Anthropology
"Bright Balkan Morning is an excellent, original, and accessible
multimedia text. The research is meticulous and humane, the people come alive in vivid photos and interviews, the music is wonderful, and the overall message is upbeat: the Cocacolonization of the world need not result in splintered ethnicities, reactionary terrorism and/or dull passive homogenization. Instead, creative people, as they always have during times when diverse people come together, can create novel syntheses that point the way towards a bright future.
I have assigned this book in a joint graduate/undergraduate class on cultural ecology (treating"other" cultures as an environmental stress and music as an adaptive response) and expect that students will respond to its generosity of spirit and ethnographic liveliness with enthusiasm. Music, for most of my students, is the only remaining creative activity they can understand,aside from computer graphics and comics. Bright Balkan Morning manages to get past their anti-literacy."
Professor Robert K. Dentan
SUNY Buffalo