Scarecrow Press
Pages: 236
Trim: 6⅜ x 9½
978-0-8108-6737-6 • Hardback /Audio disc • June 2010 • $125.00 • (£96.00)
Dimitrije O. Golemovic is professor of ethnomusicology at the Faculty of Music in Belgrade and author of Folk Music of the Podrinje Region (1987).
Whatever its contents, this book would be worthy of note simply because it has been published in English...Dimitrije Golemovic's study opens up a world that, while it will have fascinated many, will also have frustrated many who have no access to publications in Serbian and related languages. It is a greatly revised translation of the author’s study published in Serbian in 2000. But the book is much more than merely worthy of note:Golemovic´s many years of research enable him to deal with a hugely important topic—the meaning, context and realization of the refrain in Balkan song—in magisterial fashion....This extremely valuable contribution to the field of Balkan song is accompanied by a very useful compact disc containing no fewer than sixty-three excerpts, all of which are indicated in the text, and which, in conjunction with the extensive selection of music examples, make this book a seminal contribution to the field. The author’s writing style is fluid and engaging; the few examples of “translationese” merely serve to emphasize the remarkably high quality of the translation by Milos Zlatkalik of the Serbian first edition.
— Notes: Quarterly Journal of the Music Library Association