World Music: The Rough Guide Africa, Europe and the Middle East ed. Mark Ellingham, Orla Duane, and Vanessa Dowell 1999, Penguin Books New York, New York

Since the first caveman shouted or whacked something with his club simply for the pleasure of the sounds it made, music has been with us. Indigenous music is one of the key factors that define our social groups. We use it to distinguish one tribe from another, one region from another and even one generation from another. Because of this, music is as varied as the peoples who have lived on this planet. This book, which is the first of a two volume set, attempts "to document and explain the popular, folk and (excluding the Western canon) classical music traditions around the globe". Even though this volume restricts itself to a mere two continents, its task is Herculean -- and doomed to failure, at least in a book with a scant 762 pages. Still, despite the book's oversights and omissions, the authors have made one hell of a stab at it.

The best way to approach a collection like this is to pick it up and flip it open to somewhere in the middle and start reading.

Ah, we've landed in Iran. Here we find a brief history of the evolution of classical Iranian music (which for the curious was almost exclusively heard in the royal courts of the Qujar monarchs until the introduction of radio), a glossary of its unique instruments and a guide on how to listen to the music. While this last part may sound a little obvious, it is intended as a crash course in Iranian music appreciation. For those who have never had such a class, I encourage you to take one. Through classes I took in college, I found a world of previously-undiscovered delight in Western classical music, and although I was indifferent to jazz before that class, it now makes up a large portion of my music collection.

Following the "appreciation" information comes the most important part: a discography with which to begin your exploration. Each discography includes brief biographies of some of the major artists of a region, along with one or two of their major works. Record label information, as well as the formats in which the music is available, will aid you in tracking down the music that interests you. Especially handy are the handful of selections that they recommend starting out with. This style of presentation creates a doorway into even the most foreign music.

Flipping through the rest of the book, you'll find many names, such as Ofra Haza, that you recognize but know little about. This sort of random reading makes this volume a treasure.

My one criticism of the book is its somewhat arbitrary definition of what constitutes world music. The Pogues show up in the Irish listing, while Cornershop shows up for England, but I would hesitate to label either band as "world" music despite the fact that both borrow from local musical tradition. Other bands, such as the Cure or Kraftwerk, whom I consider quintessential English and German bands, are omitted entirely, leaving me somewhat confused as to what criteria were used in the decision-making process. Then again, the female choir Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares was listed as one of the key artists of Bulgaria -- a notion which I wholeheartedly support -- so they are at least on the right track.

All in all, the authors have done a marvelous job with an impossible task. For anyone who has ever been interested in music from other lands, I cannot imagine a better place to start. As a bonus, the book also comes with a CD to start out with, but as it was not included in our review materials, I cannot comment on it.

(Editor's Note: Splendid has also reviewed a number of volumes in the Rough Guide CD series. These typically focus on a specific country, region or style. You can find many of them in our Compilation Review index.)

Reviewed by Ron Davies