Music Endangerment

In response to increased focus on the protection of intangible cultural heritage across the world Music Endangerment offers a new practical approach to assessing advocating and assisting the sustainability of musical genres. Drawing upon relevant ethnomusicological research on globalizationand musical diversity musical change music revivals and ecological models for sustainability author Catherine Grant systematically critiques strategies that are currently employed to support endangered musics. She then constructs a comparative framework between language and music adapting andapplying the measures of language endangerment as developed by UNESCO in order to identify ways in which language maintenance might (and might not) illuminate new pathways to keeping these musics strong. Grant''s work presents the first in-depth standardized replicable tool for gauging the levelof vitality of music genres providing an invaluable resource for the creation and maintenance of international cultural policy. It will enable those working in the field to effectively demonstrate the degree to which outside intervention could be of tangible benefit to communities whose musicalpractices are under threat. Significant for both its insight and its utility Music Endangerment is an important contribution to the growing field of applied ethnomusicology and will help secure the continued diversity of our global musical traditions.