Irving, D. R. m. Colonial Counterpoint: Music Early Modern Manila. New York: Oxford UP, 2010. ? + 394 pp.According D. R. M. Irving, Filipinos have traditionally summarized, in an ironic formula, 353 years of their country's history before finally becoming a Republic 1946 as hundred years a fifty years Hollywood, and three years a concentration camp (12). Irving takes reader on an impressively coalesced historical and ethnomusicological journey of Philippines, focusing primarily on country's hundred years a convent, particularly that of its most important city, Manila, a key strategic Imperial Spanish colony and center of communication between Spain and Asia. As largest Spanish-occupied territory region, archipelago's important geographic location created a milieu of musical transactions between Europe, Americas, China, and Japan during early modern period and beyond. To engage reader this discussion, Irving utilizes musical concept of counterpoint as 1) a metaphor for syncretism that eventually occurred throughout Philippines, 2) a colony that absorbed European dominant musical practices, 3) an assimilator of these practices its own music through study and documentation of Filipino musics by Spanish missionaries, and eventually 4) a Filipino conduit of Spanish Imperial and religious subversion.Drawing from Ferdinand de Saussure's and Claude Levi-Strauss's ideas of to explore creation of musical meaning within cultural and social contexts of early modern colonialism and globalization, and from Jacques Derrida's challenges the ideological assumptions and contradictions that are implicit early modern documentation of crucial and formative intercultural encounters, as well as Edward Said's contrapuntal analysis revealing distinct (and opposing) voices of elite and subaltern colonial societies (4-5), Irving connects process of socialization and religious conversion intricate idea of opposition inherently present musical counterpoint:Without we can have no high pitches or low pitches, no loud notes or soft notes, no fast speeds or slow speeds. Forget consonance and dissonance; never mind major and minor. All these qualities music can be defined only relation their antitheses. In similar terms, many cultures can only discover their own identity through or difference. (231)One of Irving's common threads throughout narrative of his book is conflation of various methodologies of historical musicology and ethnomusicology order properly assess musics, which suggests perhaps a step further, that is, that order truly understand various cultural productions, disciplines may exponentially benefit from true collaboration across fields. To Irving, counterpoint is not just a musical analogy, but a social phenomenon of colonialism. He asserts that a given society there are multiple voices, which function under rules imposed by, early modern period particular, a colonial imperial power.Irving divides his book into three main parts, each delineating a process of musical socialization and assimilation early modern Philippines. The first part (Chapters 1-2), Contrapuntal Cultures, characterizes Manila as a global city and key strategic point of musical transactions and intercultural exchange. This is particularly true of vast interactions of commerce and musical practices between Europe, Americas, and Asia through encounters of various ethnicities archipelago, such as Filipinos, Chinese, Spanish, and a lesser extent, Mexican and African diasporas, all of which not only created a complex system of social categories, but who also brought their musical practices (modes, rhythms, songs, instruments, and dances) with them. Similarly what happened colonies of Americas, music would become an important tool through which missionaries, by meticulous study of native musics and their assimilations European musical practices, converted population Catholicism. …