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This essay looks at London in the second half of the nineteenth century, when features of musical life associated with a capitalist economy and the consolidation of power of a wealthy industrial bourgeoisie became firmly established. Prominent among such features, which are all closely related to the rapid increase in urban populations, were the commercialization and professionalization of music, new markets for cultural goods, a growing rift between art and entertainment, and the bourgeoisie's struggle for cultural domination.

Understood as a search for "the abstract principles embodied in music and the sounds of which it consists,"l music theory casts a wide net: it calls for a comparative sample and insists on a systematic methodology. As "the scholarly study of music, wherever it is found historically or geographically," musicology casts an even wider net. In practice, however, it has not been possible to transcend historical and geographical boundaries. (How often have you read an article on contemporary rock in JAMS or on Asian music in 19th-Century Music?) Obviously, any attempt to explore the juncture between music theory and music history-my particular brief from the editors of Current Musicology will not get very far on definitions alone. Are not disciplinary boundaries convenient tags sanctioned by a certain distribution of economic, political, and intellectual power? Better, then, to focus on what some theorists and some historians do than to dwell abstractly on the purviews of music theory and music history. Agawu asks these questions and more as he explains the relationship between musicology and music theory.

African music is an epitome of the rich cultural heritage of the African people. This esteemed cultural heritage evident in the unique music genre found in the diverse ethnic societies in Africa must be celebrated, promoted and preserved to posterity. African music festival is one of the viable avenues of showing the culture and unity of Africans. This short commentary discusses the unique characteristics of African music, its status quo in the minds of the youth, and how music festivals such as the Aswan music festival can help ignite the love and passion for African music, educate the youth about the Afircan music heritage as well as help promote and preserve the rich cultural heritage of the African content. It argues that if African governments as well as private and public agencies assist in funding music festivals, it would help promote African music in global music industry and immortalize the rich cultural heritage of the African people.

Focusing on the growth of China's ancient music education thought, this article discusses the social function of ancient music education thought and its influence and inspiration on modern music aesthetic education, and reflects on the advantages and disadvantages of modern music education, so as to put forward some suggestions for the growth of music education in China.

The essay explores some recent controversies in British music copyright through the evolving technologies used to perform or play music in the courtroom. Whilst the conceptual tension between cases has caused doctrinal anxiety about the effect of popular music in copyright, the essay contends that the recent stream of music copyright cases can be considered from a historical perspective, taking into account the tools, materials and experts as they featured in court. In doing so, the essay connects a history of legal expertise to the emergence of new technologies whilst arguing that legal knowledge about music copyright was, in fact, stabilized in the courtroom.

Hubertus Siegert's impressionistic documentary, Berlin Babylon, illuminates the demolition and urban renewal of Berlin during the mid-late 1990s. This was a critical phase in the city's history, as it prepared, amidst a flurry of excitement and anticipation, to become the united Germany's seat of power. Siegert's film seeks to give pause for thought, but deliberately eschews a "voice of god" voiceover, opting instead for a poetic audiovisual montage. This includes shots of the cityscape (and its lacunae), archival footage documenting the wartime devastation and subsequent dynamiting of buildings, observational cinema of the city's busy building sites, and of verbal snippets from various architects, developers and politicians––following the film title's cue, the agents in a rerun of the construction of the Tower of Babel––as well as epigraphs from the Bible and Walter Benjamin, and a prominent soundscape and musical score. As this article will demonstrate, the film's (mostly) sombre soundtrack plays a critical role here, commenting on the footage, and beyond that on the whole project of the new 'Berlin Republic' and its attitude to architectural heritage and twentieth century history. Re-figuring the theme of this volume, Berlin Babylon's music is a form of writing about (collapsing, old) architecture and history. And yet, the soundtrack is not as unambiguous as a voiceover might have been, and thereby allows creative space for the audience's interpretation, a matter that was very important to the film's director. This article will focus, in particular, on three elements: the use (and treatment) of historical recordings in the film; the use of silence; and finally the way in which tracks from the Berlin band Einstürzende Neubauten use music, noise and text to comment on the project of the new Berlin.

Local brass bands have become an indispensable factor in weddings, processions, rituals of birth or death, at Christmas and New Year festivities in many parts of the globe. Remains of European brass bands are widely distributed throughout Africa, India, Indonesia, Latin America, and the Caribbean. )ese bands are of both military and missionary origin. They are an important component of the nineteenth and early twentieth-century colonial expressive culture. Despite their uniqueness and widespread presence across the world, brass bands have received limited attention in Ghana. )is paper aims to address this lack by offering a comprehensive account of the contemporary situation of brass band music in Ghana. I trace the history of this musical world and explore the diverse ways military and missionary activities have shaped amateur brass band musical activities in Ghana. I discuss the distribution and band formations across Ghana, viewing it in five sections that detail different types of brass bands; church, town, service, school and "sharbo" bands. I continue by looking at the beginning, development, workings and indigenisation of European military music in local popular culture and provide an account of brass band music as observed in Ghana today. I argue that indigenisation is not a straightforward process of adaptation, rather, indigenisation is a process of ongoing aesthetic tensions and differences resulting in new musical forms and new forms of socialisation organised around musical performance.

Qualitative research has provided a home for innovative approaches to collecting, analyzing, and representing data (Hesse - Biber & Leavy, 2006; Janesick, 2011; Ketelle, 2010). Reflexive journaling, photography and photo elicitation, poetry, video representations, dramatic enactments, visual presentations, and play - writing are but a few of the creative techniques embraced by qualitative researchers in search of ways to help their audiences move beyond reading and into experiencing the data (Collier, 2001; Deacon, 2006). These formats have opened doors to re - inventions of traditional thick, rich descriptions and provided living, intentional metaphors through which a reader can filter data via their own emotional, cognitive, spiritual, and scholarly lenses. Music, however, is one area that has been minimally used as an approach to mining and re/presenting data. This piece explores the use of music in a qualitative research project. My intention is to initiate a conversation on how music can capture both participant and researcher experiences in a way that naturally challenges words, thoughts, reactions, and assumption.