Reflecting the growing interest in popular music from the developing world, this unique book is the first to examine all major non-Western urban music styles, from increasingly familiar genres like reggae and salsa, to the lesser-known regional styles of Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, the Middle East, non-Western Europe (Greece, Yugoslavia, Portugal), Asia, and the Near East. Manuel establishes parameters that distinguish popular music from both folk and classical music, defining popular music as music created with the mass media in mind and reproduced on a large scale basis as a...

In "Cassette Culture, " Peter Manuel tells how a new mass medium the portable cassette player caused a major upheaval in popular culture in the world's second-largest country. The advent of cassette technology in the 1980s transformed India's popular music industry from the virtual monopoly of a single multinational LP manufacturer to a free-for-all among hundreds of local cassette producers. The result was a revolution in the quantity, quality, and variety of Indian popular music and its patterns of dissemination and consumption.
Manuel shows that the cassette revolution, however, has...

The contradance and quadrille, in their diverse forms, were the most popular, widespread, and important genres of creole Caribbean music and dance in the nineteenth century. This book explores this phenomenon with a pan-regional perspective. It features chapters that discuss the Spanish, French, and English-speaking Caribbean.

Today's popular tassa drumming emerged from the fragments of transplanted Indian music traditions half-forgotten and creatively recombined, rearticulated, and elaborated into a dynamic musical genre. A uniquely Indo-Trinidadian form, tassa drumming invites exploration of how the distinctive nature of the Indian diaspora and its relationship to its ancestral homeland influenced Indo-Caribbean music culture.
Music scholar Peter Manuel traces the roots of neotraditional music genres like tassa drumming to North India and reveals the ways these genres represent survivals, departures, or...

First published in 1995, Caribbean Currents has become the definitive guide to the distinctive musics of this region of the world. This third edition of the award-winning book is substantially updated and expanded, featuring thorough coverage of new developments, such as the global spread of reggaeton and bachata, the advent of music videos, the restructuring of the music industry, and the emergence of new dance styles. It also includes many new illustrations and links to accompanying video footage.
The authors succinctly and perceptively situate the musical styles and...

First published in 1995, Caribbean Currents has become the definitive guide to the distinctive musics of this region of the world. This third edition of the award-winning book is substantially updated and expanded, featuring thorough coverage of new developments, such as the global spread of reggaeton and bachata, the advent of music videos, the restructuring of the music industry, and the emergence of new dance styles. It also includes many new illustrations and links to accompanying video footage.
The authors succinctly and perceptively situate the musical styles and...