Salwa El-Shawan Castelo-Branco and Susana Moreno Fernández’s Music in Portugal and Spain is a welcome addition to Oxford University Press’s Global Music Series. The volume provides an accessible introduction to key themes and cultural contexts for musical practices from the Iberian Peninsula. The authors use the themes of identity, power, and cultural flows to create a cohesive volume even when the two nations’ histories and musical traditions diverge. Castelo-Branco and Moreno focus primarily on traditional music and dance and the most iconic music genres from the Iberian Peninsula, flamenco and fado.

The authors emphasise that musical traditions on the Iberian Peninsula have continuously been shaped by global flows of people and ideas. They trace a history that moves quickly from the Roman Empire to Al-Andalus and the lasting influence of Arabic and Berber cultures to maritime expansion and Portugal’s and Spain’s colonial presence in Africa, Asia, and the Americas. Castelo-Branco and Moreno explore how the cultural policies of the dictatorial regimes of António Salazar in Portugal and Francisco Franco in Spain promoted folklore to support their nationalist agendas. A discussion of protest songs shows how musicians contributed to the movement towards democracy. Enduring post-colonial ties and participation in the European Union provide the context for a reinvention of folk traditions as heritage and local identity in the twenty-first century. The political history provides a context for understanding how folkloric traditions such Catalonian folk song and dance, Galician bagpipes, and choral singing from Portugal’s Alentejo region have become important signifiers of regional identity in twenty-first-century Spain and Portugal.

One highpoint of the book is its attention to fiestas/festas as central to music and social life in much of Portugal and Spain. The authors show that while annual public fiestas often reflect the significance of Roman Catholicism in Spanish and Portuguese cultures, their participatory rituals provide a framework for the expression of identities that are not only increasingly secular, but simultaneously local and global. In Castelo-Branco and Moreno’s telling, people sing, dance, play instruments, parade, and otherwise structure rituals that reinforce a sense of community among participants.

The traditions of fado in Portugal and flamenco in Spain will be more familiar to some readers. The chapters on fado and flamenco offer a concise history of each genre, its musical features, poetry, performance contexts, and key musicians. Audio examples include major artists such as fadista Amália Rodrigues and flamenco vocalist La Niña de los Peines. Additional audio examples on the companion website provide a thorough breakdown of accompaniment patterns and metrical cycles to complement the in-text activities and related songs on the compact disc. Listening activities help readers attune their ears to the musical features such as flamenco’s metrical cycles, guitar and hand-clapping patterns, and lyrics separately and then together.

Among the book’s many advantages is that it addresses readers of different levels. The book is friendly to undergraduate students. Few musical transcriptions are used, and the book provides thorough listening guides. The authors consistently define theoretical concepts and musicological terminology and translate key terms from Spanish and Portuguese. The authors draw on cultural and ethnographic theory and musical concepts that can serve as points of departure for more advanced readers. Short ethnographic vignettes orient the reader to contemporary scenes such as the Fiestas de San Juan de Soria northeast of Madrid, the pilgrimage of São João d’Arga in Portugal’s Minho region, a stage production based on the life of the fadista Maria Severa in Lisbon’s Mouraria neighbourhood, and a night out at a flamenco club in Córdoba, Spain. As with many books in Oxford University Press’s Global Music series, suggested activities provide concrete ways for readers to engage with concepts in the text. For example, in chapter 3, a particularly effective activity asks students to research and analyze a festival familiar to them. In the classroom, this helps students conceptualise fiestas within their own experiences while thinking through the relationships between music, rituals, and identity.

Despite its accessibility, the book has a few drawbacks. Chiefly, the absence of a conclusion, while not unusual in the Global Music series, is felt. In ending with a case study, the book misses an opportunity to reinforce themes introduced earlier or to ask readers to consider how more recent political and economic events, such as austerity measures or growth of tourism, shape musical practices. The lack of digital edition, especially with audio examples, is problematic as students are increasingly unlikely to have compact disc players or computers with disc drives. However, Music in Portugal and Spain offers a thorough introduction to vibrant musical practices and rich discussion of how music informs identity within political power.