Ways of Voice: Vocal Striving and Moral Contestation in North India and Beyond. : (Matthew Rahaim. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2021, ISBN: 9780819579393)

Matthew Rahaim is an ethnomusicologist and accomplished Hindustani singer trained in the Gwalior tradition, and this monograph perfectly encompasses these two features of the author. Ways of Voice is compelling ethnomusicological scholarship about different styles of singing in North India, and at the same time is a detailed and technical analysis of the voice as used by Hindustani singers and its characteristics. Rahaim’s ways are more than vocal genres though. The Ways of Voice described in this volume are vocal dispositions, depicted as an interrelated system of technical vocal characteristics, audience participation, cultural meanings, and social context.