The 2025 IASPM Book Prize in the category of English is a tie between two books. The Prize goes to:

Together, Somehow: Music, Affect, and Intimacy on the Dancefloor
by Luis-Manuel Garcia-Mispireta.

This book was praised for its theoretical ambition, clarity, and strong writing. One jury member highlighted how “the author applies concepts like ‘stranger-intimacy’ in a way that allows the reader to rethink the relationship between sound, affect, and collectivity”. Another reviewer described it as “very readable and enjoyable” successfully “evoking emotional registers and feelings while still being clear and analytically strong”. Theoretical contributions were emphasized as well: “The book re-innovates and critically discusses key concepts while also reinventing them”. In sum, Together, Somehow stood out as an exemplary contribution to popular music studies—innovative, engaging, and conceptually rich.

Vibe: The Sound and Feeling of Black Life in the American South
by Corey J. Miles.

Vibe was described by one reviewer as “a rare and gorgeous book”. Another wrote:
“I’ve never read a book like this. Miles’s approach to ethnography, theory, and feeling is extraordinary”. The book’s use of autoethnography was praised for its effectiveness: “Miles uses autoethnography to great effect… grounding complex theory in personal and cultural context”. The theoretical dimension was likewise lauded: “Miles adopts and generates theoretical insights that are timely, resonant, and deeply rooted in cultural critique”. Vibe powerfully combines rigorous scholarship with poetic expression, offering a landmark contribution to sound studies and Black cultural research.

The 2025 IASPM Book Prize in the category of Other Languages goes to:

Las Músicas en las Carpas de Ciudad de México (1890-1930). Construcción Musical de la Pobreza by Natalia Bieletto.

This book makes a significant contribution to our understanding of música popular mexicana by exploring an understudied yet foundational phenomenon: La música de carpas, or the musical practices associated with traveling tent theaters that thrived in Mexico City between 1890 and 1930. Lauded for its originality and methodological rigor, Natalia Bieletto’s extensive documentation and interdisciplinary analysis illuminate how these spaces shaped popular sound, identity, and collective experience. The book is especially compelling in its examination of the tension between European cultural models, which were embraced as symbols of modernity by authorities and audiences, and the simultaneous construction of a national identity. It also highlights the presence of women in genres characterized by eroticism, offering a nuanced view of the era’s clashes between entertainment and morality.

Indies y Profesionales: Sellos y Amistades en La Plata by Ornela Boix receives an honorary mention.

2025 IASPM BOOK PRIZE REPORT

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Previous Winners of IASPM’s Book Prize

2023

Award: Noel Lobley, Sound Fragments: From Field Recording to African Electronic Stories (Wesleyan University Press, 2022). 

             Special mention:  Shanté Paradigm Smalls, Hip Hop Heresies: Queer Aesthetics in New York City (NYU Press, 2022)

 Award: Nathanel Amar, Scream for Life. L’invention d’une contre-culture punk en Chine populaire (Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2022). 

            Special mentions: Anna Cuomo, Faire carrière dans le rap aug Burkina Faso: Une anthropologie politique (Les Presses du Réel, 2022), and Pascal Rudolph, Präexistente Musik im Film (edition text + kritik, 2022).

2023 IASPM Book Prize Report

2021
Award: Kyle Devine, Decomposed: the Political Ecology of Music (MIT Press, 2019)
https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/decomposed

Award: Ádám Ignácz, Milliók zenéje. Populáris zene és zenetudomány az államszocialista Magyarországon (Rózsavölgyi és Társa, 2020)
https://rozsavolgyikiado.hu/konyvek/milliok-zeneje—popularis-zene-es-zenetudomany-az-allamszocialista-magyarorszagon/139483624

 Award: Bodo Mrozek, Jugend – Pop – Kultur. Eine transnationale Geschichte (Suhrkamp, 2019)
https://www.suhrkamp.de/buch/bodo-mrozek-jugend-pop-kultur-t-9783518298374

Award: Jacopo Tomatis, Storia culturale della canzone italiana (il Saggiatore, 2019)
https://www.ilsaggiatore.com/libro/storia-culturale-della-canzone-italiana/

Award: Viriya Sawangchot, Rock Suksa. Suntreeya, Kanmuang, Peuntee

Special Mention: Mark Burford, Mahalia Jackson and the Black Gospel Field (Oxford University Press, 2018)
https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/oso/9780190634902.001.0001/oso-9780190634902

Special Mention: Klisala Harrison, Music Downtown Eastside: Human Rights and Capability Development through Music in Urban Poverty (Oxford University Press, 2020)
https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/oso/9780197535066.001.0001/oso-9780197535066?rskey=3ei8WQ&result=1#

2021 Book Prize – Meet the Authors: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMbzxadZomQVKQksWpvkTrnc0T2Tw5eQ5

2021 Book Prize Jury’s Report

2019
Award: Owen Coggins, Mysticism, Ritual and Religion in Drone Metal (Bloomsbury Academic, 2018)

Special Mention: Matt Brennan, When Genres Collide: Down Beat, Rolling Stone, and the Struggle Between Jazz and Rock (Bloomsbury Academic, 2017)

Award: L. J. Müller, Sound und Sexismus — Geschlecht im Klang populärer Musik (Marta Press, 2018)
AND
Iván Iglesias, La modernidad elusiva. Jazz, baile y política en la Guerra Civil española y el Franquismo (1936-1968) (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas, 2017)

2019 Book Prize Jury’s Report

2017
Award: Jeremy Wade Morris, Selling Digital Music, Formatting Culture (University of California Press, 2015)

Award: Berenice Corti, Jazz Argentino: La música “negra” del país “blanco” (Gourmet Musical, 2015)

2017 Book Prize Jury’s Report

2015
Award: Simon Zagorski-Thomas, The Musicology of Record Production (Cambridge University Press, 2014)

Special Mention: Stephen Amico, Roll Over, Tchaikovsky! Russian Popular Music and Post-Soviet Homosexuality (University of Illinois Press, 2014)

2015 Book Prize Jury’s Report

2013
Award: Matt Stahl, Unfree Masters: Recording Artists and the Politics of Work (Duke University Press, 2012)

Special Mention: Richard Osborne, Vinyl: A History of the Analogue Record (Ashgate, 2012)

2013 Book Prize Jury’s Report

2011
Award: Barbara Lebrun, Protest Music in France: Production, Identity and Audiences (Ashgate, 2009)

Award: Yusuke Wajima, Creating the Myth of “Japanese Spirit” (Kobunsha,
 2010)

Special Mention: Eduardo Viñuela, El videoclip en España (ICCMU, 2009)

2009
Award: Karen Collins, Game Sound: An Introduction to the History, Theory, and Practice of Video Game Music and Sound Design (MIT Press, 2008)

Award: Koizumi Kyoko, Youth Wearing Music: The Pleasure of Putting On and Taking Off

Award: Celine Cabot-Canet, Léo Ferré: Une voix et une phrasé emblématiques (L’Harmattan, 2008)

Award: Ralf von Appen, Der Wert der Musik: Zur Ästhetik des Populären (transcript Verlag, 2007)

2007
Award: Anne Danielson, Presence and Pleasure: The Funk Grooves of James Brown and Parliament (Wesleyan University Press, 2006)

Award: Manuel Monestel Ramirez, Ritmo, canción e identidad: Una historia sociocultural del calypso limonense (EUNED, 2005)

Special Mention: Lee Marshall, Bootlegging: Romanticism and Copyright in the Music Industry (Sage, 2005)

Special Mention: Wendy Fonarow, Empire of Dirt: The Aesthetics and Rituals of British Indie Music (Wesleyan University Press, 2006)

2005
Award: Joseph G. Schloss, Making Beats: The Art of Sample-Based Hip-Hop (Wesleyan University Press, 2004)

Special Mention: Rehan Hyder, Brimful of Asia: Negotiating Ethnicity on the UK Music Scene (Ashgate, 2004)

2003
Award: Regina Sweeney, Singing Our Way to Victory: French Cultural Politics and Music during the Great War (Wesleyan University Press, 2001)

Special Mention: Jeroen De Kloet, Red Sonic Trajectories: Popular Music and Youth in Urban China (Amsterdam School for Social Research, 2001)

Special Mention: Lise A. Waxer, The City of Musical Memory: Salsa, Record Grooves and Popular Culture in Cali, Colombia (Wesleyan University Press, 2002)