Stuart Baker

Soundsystem! is a new deluxe 200 page hard-back 12x12 book features hundreds of stunning full size record cover designs that span the history of reggae music. Beginning in the 1950s, Jamaican music soon developed into one of the most important and influential music industries in the world. From its early Mento (Jamaican Calypso) beginnings through to the invention of Ska, Rocksteady, Roots, Dub and Dancehall, Jamaican music is also one of the richest and innovative veins in popular music. This stunning hardback deluxe book is a timely look at the endless visually creativity of reggae record cover designs, iconic, classic, rare and unique artwork spanning sixty years of Jamaican sounds. The book includes a fascinating introductory essay on the history of reggae by Steve Barrow.

At the start of the 1960s, jazz entered a unique period of revolution as African-American musicians redefined the art form in the context of the Civil Rights Movement, Afro-centric rhythm and thought and an ideology of black economic empowerment. John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Sun Ra, Pharoah Sanders, Albert Ayler and others developed a new cosmology of sound that was as revolutionary as the social and political changes that took place in America throughout the decade. From the musical explorations of John Coltrane, Cecil Taylor and Ornette Coleman to the collective and community concerns of Chciago's Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians and the black science fiction of Sun Ra, the new jazz musicians created a musical and cultural landscape from which jazz never looked back. This large-format deluxe hardback book features hundreds of stunning photographs of the new jazz musicians in the USA throughout the 1960s, presented with an introductory essay and biographies on the many artists included in the book.

Spanning Cuban music from rumba to salsa, and graphic styles from socialist realist to geometric abstraction, this volume of Cuban record cover art traces a musical form in constant revolution. The first ever book about Cuban record sleeve design, compiled by Gilles Peterson and Stuart Baker, Cuba: Music and Revolution features hundreds of rarely seen vinyl records from the start of the Cuban Revolution at the beginning of the 1960s up until 1985, when Cuba's Special Period, brought about by the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the withdrawal of Russia's financial support for the Cuban government, led to the demise of vinyl-record manufacturing in Cuba. The artwork here reflects both the cultural and musical depth of Cuba as well as the political influence of revolutionary communism. Over the past century, Cuban music has produced a seemingly endless variety of styles--rumba, mambo, son, salsa--at a dizzyingly fast rate. Since the 1940s a steady stream of Cuban musicians has also made the migration to the US, sparking changes in North American musical forms: bandleader Machito set New York's jazz and Latin scene on fire, and master drummer Chano Pozo's entry into Dizzy Gillespie's group led to the birth of Latin jazz, to name just two. After the Cuban Revolution in 1959, the new government closed American-owned nightclubs and consolidated the island's recording industry under a state-run monopoly. Out of this new socialist agenda came new musical styles, including the Nueva Trova movement of left-wing songwriters. The 1980s saw more experimentation in modernist jazz, salsa and Afro-Cuban folkloric music. Generously illustrated with hundreds of color images, Cuba: Music and Revolution presents the history of Cuban record cover art, including many examples previously unseen outside the island itself.