Peter Manuel is an ethnomusicologist specializing in the musics of India, the Caribbean, and Spain, about which he has published extensively. Three of his eight books have earned prestigious awards, and one, Popular Musics of the Non-Western World, has been translated and published in Chinese, Korean, and Japanese. His award-winning book Caribbean Currents: Caribbean Music from Rumba to Reggae has sold over thirty thousand copies and is widely used as a textbook and reference book. Aside from his earlier book on Indo-Caribbean music and his forthcoming book on contradance in the Caribbean, his more than seventy scholarly articles include works on flamenco, chutney, the history of salsa, Puerto Rican music and identity, Indian classical music, Afro-Cuban song forms, the use of “riddims” in dancehall reggae, and other topics. An amateur sitarist, jazz pianist, and flamenco guitarist, he has also served as a copyright consultant on several cases involving Latin music and Indian music.
