Indian music and the West /

In the introduction to his fascinating book, Farrell (City Univ., London) states: "The story of Indian Music and the West is not simply about how Western musicians have used the elements of non-Western music to give piquancy to their own creations; rather it is about a wider issue--how one culture perceives and apprehends the other." The author includes well-documented details--from Hindustani airs to the Beatles--and some technical descriptions of various genres of Hindustani (North Indian) music. But he is at his best when he deals with the human processes of cultural contact. The British misunderstood the substance and the social context of India's music: they compromised it by using Western notation and censored sexual and religious texts in translation. A particularly interesting chapter deals with the influence of the gramophone in modifying the transportation, urbanization, performance, and consumption of music. Farrell's dominant English and North Indian viewpoint can be balanced somewhat by reading William J. Jackson's Ty~gar~ja: Life and Lyrics (1991). Both of these works have appeal not only for ethnomusicologists but for historians, cultural anthropologists, and in Farrell's case, fans of world music. Undergraduates through faculty; general audiences. T. T. Tuttle Cleveland State University