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his themes only superficially, and any one chaptermay well be worthy of expansion into an entiremonograph. Perhaps also due to space limitations,he relies on the reader having access to, or extensiveknowledge of, the songs. He rarely provides morethan a stanza or two from a song text, which mayprove frustrating for someone who is not familiarwith the genre. That said, he makes extensive useof notes and references. Life Flows On in EndlessSong is probably best used in conjunction with awell-stocked library, as it tantalizes the reader withmany thought-provoking starting points for furtherinvestigation.

E, BRADTKEVaughan Williams Memorial Library

Alejandro Aldekoa: Master of Pipe and TaborDance Music in the Basque Country

Sabin Bikandi. Occasional Papers Series, no. 18. Reno, NV:Genter for Basque Studies, University of Nevada, 2009. 314 pp. Music, Illus. Bibliog.

Index. Integral DVD. ISBN 978-1-877802-89-8. $34.95 (hbk). $29.95 (pbk).<http://basquebooks,myshopify,com/collections/occasional-papers-series/dvd>

This is a seriously good piece of work, and its title merely scratches the surface of itscontents. The central topic is the txistua, or txistu: the three-hole pipe, played to theaccompaniment of a tabor, that is an essential component of Basque music. The pipeand tabor tradition is widespread in Spain; the number of holes in the pipe varies fromregion to region, but the style of playing remains one-banded. The one-handed pipeis not unique to the Basques; the other major Iberian manifestation is the Jlabiol ofGatalonia, also played with a tabor, and of course in England we have our very ownwhittle and dub, familiar to morris dancers. However, the Basques have developed theuse of this instrument to a remarkable degree, and unlike in England (or Gatalonia,for that matter) the txistua is not necessarily a solo instrument and groups of themmay be played in harmony. The author, himself a Basque, goes into this developmentthoroughly, which should be no surprise since this book is his published PhD thesis.

Sabin Bikandi's approach centres on the life and work of a particularly noted traditionalplayer and teacher of music and dance, Alejandro Aldekoa, and in his introduction theauthor describes his methods, which are based on first-hand interviews. Bikandi himselfis a distinguished txistua player in his own right, but conservatory-trained. It appearsthat in recent decades the txistua has become accepted as an academic instrumentand a split has therefore appeared between tbe traditional and the classically trained

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players. For the former, the music and the dance remaininseparable, whereas for the latter they are distinctdisciplines. Aldekoa and Bikandi thus represent the twodifferent approaches to the instrument. To understand

t ^m^ I his subject, the author therefore had to immerse himself

^ K Ç ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ J ^ J in the dance in order to 'get inside' the traditional style,l ^ l ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ l ^ ^ ^ l and this involved attempting some form of dance

notation. In his introduction, the author describes hisdifficulties and his feelings while doing this, and there isan important resonance here for English readers becauseone may understand all the better Cecil Sharp's effortsin notating morris dancing.

This is a very dense book; its 314 pages arepacked with facts, figures, illustrations, and analysis.Nevertheless, it remains very readable, since the lump

is leavened with anecdotes which engage the reader, and it contains a useful glossaryof Basque terms. Of particular historical interest is how the music and dance survivedduring the Franco dictatorship, and how they remain an integral part of Basque culture.Also, for dance scholars, the two chapters detailing the dances and how they are taughtare illuminating. It is worth mentioning the enclosed DVD at this point, because thiscontains footage of the dances as well as the music. The agility of the high-kickingdancers is extraordinary.

The chapter on music theory completes the picture. Apart from giving a quicksummary of the various instruments used for Basque traditional music, there is alsopassing mention of competitive song improvisation, which cannot really be describedin a book but needs to be experienced at first hand; sensibly, there are some excellentexamples on the DVD. The bulk of the chapter is a highly technical analysis of the taborplaying and the txistua playing. The stress here is on how the musicians adapt the musicto fit the local dance variations so that the music always supports and never dictates tothe dancers. A sound knowledge of music is essential in order to understand this part,but it repays the effort. There are detailed examples showing the interaction between themusic and the dance steps. Bikandi then traces the changes that have happened to boththe tabor and the txistua in recent generations; for example, earlier txistuak did not followmodern equitempered pitch sounds. He also explains the fingering of the instrument toget full chromatic scales. This chapter alone is worthy of being a book in its own right.

Having enthused about the book, I do have a couple of quibbles. The US Englishshows an all-too-familiar culture/vocabulary problem, the most obvious and absurdexample being the translation of the Spanish ayuntamiento as 'town hall' or 'city hall'.The correct term is, of course, 'local council', since even small villages have their ownayuntamientos, though it should be noted that these have far more devolved power thanlocal councils in the UK, especially at the parish/village level. My second quibble is thatthere is little reference to one-handed or three-hole pipes outside the Basque tradition;some comparison with the Catalan and English forms would have been interesting anduseful. But they are quibbles, not major criticisms. This book, with its associated DVD,

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is a tour de force that seems destined to become a - if not the - definitive work onthe subject, and is essential reading for anyone interested in three-hole pipe music, orIberian folk music and dance at large.

SIMON FUREYSant Miquel de Fluvià, Catalonia, Spain

TED GIOIA

Work SongsTed Gioia. Durbam and London:

Duke University Press, 2006. xiii + 352 pp. Bibliog. Index. ISBN-0-8223-3726-6.

In tbe epilogue to Work Songs, Ted Gioia imagines afuture in which 'people's work would also [...] be theirsong, even when no music could be heard'. This bookis as mucb about labour as about music, striving to(re)unite tbe two through a combination of historicalresearch and polemic. Gioia's Utopian vision is infusedwith the values he associates with a pre-industrial past.Here, work was something dignified, however hard theconditions, and the songs of the workers - of farmers,sailors, and spinners - were unpolluted by the 'auraleffluvium of FM radio'. This romantic view of history,accompanied by a general distaste for modern popularculture, pervades the book as a whole. But Gioianever intended this to be a serious historical study,cheerfully disregarding chronological and geographicalboundaries (though with one ear always attuned to thecontemporary USA) as he sweeps the reader along in his enthusiasm and passion forthe subject. Work Songs is just one stage in the author's mission to reaffirm the power —indeed, the necessity - of music in everyday life. There is a companion volume. HealingSongs, with plans for a third, entitled Love Songs.

The definition of'work song' is broad, encompassing songs sung during labour; songsabout work; and songs composed, performed, or consumed in a work-related environment(from commercial advertising jingles to protest songs of tbe labour movement). Hisunwillingness to be too tightly constrained necessarily limits the insights Gioia is ableto offer into any one specific area. In particular, practices of singing whilst workingare given relatively little detailed analytical attention. However, the author makes noapologies for 'trying to construct the big picture'. Although there is limited new primaryhistorical research here, the synthesis of such an eclectic range of published materialsand recorded work songs into an accessible text is impressive. The referencing systemis unfortunately rather difficult to follow, with no numbered notes in the main text toalert the specialist reader to useful sources. The select discography of 'Recommended

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