Cassette Culture

by Peter Manual

In Cassette Culture, Peter Manuel tells how a new mass medium--the portable cassette player--caused a major transformation in popular culture in India. The spread of cassette technology in the 1980s changed 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.Cassette Culture is the first scholarly account of Indian popular music and the first case study of the cultural and social consequences of a technological revolution now occurring throughout the world. With a new preface, this book will be an invaluable resource for anyone interested in modern India and the tremendous changes in its cultures and subcultures, popular music, and contemporary global culture.

About the Author:

PETER MANUEL is Professor of Music at John Jay College and at the graduate center of the City University of New York.REVIEWS: 'Peter Manuel's groundbreking study...in its documentary breadth and theoretical depth, goes beyond the analysis of the 'cassette revolution' to make a landmark contribution to the study of modern South Asian mass culture...If you want a solid yet lively scholarly book that has its finger on the pulse (or 'play' button) of contemporary South Asian culture, this is it.' PHILIP LUTGENDORF'Peter Manuel's fine account of the development of the cassette industry in India actually goes far beyond the consideration of musicological and technological issues, and adds very considerably to our understanding of contemporary culture and of social issues in India, not to mention the specific contemporary expressions of 'communism' and religious chauvinism.' RUPERT SNELL'Manuel's work has profoundly reoriented the conceptualization of folk, popular, and film music in South Asia. Cassette Culture is essential reading for media theorists, ethnomusicologists, folklorists and South Asian scholars interested in the contemporary, technologized world.' KIRIN NARAYAN'[It is] an exciting new book...this unique volume, [is] well-researched and argued...' CHIDANANDA DAS GUPTA