This book begins from the premise that we are living in an age in which the social is in a continuous process of reinvention. The book is also grounded in the assumption that music is a perennial key player in the processes of reinventing the social since music holds the power to stimulate and transport visions of change through its appeal to all human senses in the Americas and beyond the American hemisphere. Chapters address the intersection of music and identity politics, the role of music in social movements, music's presence in commodity and tourist culture, music in the context of museum culture, music's presence in literature and the visual arts, and music documentary as alternative sonic historiography.