Peter Wicke was born in Zwickau in 1951 and is currently head of the centre for popular music research at the Music Faculty of Berlin's Humboldt University. He completed his music studies in Berlin in 1974. Since then he has been a member of the teaching staff at the Music Faculty at Humboldt University, lecturing on the history, aesthetics and theory of popular music. He received his PhD in 1980 for a thesis on the aesthetics of popular music, and in 1986 he received his Dr. sc.phil. He has published many articles in his native country and abroad on theoretical, historical and cultural-political problems of popular music, and his work has been translated into English, French, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Finnish, Czech, Bulgarian and Russian. He is the co-author, with Wieland Ziegenrücker, of Rock Pop Jazz Folk. Handbuch dei populären Musik. He has visited many foreign universities on lecture tours, including, as part of the preparation for this book, London, Liverpool, Manchester and Birmingham. He is a member of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music and has held the post of General Secretary of the Association since 1987.