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Music in Latin America and the Caribbean: An Encyclopedic History: Volume 1: Performing Beliefs: Indigenous Cultures of South America, Central America, and Mexico.

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Music in Latin America and the Caribbean: An Encyclopedic History: Volume 1: Performing Beliefs: Indigenous Cultures of South America, Central America, and Mexico. Edited by Malena Kuss. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2004. [xxx, 416 p. ISBN 0-292-70298-1. $60.] Index, bibliography, illustrations, music examples, compact discs.

Malena Kuss, musicologist and professor emeritus of the University of North Texas, has edited an informative volume that explores the role of music and worldviews of the indigenous peoples of Latin America. The editor notes that the initial volume of the series "focuses on the inextricable relationships between worldviews and musical behavior in current and relatively recent practices of indigenous groups" (p. xix). The work marks the first installment of a four-volume study of the music of Mexico, Central America, South America, and the Caribbean, the latter being excluded from this volume.

Symptomatic of an edited work with multiple contributors, the book contains chapters that vary significantly in scope, length, and method. While the central theme of the volume is not entirely cohesive, the diversity of the authors' approaches and backgrounds guarantees no privileging of a single perspective, and skillfully captures the complexities of the subject. Kuss argues that by "[adhering] to the principle that these [musical traditions] have to be studied...

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