Ebook: Beats of the heart: Popular music of the world

From the Shanghai "Youth Palace" where a rouged male orchestra plays tangos and "Take Me Back to West Virginia," to the front porch of an Appalachian banjo-picker's cabin, 'Beats of the Heart' takes us on a fourteen-stop tour of the places where today's most popular music is created. Samba, reggae, salsa; Tex-Mex ballads, African drums, Japanese synthesizations: the sounds are as varied as the cultures they reflect. In the profiles and interviews that make up the book's text, Jeremy Marre and Hannah Charlton show us how these traditional forms of expression have responded to the needs of a transformed society - how music has become a vehicle for protest, politics, history, commerce, dance, storytelling, and sheer joyful celebration, all at the same time. Beats of the Heart is a colorful, globe-trotting, and remarkably perspective one-of-a-kind book.

Popular music is the ‘cry of the people’. Following Jeremy Marre’s acclaimed film and television series, 'Beats of the Heart' listens to that cry in China, South Africa, the United States, Colombia, Jamaica, India, Egypt, Thailand, Brazil and Japan.

This book chronicles Jeremy Marre’s journeys, describes the people he meets, their music and the story of committing them to film and to record. The authors capture the excitement of the music and the passions of those who make it.

See http://www.harcourtfilms.com/beats.html for more details on the film series.