Simon Broughton Livres

Narrative driven, providing background and context on the music of 70 countries and regions, ranging from salsa to soukous, cajun to calypso, rai to qawwali. Set up in regional chapters. Each explanatory chapter is followed by a discography, with very short reviews of what the editors consider the very best music in the category. Various musicians are spotlighted in sidebars.

The Rough Guide to World Music is the unchallenged reference work on sounds from around the globe. This third edition is more comprehensive than ever - updated and expanded throughout and with a number of new countries added. Volume 1: Africa & Middle East has full coverage of genres from Afrobeat to Arabesque, and artists from Amadou & Mariam to Umm Kulthum. The book includes articles on more than 60 countries written by expert contributors, discographies for each article with biographical notes on thousands of musicians and reviews of their best CDs.