MOTHER'S DAY SPECIALS! SHOW ME MORE
Heather Sparling is Professor of ethnomusicology and the Canada Research Chair in Musical Traditions at Cape Breton University in Canada.
The book draws attention to an interesting phenomenon which certainly invites further study and alternative approaches. The corpus itself is a fascinating collection, and the website is an essential complement to the book (although it is rarely mentioned there). Sparling certainly offers answers to the questions she sets herself in terms of the significance of disaster songs as social and cultural responses to tragic death and contemporary death culture, how they arise and develop, the differential identities and motivations of those who compose them, the relationship of newer disaster songs to the musical history of the region and its influences, and the impact of media technologies on this phenomenon. Those interested will want to read this book and see if they agree. - Julia C. Bishop (University of Sheffield) for the Folk Music Journal
