Innehåller bibliografi och index

Jamaica's first recording studio -- The demand for new styles of recorded music -- Establishing an internationally competitive recording model -- Establishing a Jamaican sound -- The 1970s-1980s : a period of dramatic change -- Drum machines and synthesisers : the serial recording model -- The riddim production method : the audio engineer as music arranger -- Computer-based recording and the multi-role producer in the 1990s -- A Jamaican recording studio ethnography

Vibe Merchants offers an insider's perspective on the development of Jamaican popular music. This rare perspective focuses on the actual details of music making practice, rationalised in the context of the economic and creative forces that locally drive music production. By focusing on the work of audio engineers and musicians, recording studios and recording models, Ray Hitchins highlights a music creation methodology that has been acknowledged as being different to that of Europe and North America. The book leads to a broadening of our understanding of how Jamaican Popular Music emerged, developed and functions, thus providing an engaging example of the important relatrionship between music, technology and culture that will appeal to a wide range of scholars