popular music and globalization

: i a : ' v V l L L T h o m a s P i n k : , \ D A M E N T A L I 5 M

Malise Ruthven

. L O B A L I Z A T I O N Manfred Steget

HAB E RMAs Cordon FinlaYson

H I E R O 6 L Y P H S P e n e l o P e W i l s o n

H I R O 5 H I M A B . R . T o m l i n s o n

H U M A N E V O L U T I O N Bernard Wood

I D E O L O 6 Y M i c h a e l F r e e d e n

I N T E R N A T I O N A L R E L A T I O N 5

P a u l W i l k i n s o n

JAZZ Brian lvlorton

L I N 6 U l 5 T l C 5 P e t e r M a t t h e w s

L O C K E J o h n D u n n

M A N D E L A T o m L o d g e

M A T H E M A T I C s Tim Cowers

M E D I C A L E T H l C 5 T o n Y H o P e

T H E M I N D M a r t i n D a v i e s

M O D E R N I R E L A N D

Senia Padeta

M O L E C U L E 5 P h i l i P B a l l

MYTH Robert Segal

N A T I O N A L I 5 M S t e v e n G r o s b Y

N O R T H E R N I R E L A N D

M a r c M u l h o l l a n d

P E R C E P T I O N R i c h a r d C r e g o r Y

P H I L O 5 0 P H Y O F R E L I 6 I O N

lack Copeland and Diane Proudfoot

P H O T O C R A P H Y S t e v e E d w a r d s

P LATO Julia Annas

P O S T C O L O N I A L I S M Robeit Young

P O S T M O D E R N I 5 M christopher Butler

P O S T S T R U ( T U R A L I 5 M

Cathefine Belsey

P R E H I S T O R Y C h r i s C o s d e n

T H E P R E 5 O C R A T I C 5

Catherine Osborne

T H E R A J D e n i s l u d d T H E R E N A I 5 5 A N C E l e r r y B r o t t o n

R E N A I 5 S A N C E A R T

C e r a l d i n e J o h n s o n 5ARTRE Christina Howells

s C H I Z O P H R E N I A

Chris Frith and Eve Johnstone T H E 5 P A N I 5 H C I V I L W A R

H e l e n C r a h a m

T E R R O R I 5 M Charles Townshend

TRAC E DY Adrian Poole

T H E T W E N T I E T H C E N T U R Y

Martin Conway

P h i l i o V . B o h l m a n

For more information visit our web site

www.ou p.co. uk/vsi

W O R L D M U S I C A Very Short Introduction

OXTORD I J N I V E R S I T Y P R E S S

Prefmee

At the beginning of the 21st century it is impossible to define world

music without slipping down a tautological slope. World music is that

music we encounter, well, everywhere in the world. World music can be

folk music, art music, or popular music; its practitioners may be

amateur or professional. World music may be sacred, secular, or

commercial; its performers may emphasize authenticity, while at the

same time relying heavily on mediation to disseminate it to as many

markets as possible. World music's consumers may use it as they please;

they may celebrate it as their own or revel in its strangeness. The old

definitions and distinctions dont hold anlrrnore; world music can be

Western or non-Western, acoustic or electronically mixed. The world of

*orld music has no boundaries, therefore access to world music is open

to all. There's ample justification to call just about anything world

rnusic.

World music is inseparable from another equally ilifficult to define

phenomenon ofour age, globalization. By the end ofthe year 2Oo1,

above all in the wake ofthe events ofSeptember l1th, it was no longer

possible to deny the impact ofglobalization even on local, on-the-

street realities. It remains hard to pin down, much less define, but

few have failed to rec6gnize the paradox in the rhetoric and reality of

globalization. It's both good and bad, a worldview to be celebrated

and vilified, a force that can contain the world but also a movement

that must be contained by force. It could be said that globalization

has ts'o meanings, or indeed that it opens up tlvo ways ot

encountering the world, and most people ally themselves with one or

the other.

The trvo meanings of globaiization are emblematic of the tlvo

contradictory ways in which 'world music' is understood today' In the

course of this book I rely on both meanings for my own examination of

what world music is today, paradoxes and all. For many, world music

represents much that is right in the world, indeed, the very possibility

that music and music-making bring people together. The sheer volume

of world music - on the radio, CDs, and the Internet, and in university

classrooms and books with diverse readerships - has never been greater'

When it comes to celebrating globalization, world music is always

within earshot.

There's also the darker side to world music. World music can raise fears

that we are losing much that is close to home' Its homogenizing effect

threatens village practices as it privileges the spaces ofthe global village'

Its dissemination across the globe depends on the appropriation of

transnational recording companies, whose primary interests are to

exploit cultural resources. Fusion and border-crossing may enrich some

world-music styles, but they impoverish others' At the beginning of the

21st century there is much about the rhetoric and reality of

globalization that has given world music a bad name.

In this book I seek a middle ground. I urge the reader both to look

critically at the ways in which musicians and managers have turned to

world music to appropriate and exploit traditional music and to

recognize how the abundance ofworld music today offers the

opportunity to experience the diversity ofhuman societies like never

before. The middle ground I seek does not avoid the dual meanings

evident in the rhetoric ofglobalization or the discourse ofworld music,

but rather it endeavours to represent the space of encounter, which is

also the space in which the history of world music has unfolded'

Accordingly, the middle ground in this book also affords me the

opportunity to wrestle with the dilemma faced by all authors of these

'\ery Short Introductions': dealing with a vast topic in a deliberately

restricted space.

If there were a moment when globalization became truly globalized, it

n-ould appear to be the summer and autumn of zool, during which time

I completed the final revisions ofthis book. The rhetoric ofglobalization

has reached new heights, and the word itselfhas become a household

term. In the academic world, it has come of age as high theory, and few

disciplines have managed to avoid its seductiveness at some level.

L-nquestionably, the key word on the 2oo1 conference circuit was

globalization: on 18-19 May 2oo1, for example, my own university

hosted an event it called the'Third Annual Globalization Conference'.

Globalization had seemingly won the day, providing theory and

dlscourse for scholars ofvarious stripes and from throughout the world,

:o that they could tackle the big issues of modern times.

\tore striking to the average residents of the global community was the

estent to which the rhetoric of globalization mobilized many fellow

:cidents to action. During the summer of 2oo1 the debates over

ilobalization quite literally spilled onto the streets, notably at the mid-

-Tn\''Gg Summit', an event that brought together the representatives of

: collective customarily designated as the 'world's seven wealthiest

rations plus Russia'. In 2oo1, the summit convened in Genoa, Italy,

nfrere it was greeted by tens ofthousands ofprotesters, who

represented a broad range ofpolitical agendas, all now subsumed under

-:he rubric'anti-globalization'. In every imaginable permutation, the

Setoric of globalization fragmented into countless buzzwords. There

n-as talk of 'global trade agreements' and'global warming', 'global

markets' and the 'global economy'. The rhetoric, nonetheless, was

lon-erless when it came to stemming the problems at hand, the local

problems that erupted when the anti-globalists rioted in the streets,

clashed with the police mustered to defend the cause ofglobalization,

and slid into a conflict that produced destruction, injury and death'

ln the aftermath of the events of September uth, the rhetoric of

dobalization entered a radically new phase. The attacks themselves

were directed toward'symbols'of globalization, the World Trade Center

and the Pentagon. The perpetrators were members of 'global terror

networks', and stemming their spread required that a'global alliance

against terror'be mustered. World culture and world history were at

stake, thus making it necessary to fight the war on terrorism on a 'global

scale'. The rhetoric ofglobalization spread, but the possibilities ofwhat

it might really mean also multiplied. Many more people in the world

imagined they felt the presence of globalization more directly in their

own lives, but few were any closer to knowing whether it was something

that brought comfort or that had the potential to destabilize the world

as they knew it.

The unchecked prolif'eration ofperspectives on globalization in 2oO1

also sheil light on the vastly different meanings of world music. The

term world music is itself relatively new, let's say two decades old. Prior

to the early 198os, all-encompassing terms to describe the musics of the

world were rare, with preference given to regional categories or

designations ofgenres; one studied and wrote about'Aiiican music' or

'folk music', not world music. In the 198os, the field of ethnomusicology

took a turn toward what we might call big issues, approaching them

comparatively and with more consciously interdisciplinary methods,

and it followed that world music, for example in Bruno Nettl's highly

influential writing, commanded greater attention. It was also during the

198os that world music found its way into college and university music

curricula, again as the result ofa perceived need to study all the world's

musics. Initially an alternative to Western art music', world music

embraced more and more areas in the academic music curriculum,

inspiring widespread rethinking of how music itself was to be taught'

World music is also that phenomenon that greets one on the new floors

oflarge record shops, or in the'international'bins ofthe CD sections in

book shops. This is the world music that is omnipresent whenever we

step into chain coffee shops, several ofwhich market their own world-

music CD blends next to their global coffee blends. In a word, this world

music is traditional music repackaged and marketed as popular music'

This world music, too, owes its origins to the 198Os, when the executives

:n record companies and advertising specialists determined that

pcpcJar music from outside the Anglo-American and European

arinsh€ams needed a distinctive name. During the 198os, the record

mdusq'toyed with a few other names - worldbeat, world fusion,

er,hnopop, even tribal and new age - but by the 199Os, it was world

=usic that enjoyed by far the greatest currency. Again, it was an issue of

im truh'global implications of the name itself. Maybe this kind of world

=nsic really was limited to the appropriation of traditional music as

;.:pular music, but its claims to globalization were surely well founded.

Giren this preoccupation with the global signalled by the several

s€enings of 'world', one understands perfectly well why there is a

tndency when approaching a subject as seemingly boundless as 'world

=ilsic'to try to capture some measure of its vastness and variety. The

cc"oder of it all, one might imagine, should ultimately entice and seduce

*:e reader. There is an equally strong countertendency, however, that

l:rEFS one to find something singular and unitary about a global

;imomenon, thus to condense it and make it manageable for the

=eder. It is my goal in this Very Short Introduction to strike a balance

-'gneen these two approaches. On one hand, I write as an

dnomusicologist, therefore world music is for me all the musics of the

T'ortd- With that approach in mind, I have written this book so that it

:aight give readers some sense ofdifference and might encourage them

:o ask rvhy humans use music in so many ways: What does world music

:dl us about the diversity ofhuman cultures? On the other hand, world

srsic at the beginning ofthe 21st century has all the trappings of

giobalization, whose theorists endeavour to explain why cultural

?henomena have increasingly come to demonstrate similarity. World

=usic has long been mustered by both camps to provide evidence for

:en- theories, whether they stress cultural relativism or universalism.

\-either way of imagining world music is wrong; neither tells the whole

ston'. For these reasons, this introduction attempts to negotiate the

space between what world musics really are and what they are imagined

:o be.

Before readers get the feeling that I am equivocating about what world

music is - simply acquiescing to the validity of all possible meanings - it

is only fair for me to reveal some of the meanings world music has for

me, meanings that have shaped the way I approach it in this book.

World music is very much a construct of modernity, which is to say the

encounter with and interpretation ofthe world that was unleashed by

the Age ofDiscovery the Enlightenment, colonial expansion, and the

rise of the nation-state. Asserting that there is music everywhere in the

world is, therefore, a Western concept, if it is also, however, a concept

that results from Western encounters with the world. 'Encounter'is a

crucial concept throughout the book. Encounters mark important

historical moments; encounters bring about change, even revolution;

encounters create the conditions for exchange. Cultural encounter itself

is by no means Western; nonetheless, the growing sense in the past 5oO

years that encounter is not isolated but rather has ramifications for

world history is.

At the beginning of the 21st century then, world music is not simply the

music of an exotic'other'. Our encounters with the world have become

quotidian, and music mediates those encounters, whether we perceive

that or not. It is not simply a matter that television advertisement

regularly draws on South Asian and West African drumming; it is not

the weaving of world-music tracks into film soundtracks; it is not only

the fact that Protestant h)rynnals are increasingly multicultural or that

the Catholic Mass is musically familiar to every ethnic community in the

metropolis; nor is it that Sufism has become a world religion mediated

by world music; it does not even stop with the legal cases about musical

ownership or the limits of downloading music from the Internet. It is,

rather, the confluence ofall these phenomena, which too must be

understood as encounters that are imagined and mediated by the West.

World music is an inescapable everyday experience, whether or not we

understand what it means. In this Very Short Introduction I strongly

make the case that there is much to be gained from understanding what

i t d o e s m e a n .

This book unfolds as a series of thematic leitmotifs, each one assuming

the form ofa chapter. Though the chapter-length leitmotifs differ, the

r4:s in *'hich they are treated are similar, thereby making it possible to

stire torvard a certain degree of coverage while admitting to its

::nitations. All chapters employ the same structure, in other words, the

sc.me sir sections through which I pursue the leitmotif of the different

"**pters. Each chapter begins with an encounter, and it proceeds

:rrough a series ofhistorical, theoretical, and aesthetic sections via

i-€xr.ettes of musicians and scholars before arriving at popular music

e:<i the present. Within each chapter, therefore, I strive for internal

:::nslstency, returning in subsequent chapters to a point ofbeginning so

'i,,a:r each chapter might become a naxrative of encounter for the reader.

Tbe schema below summarizes the organizational structure of each

'+rFtter:

:- Encounter with world music

:: Historical ortheoretica.l excursus

:i: Pmfile of a musician

r: Aesthetic issue, especia\ an examination of meaning and identity

r:: Profile of an ethnomusicologist or group of world-music scholars

-c Ethnographic present and popular music

$0,4n;- of the encounters that fill the book are my own, in one way or

nnother. They may come, more or less directly, from my own fieldwork;

-iq- may represent, rather more indirectly, musical practices that I have

eryerienced through theoretical engagement, for example my special

:lunctrn with the relation behveen religion and music; they may also

rise from my own attempts to forge an approach that would enable me

a.ed- I hope, others to understand something of the whole of world

-u-.ic. This approach, then, is meant to encourage the reader to engage

=ore directly with world music as e,rperience.

I: should not go without saying that the chapter organization I have

rmployed for this book helps me deal with the problem of representative

a,r'equal coverage of all the world's music. Few readers will fail to notice

rather quickly that all world musics do not make it into the book; they

mill also recognize that I return rather frequently to some parts ofthe

n-orld and to some repertories of music, whereas others receive more

fleeting visits. In fact, I feel no need to make excuses or offer disclaimers

for the music that is not in this book. Tokenism does not solve the

problem ofrepresentative coverage, but rather exacerbates it, all the

more so in a short introduction. More to the point, I understand many

ofthe sections in the book as points ofdeparture, or rather as invitations

to readers who might wish to turn first encounters into excursions and

experiences oftheir own. At the beginning ofthe 21st century our

everyday encounters with world music make this eminently possible.

This book was not initially my idea but that of George Miller, who

stewards the Very Short Introductions through Oxford University Press'

George put his faith in my ability to carry out the project, and I hope he

recognizes in the end result even a small measure of my deep

appreciation. I was especially fortunate that four very different readers -

a current university music student; a former PhD student at the

University of Chicago, now teaching ethnomusicology at the National

Cheng-kung University in Taiwan; a trusted colleague at Chicago; and a

distinguished pedagogue at the Open University in the UK - were

willing to offer comments and suggestions on the final version of the

manuscript: very special thanks for their time and insights go to Andrea

Bohlman, Pi-yen Chen, Martin Stokes, and Martin Cla1'ton. In writing a

book on world music, one constantly realizes the ways communities and

collectives shape what music means, locally and globally. Over the

course ofmany years my students have constituted an especially

meaningful collective, shaping my thinking about world music again

and again. As a s1'rnbol of my appreciation for what my students have

done for me, I am especially pleased to dedicate tliis book to them.

As always, the final word ofacknowledgement goes to Andrea, Ben, and

Christine, a marvellous collective of world and world-class musicians if

there ever was one. Thanks for being there as we encountered world

music at home and abroad, at border-crossings and on concert stages,

wherever and whenever we seized the opportunity.

Philip V. Bohlman

Llst of illustrati*ms

; CDs of Sufi music in an

-{ustrian record shop 19 q Philip V. Bohlman

3 F'r-ances Densmore and lfountain Chief 24 F{arris md Ewing, National

-{athrcpological Archives,

Seitb$nim Institution

5 [,ouis Pinck and Uama Tiirk 2s kblished m a postcild in 1938

{ Funeral chant ofthe Fangwe people 29 Falk*ans

5 "Art-song'from Tirnis 31 Q Dr- R Iahmann

B6la Bart6k collecting folk songs in a Slovak village 67 @ Archive lconographico,

SA./Corbis

B6la Bart6k with his gramophone 68 Lebrecht Collection

Street musician in a Bucharest marketplace 135 @ Philip V. Bohlman

Field recording during WorldWar I 142

The Eschikagou Powwow 2OO1 1.1,8 The Gathering ofNations Ltd.,

Albuquerque, New Mexico

to

S'bitre erery effort has been made to secure permissions, we may hcre hiled in a few cases to trace the cop)'right holder. We apologize fw anr apparent negligence.