The present volume offers, for the first time, a representative overview of the relationship of music and communism outside the communist bloc. Ranging across multiple musical genres, five continents, and seven decades, the nineteen chapters address both prominent musicians who aligned themselves with communism, and the investments in music of a range of communist and radical Marxist organisations (including national Communist Parties, the Black Panther Party, andMaoist and Trotskyist groups in Britain, Germany and Nepal). In the book's first section, five musicians (Giacomo Manzoni, Ernie Lieberman, Konrad Boehmer, Chris Cutler and Georgina Born) offer their own, more personal perspectives upon their engagement with communism. The volume as a wholehighlights two 'red strains' in particular: the irreducible differences of opinion between communists regarding key debates concerning music's role in society; and the