap, and helps us achieve a deeper understanding of how and why musical pasts are reimagined and transfigured in modern-day postindustrial, postcolonial, and postwar contexts. The book's thirty chapters present innovative theoretical perspectives illustrated through new ethnographic case studies on diverse music and dance cultures around the world. Together these essays reveal the potency of acts of revival, resurgence, restoration, and renewal in shaping musical landscapes and transforming social experience. The book makes a powerful argument for the untapped potential of revival as a productive analytical tool in contemporary, global contexts. With its detailed treatment of authenticity, recontextualization, transmission, institutionalization, globalization, the significance of history, and other key concerns, the collection engages with critical issues far beyond the field of revival studies and is crucial for understanding contemporary manifestations of folk, traditional, and heritage music in today's postmodern cosmopolitan societies.

Author Biography

Caroline Bithell is Senior Lecturer in Ethnomusicology at the University of Manchester, UK. Her work on Corsican music has appeared across a range of edited volumes and journals. Her first monograph, Transported by Song: Corsican Voices from Oral Tradition to World Stage, was published by Scarecrow Press (2007). Her edited collection, The Past in Music, appeared as a special issue of the journal Ethnomusicology Forum (2007). Her new monograph, A Different Voice, A Different Song: Reclaiming Community through the Natural Voice and World Song, is published by Oxford University Press (2014). Her current research focuses on Georgian polyphony, intangible cultural heritage, and cultural tourism.

Juniper Hill is Lecturer in Music at University College Cork, Ireland, and Research Associate at the University of Cambridge, UK. The recipient of two Fulbright Fellowships, a Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship, an Alexander Von Humboldt Fellowship, and a University of California Faculty Fellowship, she has conducted fieldwork in Finland, South Africa, the United States, and Ecuador. She has published in the journals Ethnomusicology, Ethnomusicology Forum, Musiikin Suunta, Pacific Review of Ethnomusicology, Revue de Musicologie, and Yearbook for Traditional Music as well as in edited volumes such as Musical Imaginations (OUP 2012). Her monograph Becoming Creative: Insights from Musicians in a Diverse World is forthcoming from Oxford University Press.