[audiobook] Music of Latin America and the Caribbean by Mark Brill at Arts-Photography

Review

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful. Information dense but not illuminatingBy verboseThe book provides a lot of information. but tries to cover far too much in a limited space. The information is not well organized; for instance. the author talks about two meanings of the term "montuno" without providing any context. and then talks about the genre "son montuno" (where the meanings finally get contextualized) several pages later. The entire book is full of such poorly organized bits of information.The author tries to both provide musical analyses of prevalent genres. and present their history. But since the history often depends on information that has not yet been provided. the book is full of statements like "this is discussed further in Chapter 6". If you tell me that Mexican "son" derives from Cuban "son". but what Cuban son itself is like isnt discussed until another chapter. then that is a mere factoid to be remembered. not a meaningful piece of information. This makes the book information-dense while not being illuminating.Considering the price of the book. its shocking that CDs arent included with it; they have to be purchased separately. and are about as expensive as the book. Also. the illustrations are all greyscale--no color pictures at all. The paper quality is poor. The book is ridiculously overpriced for the production values.The illustrations are also insufficient. To be told what a cuatro looks like is not nearly as helpful as being shown a good. color picture of one. Considering that the author names dozens of instruments on practically every page. this again makes the book information heavy while not being actually useful for understanding the subject.It is clear that the author is an expert on the subject. and he is good at providing social context. But the sheer amount of information (names of instruments. names of performers. names of related genres. etc) presented in unhelpful fashion. without illustrations or musical examples alongside. makes this book a slog and not enjoyable.1 of 1 people found the following review helpful. Two StarsBy marioToo ambitious. It is not a music text neither a cultural text on Latin America1 of 2 people found the following review helpful. Informative but episodic at the same time.By Jack B.Last semester. I took a class called Latin American Music and Culture. This was the required text book. I was excited to take the class and was ready to learn a bunch. but I have to say that I didnt walk away from the class with much more than a greater general knowledge of the subject. I think it may have been the teachers horrible instruction more than the book. but I found the book to be very episodic and boring. Sure. I now know a lot about music styles and dances of Latin America. but I didnt get the excitement or flavor of the culture out of the book. There was nothing in the book that inspired you to want to keep reading. but rather it felt like reading a collection of Wikipedia articles. I can tell that a great deal of effort was put into writing the book. so I respect that but I just didnt get any life out of it. I think the instructor is also responsible for breathing life into the subject. but given that he was an ego maniac who would go off on random tangents. that just didnt happen for me.P.S. As a side note. dont waste your money purchasing the CD. you can find all the songs on youtube. ALSO the one thing I really liked about the book were the music suggestions! It opened my eyes and ears to some great music. The one really cool section of the book.I give it four stars because objectively speaking. its very informative and will tell you a good deal about the subject. but when it comes to interest level. the book wasnt able to hold mine.