Last night I planned to read this book for just a few minutes before going to sleep. Hours later, instead of sleeping I was transformed into the world of the Balkan Roma musicians and their incredible culture! I simply couldn't put this amazing book down. I love the stories and interviews with the old musicians, the informative history of the Roma people and their culture, the full-of-life photos, and the CD with soundscapes. All these pieces combine to give the reader a great view of a people and their heritage, and one that has been largely overlooked in the past. I found the work ethic of the musicians described in this book to be very inspirational. To be able to play all kinds of requests for days on end is really something to admire. Musicians of any genre could learn a whole lot from reading about the musicians in this book. Years ago, these authors turned me on to the subculture of polka in the USA (and made a polkaholic out of me) with their super "Polka Happiness" book. They have clearly done it again - informed the world about an incredibly rich culture that was largely hidden from view.

This book responds to my interest in the social context of folk music and dance. The focus was on the lives of the people who make the music, in this case the Roma of Jumaya (Iriklia) in Greek Macedonia. The writers give you quite a rounded view, describing how the music is performed, at what kinds of events, how people relate to the music and each other, how the musicians see themselves and their occupation and how making a living as a Roma musician fits into Greek society. There is also a strong sense of history and how things have changed over time in many ways - the history of Roma in Greece and other Balkan countries, the specific history of Roma in Jumaya, and the stories of individual musicians and their families. The consistently positive way that the writers approach their subject is also refreshing - they describe how Roma have used music to survive and, in some cases, prosper, and how in doing so they have contributed to the multi-layered fabric of Greek-Macedonian ethnic identities.

What is especially interesting to me is the authors' view of how multi-ethnic society works in Greek Macedonia as compared to Bulgaria or Former Yugoslavia, and how the strategy of Roma musicians is different in these different countries. In Greek Macedonia the musicians play the music of all ethnic groups in order to maximize their flexibility and income. During multi-ethnic celebrations the musicians follow a strict policy of playing everyone's requests in the order requested, so that no one feels that they have priority. There is a fascinating description of an ethnically mixed wedding where the families have to adjust their various wedding traditions to accommodate each other, making it up as they go along to some extent.

The authors compare and contrast this with the approach taken by Roma musicians in other areas of the Balkans. In Kosovo in the 1980s the Roma musicians are said to have purposely selected music from traditions from other than Serbian and Albanian in order to avoid conflicts. In Bulgaria the wedding band tradition is described as leading to a new pan-Balkan "fusion" style which borrows from many cultures but still feels Bulgarian. Ultimately the motivation behind each strategy is the need of musicians to make a living.

The book is interesting reading from a North American perspective as well. Keil contrasts the multi-ethnic consciousness of Greeks, where the same person may have several types of ethnic and national identities simultaneously, with the concept of "multiculturalism" which he describes as slices of a pizza in which there are lots of ethnicities but everyone is either one thing or another. This raise the question of what is really going on in such immigrant nations as Canada and the United States.

The accompanying CD is a potpourri of sounds, including music of various types, and there is a section of the book describing the contents of the CD. Some of the track titles are Market Day in Jumaya, Afternoon at a Mahala Café, At Home in the Mahala, New Year's Party in Serres, Taverna Party at Nikisiani. The combination of the text, the many high quality black and white photos and the soundscape are successful in putting you into the experience, as much as this is possible. There was also a nice balance between Angeliki Keil's straight-forward and very readable reporting of the lives of the musicians and Charles Keil's more theoretical musings about ethnicity, the music and the role of the musicians. My only complaint about the book is its weight - it's printed on very heavy, glossy stock, no doubt adding to the quality of photographic reproductions, but it is so big and heavy that you pretty well have to read it sitting up. An alternate title could be, "Your Big Fat Roma Music Book."

When you get Bright Balkan Morning you are likely to open it up and then leaf through it, looking at the photographs. After a few minutes of this you'll remove the CD from the inside back cover and put it on. Then you continue looking at the photos while listening to the sounds.

That in itself is a rich and satisfying experience. But don't stop there. Read the text!

It tells of Roma (aka Gypsy) musicians who have cornered the market on live music in polyglot Greek Macedonia. While they are at the bottom of the social order, anyone who wishes a proper wedding, festival, or party of any kind hires these musicians. The musicians generally perform in trios, one playing a bass drum while the other two play the zurna - a double-reed woodwind found throughout Eurasia and Africa. Their repertoire is drawn from the peoples who live in the area, or passed through at one time, and is sometimes more Oriental, sometimes more European - whatever the customer wants.

Keil and Keil give detailed accounts of several performances - a baptism, a wedding, and a saint's day festival - tell the life stories of a dozen or so musicians & family, and recount the broad history of the Roma in the Mediterranean as well as presenting a more focused account of their sojourn in Greek Macedonia. Blau's photographs range from intimate portraits, to dancers in full party whirl, through street scenes jumbled or measured, to serene landscapes. Some of his shots are so strikingly composed - the cover image, for example - that the effect is both subjective (Blau's aesthetic) and objective (we're looking at things, out there, in the world). Steven Feld's soundscapes give us the living flow of sound. Not only do we hear the twin zurnas flying through drum rhythms, but dancing feet, shouts of joy and exertion, motors churning, sheep braying, and Stevie Wonder piped in through a tinny sound system.

Bright Balkan Morning is a milestone. See it, hear it, read it. Take pleasure in it.

This is the second most important book that's been written on American popular music. Keil sees blues culture as medicine for the ills of Western Civilization. After introductory chapters on African-American music (in which he makes some remarks on Baraka's Blues People), and blues styles, Keil begins discussing the urban blues, blues played with electric instruments and played in clubs in cities. He has studies of B. B. King and Bobby Blue Bland, plus remarks on many other bluesman. How do they structure a performance? How do they interact with the audience? What are the values upheld in the blues world?

Unfortunately, most people who actually know something about RnR and RnB are too old to look like they do to younger readers who think Buddy Guy is first generation. Most thirtysomethings (or fortysomethings) think rock is rock 'n roll and rock 'n roll is rhythm and blues and rhythm and blues is blues.

Today, the actual people who created modern urban blues forms are unknown to young rock revisionists. But they weren't unknown to Charles Keil. He traces and authoritatively compares the various styles of blues, showing that the electric forms that led to rock were as important and significant as the blues music put out in the twenties and thirties.

Duh, you say. Well when this book was written, there were no books on the subject of modern (1950s-1960s) blues around. Especially none written for a black or knowledgable white audience. This is the book that started the black-oriented musical criticism necessary to understand the main tap root to rock 'n roll.

Although the first of its kind, it still remains fresh with very little material the would need updating today. When I got my copy in the mid sixties, I stopped everything and read it cover to cover underlining all the important parts. As I say, Urban Blues was the first and still one of the few to get it right. Bedrock.

This is a very interesting book, fascinating in the places it takes you. Still I think the authors are overly self-conscious, and that gets in the way. They make no bones about being political, even sometimes feel guilty about it. Plus in an effort to avoid Eurocentricism, they have Europhobic blind spots. Too much they are concerned about categorizing about 'uptown' vs. 'downtown' and being partisian about it.

Still, it is a great book to read because of the issues it raises and makes you think about.

And it is great to read about a Papuan New Guineau tribe's encounter with the performance of Nefertiti by the Papuans.

Excellent scholarly book on polka music, concentrating predominantly on the Polish style, although one chapter is devoted to the Slovenian-American-style. This book along with Victor Green's "A Passion for Polka" mark two MUST READS for any serious polka aficianado/scholar.