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Caribbean, Latin & Latin American
A Day for the Hunter, A Day for the Prey: Popular Music and Power in Haiti
Gage Averill
University of Chicago Press, 1997, ISBN#: 0-226-03292-2
paperbound, 276 pages, a few B&W illus.
History. Part of the excellent Chicago Studies in Ethnomusicology series edited by Philip V. Bohlman and Bruno Nettl. Averill walks a thin line between an enthusiast and an ethnomusicologist - and does a good job. Book is loaded with band histories with the emphasis on politics and a song's brokering of power between the artist, government and audience. Enjoyable and readable - chock full of great lyrics and everyday sayings. Essential as no similar book is available in English. Cursory, disappointing discography.
The Brazilian Sound
Chris McGowan, Ricardo
Pessanha
Billboard Books / Watson Guptill, 1991. ISBN#:
0-8230-7673-3
paperbound, 215 pages, B&W illus., $19.
History. Fave. By a nose, the best one to buy. There are also two
prose books to have a look at - Samba (Alma
Guillermoprieto, Vintage, 1993), the most readable book on Carnival and
samba - good fun and a serious socio-political tract! Also, Why
Is This Country Dancing (John Krich, Touchstone, 1993), a talky
walkabout by a snotty NY guy who is funny a third of the time.
Essays on Cuban Music
Manuel, Peter
University
Press of America, 1991. ISBN#: 0-8191-8430-6
hardbound.
History. Peter does good work - one of the few books in English on folk
and popular music from Cuba. Both Cuban and American writers.
Guinness Who's Who of Reggae
Colin Larkin
Guinness
(UK), 1994. ISBN#: 0-85112-734-7
paperbound, 315 pages, £ 14.
Reference. Just about all there is, organized by artists. Not easy to
use for factchecking, but good histories are; the re-published
Reggae Bloodlines: In Search of the Music and Culture of
Jamaica (Stephen Davis, Peter Simon, Da Capo Press, 1992) and
the OP, Jah Music (Sebastian Clarke, HEB, UK, 1981).
Kaiso! The Trinidad Calypso
Keith Q. Warner
Three Continents Press (UK),
1982. ISBN#: 0-435-98790-9
paperbound, 152 pages, B&W illus.,
£4.
History. Fave. One of the first books out on Calypso - a
rambling heap oĶinfo, no index, lots of lyrics. Intro. by Slinger
Francisco (the Mighty Sparrow). In the '90's a spate of similar books
appeared, all shunning soca and concentrating on the historical, early
calypso. All are about equal: Calypso Calaloo: Early Carnival
Music in Trinidad (Donald R. Hill, University Press of Florida,
1993), Calypso & Society in Pre-Independence Trinidad
(Gordon Rohlelr, self published, 1990) and Carnival Canboulay and
Calypso (John Cowley, Cambridge U. Press, 1996).
Latin Tinge
John Storm Roberts
Original Music,
1985. ISBN#: 0-9614458-1-5
paperbound, 246 pages, $12-ish.
History. Fave. A Classic. The Impact of Latin American Music On the
US.
Musica Brasileira
Claus Schreiner
Marion Boyars
Publishing, 1993. ISBN#: 0-7145-2946
hardbound, 306 pages,
$35.
History. Translated from German so a bit awkward. More human,
lotsa lyrics, in tandem with Brazilian Sound gives a good overview.
Reggae : The Rough Guide
Steve Barrow and Peter Dalton
The Rough Guides, 1997, ISBN#: 1-85828-247-0
paperbound, 394 pages, $20.
What shelf? : Reggae / History
Pretty good overview. Artist profiles are sketchy, but many bios. unavailable in any other books. Atmospheric. No table of contents, book moves chronologically and by dominant genre towards the current scene. One of the first books to acknowledge that ragga and dancehall ARE reggae, giving them equal weight to earlier, lyrical song-style reggae (Reggae Island, Jamaican Music in the Digital Age also covers this newer material, but is an interview only text). While a great many important compositions highlight the career of an artist, discographies are album lists of recommendations, concentrating on the readily available. Good following of the migration of tunes and rhythms from composition to composition. No real bibliography. Time line and glossary seem like filler. Like many UK publications the authors are extremely concerned with the recording industry itself- producers, DJs and soundsystems. Good to do as the producers are often on a par with the artists, a bad idea as the text often seems the guilty wanderings of young writers aware that only British business practices could have sufficiently inspired Marx.
Reggae Island: Jamaican Music In the Digital Age
Brian Jahn and Tom Weber
Da Capo Press, 1998, ISBN#: 0-306-80853-6
paperbound, 253 pages, $19.
What shelf? : Reggae / History
Re-issue of one the first book to cover the current, less melodic Jamaican material presented through interviews with the artists and producers.
Salsiology
Vernon Boggs
Excelsior Music /
Greenwood Press, 1992. ISBN#: 0-935016-63-5
paperbound, 379 pages,
$24.
History. Wonderful information, organizationally a bit jumbled
with only OK writing. But, one of the few books on Latin music in the
US. Max Salazar has a lot of input, while the late, great Vernon
handles the unassuming and knowing interviews. Other books to look for
covering related subject of Latin, and Latin transposed, are :
Encyclopedia of Latin American Music in New York,(Frank M.
Figueroa, Pillar Publications, 1994) and My Music Is My
Flag (Ruth Glasser, University of California Press, 1995).
Zouk: World Music in the West Indies
J.
Guilbault w/ G. Averill, E. Benoit, G. Rabess.
University of Chicago, 1993. ISBN#:
paperbound, B&W illus. $25.
History. Just about the only book on the subject in English. CD
included.
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