Music Appreciation: Histories and Cultures

Music Appreciation: Histories and Cultures is an introductory text that covers even-handedly and engagingly the subject of music from across the spectrum of the Popular, World, and Western Classical traditions. The authors began this project after realizing that even though one (Keister) is an ethnomusicologist, and the other (Smith) is a musicologist, they share a personal and professional relationship with music of the Popular tradition, as both performed music of
this style, especially in their college and pre-college years (the 1970-80s), and both remain devoted fans of the style and its cultural heritage—particularly the contributions of women, artists of color, and those of the LGBTQ communities. Both authors have since published on the topic of rock and related styles, beginning with a co-authored article that appeared in Popular Music. The idea behind the current text was to combine all three of their passions, along with
their nearly sixty years of combined experience teaching introductory courses in World Music, Music Appreciation, and Popular Music to non-music majors.

Music Appreciation begins with a study of musical fundamentals, which is designed to encourage active and engaged listening. Here, as throughout, the text leaves hasty judgments aside, embraces the familiar, and encourages discovery. After hearing a descending scale in the well-known “Joy to the World” carol, for example, students are led to discover the special disjunct quality of Chris Isaac’s expressive leap up a fifth in his passionately haunting “Wicked Game.” Similarly, after encountering the famous ostinato of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony the text turns to a much less overt, deceptively simple, and downright sinister use of the same type of hythmic device in “Every Step You Take” by the Police.

Rather than take a uniform approach to each subsequent unit, Music Appreciation treats each style on its own terms and follows only those paths that lead to discovery and enrichment. In the Western Classical unit, for example, the authors not only trace styles and developments that mark points of change, they also show how cultural forces, as well as technical advancements of all kinds, encouraged musicians, mainly of the underclass, to champion innovation as they negotiated and often overcame the confines of various elitist systems of patronage. In the World Music section, students learn a way of thinking about musical fundamentals free of Western biases and discover how complex traditions have evolved out of Asian, African, Latin American, and Indigenous cultural contexts, many without relying on written notation.

Finally, in the Popular Music section the text delves deeply into, as it champions, the great achievements of popular music in its many forms from the late 19th century to the present. Chapters on roots, jazz, rock, and soul trace how cultural values and technological innovations have led to the development of music that has transformed popular culture, bringing the spirit of discovery to the familiar that spurred the project on in the first place. This text was designed for courses that range from large lecture, small classroom, and asynchronous environments, where it has been used and tested for over ten years. It is currently being taught to over 2,000 students per year at the University of Colorado Boulder.