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About the Book

Women Singers in Global Contexts: Music, Biography, and Identity

In Women Singers in Global Contexts, the biographical and poetic narratives demonstrate how the act of singing embodies dynamics of representation, power, agency, activism, and risk-taking.

Engaging with performance practice, politics, and constructions of gender through vocality and vocal aesthetics, this collection offers valuable insights into the experiences of specific women singers in a range of sociocultural contexts. Contributors trace themes and threads that include childhood, families, motherhood, migration, fame, training, transmission, technology, and the interface of private lives and public identities.

The book is the first collection of primarily ethnographic work to concentrate solely on individual women singers. Singing takes on a distinctive role in each woman's life, and the women profiled include a locally known community singer, an internationally renowned priestess, a professional wedding singer, and a national star.

Essays range across musical genres encompassing jazz, rap, traditional, folk, devotional, and classical, and the collection's geographical range encompasses Afghanistan, Australia, Canada, Cuba, Cyprus, Germany, Iran, Japan, Mexico, Poland, South Africa, Torres Strait Islands, Turkey, and the United States.

Contributors are Shino Arisawa, Katelyn Barney, Gay Breyley, Nicoletta Demetriou, Veronica Doubleday, Ruth Hellier, Ellen Koskoff, Carol Muller, Thomas Solomon, Amanda Villepastour, and Louise Wrazen.

"An ambitious collection of essays on women singers by leading scholars in ethnomusicology and related fields. The volume will be welcomed by students of a variety of disciplines including ethnomusicology and women's studies." —Anne K. Rasmussen, author of Women, the Recited Qur'an, and Islamic Music in Indonesia

Authors Carol Muller, Ruth Hellier, Amanda Villepastour and Louise Wrazen, November 2012

Authors Carol Muller, Ruth Hellier, Amanda Villepastour and Louise Wrazen, November 2012


Authors Ellen Koskoff and Ruth Hellier, November 2012

Authors Ellen Koskoff and Ruth Hellier, November 2012


University of Illinois Press Senior Editor Laurie Matheson with volume editor Ruth Hellier, November 2012


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