Provides a complete historic overview of the sounds of the entire English-speaking Caribbean region, bringing together informative essays on the development of a range of music styles and the industry's top performers. Original.

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 developments in the context of themes of gender and racial dynamics, sociopolitical background, and diasporic dimensions. Caribbean Currents showcases the rich and diverse musics of Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Trinidad, the French Caribbean, the lesser Antilles, and their transnational communities in the United States and elsewhere to provide an engaging panorama of this most dynamic aspect of Caribbean culture.

The classic introduction to the Caribbean's popular music brought up to date.

A history of Jamaica's contribution to world culture--reggae--traces the history of the form from African rhythms to the slums of Kingston and the international recording industry.

In "Reggae Wisdom: Proverbs in Jamaican Music" Swami Anand Prahlad looks at the contexts and origins of these proverbs, using them as a cultural sheet music toward understanding the history of Jamaican culture, Rastafari religion, and the music that isthat culture's worldwide voice.

The team of writer Chris Salewicz and photographer Adrian Boot have brought together 50,000 words of text and over 400 images from the ReggaeXplosion Archive to create a history that contains a potent cocktail of drama, turbulence, pride and protest. From the earliest emergence in the 1950s of the fiercely competitive sound systems, fighting sonic battles in downtown Kingston, the story of Jamaican music is traced through ska, the birth of reggae, dub, roots reggae and the impact of Bob Marley to the new, harder-edged developments that have emerged in the last twenty years, including dancehall, ragga and jungle. Unpublished transcripts of interviews with key figures like Lee 'Scratch' Perry and Prince Buster introduce the authentic voices of reggae history to the book - which blends researched facts, graphics and rare images to create not only a sense of the pulse of the music, but also the contrasts of poverty, humour, desperation and joie de vivre that typify both the island of Jamaica and its music.

First published in 1987. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.