This beautiful and informative book offers a detailed introduction to the musical heritage of Central Asia for readers and listeners worldwide. Music of Central Asia balances "insider" and "outsider" perspectives with contributions by 27 authors from 14 countries. A companion website (www.musicofcentralasia.org) provides access to some 189 audio and video examples, listening guides and study questions, and transliterations and translations of the performed texts. This generously illustrated book is supplemented with boxes and sidebars, musician profiles, and an illustrated glossary of musical instruments, making it an indispensable resource for both general readers and specialists. In addition, the enhanced ebook edition, which is so comprehensive it had to be split into two ebooks, contains 180 audio and video examples of Central Asian music and culture. A follow-along feature highlights the song lyrics in the text, as the audio samples play.

Theodore Levin is Arthur R. Virgin Professor of Music at Dartmouth College and Senior Project Consultant to the Aga Khan Music Initiative. He is the author of Where Rivers and Mountains Sing: Sound, Music, and Nomadism in Tuva and Beyond (IUP, 2006) and The Hundred Thousand Fools of God: Musical Travels in Central Asia (and Queens, New York) (IUP, 1996).

Saida Daukeyeva is a Georg Forster Research Fellow (HERMES) at Humboldt University in Berlin. She is author of Philosophy of Music by Abu Nasr Muhammad al-Farabi.

Elmira Köchümkulova is Senior Research Fellow at the University of Central Asia in Bishkek. She is author of Respect Graces the Living, Lamentation Graces the Dead: Kyrgyz Funeral Lamentations (in Kyrgyz), and Kyrgyz Herders of Soviet Uzbekistan: Historical and Ethnographic Narratives (in Kyrgyz and English).