Live from Dar es Salaam

"The extensive research for this book provides valuable insight into Tanzanian culture. Live from Dar es Salaam discusses our history and examines current radio stations, performances, recording studios, and music education. In reading this book, young people will learn about what their elders did in the past, and elders will remember those things they took part in. In addition, this book will become a road map for the next generation to use in order to learn about Tanzanian popular music. It is a very important book that illustrates the past, present, and future of Tanzanian music."

~Remmy Ongala

"This isn't just a book about Tanzanian popular music. It's a compendium of everything one could wish to know and more about Dar es Salaam's performance life, and an ethnographic tour de force that offers an insider's trip to the sweaty heart of an African capital's music scene, without having to go there. The social economy of post-independence Dar es Salaam is painstakingly interwoven into an account of every style, trend, and movement in the city's imaginative life from every angle. Perullo's achievement will set the standard for studies of popular culture in urban East Africa for decades to come."

~David B. Coplan, University of the Witwatersrand

"Scholars interested in the popular music of urban Africa will welcome Alex Perullo's Live from Dar es Salaam enthusiastically. Perullo's comprehensive examination of a city's musical life is lively and compelling, and readers will be impressed by the breadth and depth of the author's description and analysis."

~Ethnomusicology Forum

"Live from Dar es Salaam . . . takes on the challenge of examining Tanzania's popular music in the context of that country's shift toward capitalism. The book offers insights into the multi-sided challenges of neoliberal globalisation, and opens new avenues for thinking about the often-imbalanced demands neoliberal globalisation places on African musicians."

~Popular Music

"Alex Perullo has written an ethnography that is as comprehensive as it is enjoyable to read."

~Africa

"The case [Perullo] makes for Tansania's music economy as one of the most thriving in Africa . . . and an example of Africans making things happen for themselves, is well documented and convincing. . . . Through Perullo, we are given a unique insight into the manifold uses of art and artifice by which people shape their own lives in an African city today."

~Tanzanian Affairs

"Alex Perullo focuses on the creative practices Tanzanians in the music economy in Dar es Salaam utilize as they try to make something of a living in difficult economic times. Perullo also shows how music in Tanzania transitioned from work to a commodity as the country itself moved from a socialist to a capitalist political–economic ideology."

~American Ethnologist

"The book displays the author's encyclopedic and deep knowledge of Tanzania's music economy. It contains rich ethnographic descriptions and persuasive arguments, and would be valuable to anyone interested in the contemporary music scene in Tanzania."

~African Studies Review