If you are not interested in exploring the details of the music biz in India, turn off this site right now; this book is not connected to the Western pop scene. CASSETTE CULTURE is a study of the impact of cassette technology on popular music in North India. It explores the nature of the changes the arrival of widely-available cassettes has made on the structure of the Indian music industry and on popular music itself. I found it a well-written book with an absolute minimum of scholarly jargon, though it is an academic book. The author does not presume knowledge on the part of the reader and gives careful explanations of Indian musical styles, regional cultures, and music industry details. I found the balance between theory and description excellent. There is an interesting discussion of the popular music recording scene in other parts of the world, as well as a thorough historical look at that topic in India itself. The problem of piracy is dealt with in depth. There are three basic issues that underlie Manuel's study. First, the nature of control of the mass media in India. Second, the content of the mass media and how it is presented. And third, the effect of the content on the audience and how they use that content. With these guidelines, he shows how the arrival of cassette technology and cheap cassette players in the 1970s created a revolution in Indian popular music. By the 1980s, a transformation was underway, with the rise of hundreds of small regional producers, as well as a few giants. Escape from corporate control might lead us to think that the cassette "revolution" was a liberating force, but Manuel points out that this is not entirely so. The new technology has also been used to spread traditional, unprogressive, and even reactionary, bigoted messages through India. Cassettes have fuelled many a regionalist or separatist movement as well as the strivings of many an opportunistic politician.
I strongly recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn more about the combination of music, popular media, technology and culture in India, one of the great civilizations of mankind, which seldom appears in Western media except for disasters, murders, or horror stories . Manuel has written a classic. Buy it.
