The Book of Salsa
A Chronicle of Urban Music from the Caribbean to New York City
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Narrated by:
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Drew Birdseye
About this listen
Salsa is one of the most popular types of music listened to and danced to in the United States. Until now, the single comprehensive history of the music - and the industry that grew up around it, including musicians, performances, styles, movements, and production - was available only in Spanish. This lively translation provides for English-reading and music-loving fans the chance to enjoy César Miguel Rondón's celebrated "El libro de la salsa." For this first English-language edition, Rondón has added a new chapter to bring the story of salsa up to the present.
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A blast from the past
- By Amazon Customer on 07-30-16
By: David Hepworth
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The Secret Life of the American Musical
- How Broadway Shows Are Built
- By: Jack Viertel
- Narrated by: David Pittu
- Length: 11 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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For almost a century, Americans have been losing their hearts and losing their minds in an insatiable love affair with the American musical. It often begins in actors and reaches its passionate zenith when it comes time for love, marriage, and children, who will start the cycle all over again. Americans love musicals. Americans invented musicals. Americans perfected musicals. But what, exactly, is a musical?
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Great review lacked music
- By joseph f mcgovern on 10-14-18
By: Jack Viertel
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Beethoven
- A Life in Nine Pieces
- By: Laura Tunbridge
- Narrated by: Laura Tunbridge
- Length: 7 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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The iconic image of Beethoven is of him as a lone genius: hair wild, fists clenched, and brow furrowed. Beethoven may well have shaped the music of the future, but he was also a product of his time, influenced by the people, politics, and culture around him. Oxford scholar Laura Tunbridge offers an alternative history of Beethoven's career, placing his music in contexts that shed light on why particular pieces are valued more than others, and what this tells us about his larger-than-life reputation.
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Engaging, interesting, nice format
- By George on 07-04-22
By: Laura Tunbridge
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Alan Lomax: A Biography
- The Man Who Recorded the World
- By: John Szwed
- Narrated by: Scott Sowers
- Length: 20 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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The remarkable life and times of the man who popularized American folk music and created the science of song. Folklorist, archivist, anthropologist, singer, political activist, talent scout, ethnomusicologist, filmmaker, concert and record producer, Alan Lomax is best remembered as the man who introduced folk music to the masses. Lomax began his career making field recordings of rural music for the Library of Congress and by the late 1930s brought his discoveries to radio, including Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and Burl Ives.
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They Done Good
- By DonnaMarie113 on 06-26-22
By: John Szwed
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Uncommon People
- The Rise and Fall of The Rock Stars
- By: David Hepworth
- Narrated by: Matthew Lloyd Davies
- Length: 10 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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The age of the rock star, like the age of the cowboy, has passed. Like the cowboy, the idea of the rock star lives on in our imaginations. What did we see in them? Swagger. Recklessness. Sexual charisma. Damn-the-torpedoes self-belief. A certain way of carrying themselves. Good hair. Interesting shoes. Talent we wished we had. What did we want of them? To be larger than life but also like us. To live out their songs. To stay young forever. No wonder many didn't stay the course.
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INSIGHTFULL!
- By CLAUDIA R KENNEDY on 02-18-18
By: David Hepworth
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The Walrus and the Elephants
- John Lennon’s Years of Revolution
- By: James A. Mitchell
- Narrated by: Stephen Hoye
- Length: 6 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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In late 1971 John Lennon left London behind and moved to New York, eager to join a youth movement rallying for social justice and an end to the Vietnam War. Lennon was quickly embraced by radicals and revolutionaries, the hippies and Yippies at odds with the establishment. Settling in Greenwich Village, the heart of Manhattan's counterculture, the former Beatle was soon on the frontlines of the antiwar movement and championing a range of causes and issues.
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I wish you were still here
- By Kazuhiko on 12-09-13
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Beatles '66
- The Revolutionary Year
- By: Steve Turner
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 12 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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The year that changed everything for the Beatles was 1966 - the year of their last concert and of Revolver, their first album created to be listened to rather than performed. This was the year the Beatles risked their popularity by retiring from live performances, recording songs that explored alternative states of consciousness, experimenting with avant-garde ideas, and speaking their minds on issues of politics, war, and religion. Music journalist and Beatles expert Steve Turner investigates the enormous changes that took place in the Beatles' lives and work during 1966.
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Great listen
- By Tad Davis on 07-28-18
By: Steve Turner
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With Amusement for All
- A History of American Popular Culture since 1830
- By: LeRoy Ashby
- Narrated by: Kevin Pierce
- Length: 33 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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With Amusement for All is the first comprehensive history of two centuries of mass entertainment in the United States, covering everything from the penny press to Playboy, the NBA to NASCAR, big band to hip hop, and other topics including film, comics, television, sports, and music. Paying careful attention to matters of race, gender, class, economics, and politics, LeRoy Ashby emphasizes the complex ways in which popular culture simultaneously reflects and transforms American culture.
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So Much Fun!
- By Paul on 11-28-13
By: LeRoy Ashby
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Let’s Go Crazy
- Prince and the Making of Purple Rain
- By: Alan Light
- Narrated by: Fred Berman
- Length: 7 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Purple Rain is a song, an album, and a film - each one a commercial success and cultural milestone. How did this semiautobiographical musical masterpiece that blurred R&B, pop, dance, and rock sounds come to alter the recording landscape and become an enduring touchstone for successive generations of fans?
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A Must-Read For Any PRINCE Fan
- By Bryan K. Chavez on 05-06-16
By: Alan Light
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The Never-Ending Present
- The Story of Gord Downie and the Tragically Hip
- By: Michael Barclay
- Narrated by: George Stroumboulopoulos
- Length: 17 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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From our talent-rich neighbor to the north comes this biography of one of the most successful Canadian rock bands, The Tragically Hip, which announced a year-long tour after sharing the news of lead singer Gord Downie’s inoperable cancer. Now available to US listeners, The Never-Ending Present details what led up to the memorable night when music fans all over the world watched Downie’s heroic final performance.
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Hometown Heroes
- By Tommy Garou on 12-13-18
By: Michael Barclay
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Somebody to Love
- The Life, Death and Legacy of Freddie Mercury
- By: Matt Richards, Mark Langthorne
- Narrated by: Tim Bruce
- Length: 15 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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When Freddie Mercury died in 1991, aged just 45, the world was rocked by the vibrant and flamboyant star's tragic secret that he had been battling AIDS. That Mercury had even been diagnosed came as a shock to his millions of fans, with his announcement coming less than 24 hours before his death. In Somebody to Love, biographers Mark Langthorne and Matt Richards skilfully weave Freddie Mercury's incredible pursuit of musical greatness with Queen, his upbringing and his endless search for love with the story of a terrible disease.
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Stunning dual biography of Freddie and AIDS
- By tru britty on 07-19-18
By: Matt Richards, and others
What listeners say about The Book of Salsa
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Cecilia Salguero
- 08-11-24
Bilingual reader would’ve been best
This audiobook would have benefited enormously from having a bilingual person do the recording. The person who read it did a great job with the English but struggled with every word and name in Spanish throughout the entire book, which is very distracting and at times hard to understand.
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- ricardo
- 01-09-18
Spanish pronunciation is terrible
When will Audible hire a person who can pronounce Spanish properly? There Is absolutely no excuse for his book that has words or surnames in Spanish to be pronounced improperly. When the subject matter deals with a specific topic that involves a Hispanic culture, it safe to assume that the narrator will have to say some words and some surnames in Spanish. While the narrator has a great voice and delivery, he tortures the Spanish language. It’s inexcusable. The same thing happened with the audiobook for “War Against All Puerto Rican’s” by Nelson Denis. Dear also, the narrator absolutely destroyed Spanish words. As a Latino, I think insult to the fact that a huge company like Amazon and audible can’t find it in the budget to hire a narrator or an actor who can pronounce words properly in Spanish. It’s a real shame because I really enjoy Audible. It’s a great product, but when The subject matter requires pronunciation of a language other than English, there is no reason why audible or Amazon cannot hire a narrator who can pronounce the words properly. I am really disappointed.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Carlos Morillo
- 02-05-24
Disappointed
The information is very interesting. However, I do not enjoy the narrator. I do not understand why they didn’t find a Latino to narrate the book. The narrator butchers Spanish terms and titles, which makes it difficult to listen to.
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- A. K. Moore
- 02-20-14
As of 2014, the best audiobook on this subject
Any additional comments?
SHORT VERSION: Of the books on this subject, there are three that are much better than this one: Faces of Salsa, Salsa Talks, and the quintessential masterpiece of the genre, Ned Sublette's Cuba and Its Music. None of these is or is likely to be available in audio, so if you want audio, this is the best one out there - if you find a better one, please post it here so I can find out about it! I would also point out that these four books are all different and have surprisingly little overlap. To really get your head around the subject you should read all four and then some.
The book and narration have similar strengths and weaknesses. The book is well-written and handles the big picture well, but needs serious proofreading on facts. The narration is well-delivered and I prefer listening to it to reading the hard copy which I also own, but it too has serious proofreading problems - on pronunciation.
NARRATION: I am a serious student of Spanish but not a native speaker. About 70% of the time, this narrator's pronunciation, while it doesn't sound native, is better than mine, but the other 30% is embarrassingly sloppy and with all the Spanish courses I've gone through, it's like fingernails on a chalkboard to hear him say "Antonio mahKEEN" (instead of maCHEEN) and to pronounce Valdés or Hernández perfectly one time and like an American baseball announcer the next. So that's why I say "sloppy" - it's not that the narrator is clueless - when he's good, he's quite good. But in a way, this makes it even more annoying that he didn't take the time to edit his errors. We all know that these narrations are done with digital audio that can be edited as easily as an email. Why not just have a native speaker listen to it and point out the errors and fix them???? Por favor!!! This book has Spanish words in nearly every sentence. It was ridiculous not to get a native speaker, or at least to have a native speaker identify the errors and to go back and punch in. That said, it's more than passable if you compare it to Tom Wolfe's "Back to Blood", which has the most comically horrible pronunciation imaginable. (noooo! que gym! oh my god, I'm getting nauseous just remembering that one - and it's such a great book ... grrrrr)
THE BOOK: It's a love-hate thing. Rondón is a very thoughtful guy and writes compellingly, making big, important observations well, but he makes enough factual errors that you have to be careful you're not mislearning things. For example, he calls Tito Rodríguez a "Cuban singer". Tito Rodríguez had a Cuban mother and a Puerto Rican father but he spent his whole life in PR and NY and is absolutely considered a Puerto Rican singer - in fact, one of THE major Puerto Ricans of his era. Calling him Cuban would be almost as bad as saying that James Brown was one of the great white soul singers or Michael Caine is one of the top Italian actors. If you were talking about the iconic singers of the 50s, you'd use Beny Moré or Celia Cruz for Cuba and Tito Rodríguez or Ismael Rivera for PR. Rondón also mixes up Pete Rodríguez the boogaloo artist with Pete "El Conde" Rodríguez, a very important and soulful Puerto Rican singer who could scarcely be more different from his namesake. There are other problems. This book is a great "forest" with some flawed "trees". I temper these criticisms with the fact that I bought the audiobook after buying the print book and I would buy both again. But I'll temper THAT with the fact that I'm probably more obsessed with this subject than you, the reader of this review, probably are.
THE TRANSLATION: Note that the original book is in Spanish and I've been told that it's a lot better, but I'm only fluent enough to complain about this narrator, not fluent enough to get more from the Spanish version that I can from the English! I've read many books with bad, overly literal translations, like "Cuban Fire" - "The Book of Salsa" (the one being reviewed here) is MUCH better translated - it really sounds like it's written in English. It could be that some of the factual problems were "lost in the translation" - so, like the book and the narration, the translation is great in the global sense, not so great when you get to the devil in the details.
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5 people found this helpful
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- Josh
- 01-23-19
an ugly omelet of a book
unfortunately, I will be returning this. being an avid salsa dancer and music aficionado this book does a very poor job of putting any context and structure behind it.
a random bunch of names and instruments, countries and locations. no structure at all!
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