…a very fascinating book that foregrounds, at this moment in time, music’s continued role in shaping societal identities and ways of belonging. It will be read widely and enthusiastically by a variety of scholars from various disciplines such as ethnomusicology, musicology, as well as linguistic and social anthropology.
...exceedingly well-researched… a major contribution to the study of the centuries-long history of successive settlements on the Kenya coast…and their integral connections to the Indian Ocean...
Guided by an “ethnographic ear” and a “willingness to listen,” Eisenberg manages to craft a writing style that speaks to a general readership and undergraduate students as well as specialists of Swahili studies, Indian Ocean studies, and music.
I urge you to read this wonderful book, whose contributions include...an ethnographically informed, hermeneutic approach to hybridization; and a welcome new framing of the concept of appropriation…
This insightful and rich study traces the genealogy of taarab, not simply as a transoceanic musical genre, but as a meaningful and integral dimension of Swahili identity and space, of uswahili itself.
This book provides a serious examination of Swahili hip-hop, and an important demonstration of how a study of music builds on and informs notions of identity. Eisenberg's insights are original and valuable.
A work of deep and sustained research, formidable both in its theoretical sophistication and historical depth, Sounds of Other Shores is a fabulously rich investigation of cosmopolitan acoustemology.
Eisenberg provides potent music histories that lie at the heart of a genre, invigorating the debates about Waswahili belonging and citizenship beginning before European colonization and proceeding to Kenya's post-colonial eras.