One planet, one music

In other words, he's not aware of the paradoxes: that global standardisation and local differentiation go hand in hand, that wars against terrorism make more terrorists, that major labels snapping up indies leave a frogspawn of more, indier indies in their wake, that big stars do not stop amateurs from making music, that the spike on the left of the power law curve does not stop its tail stretching far along the right axis, that it takes an empire to create a guerilla movement or a breakaway republic...

Still, I think he's right about one axis, the concentration axis. He's just left the other one, the diversification axis, out of his picture.

1. It.
2. The alternative to it.
3. The Official Other.
4. All others (out of frame).

How do wars against terrorism making more terrorists fit in among the purchase of indie labels? OK fine, we don't like Bush, but that's not really relevant here...

Anyway... what does he mean by globalisation? Because he seems to conflate the specific meaning of globalisation as the weakening barriers to transnational capitalism with the general spread of anglo-american culture. To be sure there is a symbiosis at work between these two trends, but given that fact, what is his point? Every era in pop music has a few superstars, but I think he overestimates their presence.

Do people globally listen to Norah Jones and Beyonce in such percentages that it drives local music out of the market? Does he have foreign sales figures to back that up?

People do have a taste for American music, but that's not imposed on them by AOL or whatever. Consumers drive demand. And its not like most music you hear in other countries is our stuff, it's a mixture.

Also: diversification wants to be more than mere reaction or negation.
That's looking at it from the view of majors, i.e. the "winners", then yes, the diversifiers are the "losers", the folks who aren't good enough to make it big (or don't want to).
But from the point of view of the small labels/scenes, this isn't true at all. How many people start a band/label/club out of reaction or spite toward the mainstream, and how many because it happens to be the music they love to play or hear?

mcdonalds - should be nourishing, but is in fact corrosive
music industry - should be rebellious, is in fact conservative

it's just a fact of life. if there was a huge art museum corporation that made profitable art museums, it would be filled with glorious dictator portraits, pompier-style nymphs and gypsy girls, princess diana in andy warhol style, etc.

i guess the deeper question to me is, why are huge corporations that manufacture goods often quite good at what they do, and able to steal innovations from the little guy and bring them to the people at reasonable prices, but the further you get into the realm of culture / ideas, the worse those megacorporations get, and less liable to appropriate / steal innovations...

In addition, the work environment that might be good for the producer, manager or marketer will most likely not be the best work environment for an artist. A smaller company will be more likely to allow for the flexibility that artists need in order to nurture creative ideas when they strike -- without feeling inordinate pressure from other managers to 'mainstream' their employees' schedules.

see, this is exactly the kind of talk i think that's missing the point. of course it may be true on an anecdotal level, but when you look at the global face of how all forms of non-physically engineered products are sold, the larger the corporation, the worse the choice/quality/conservative values etc. it's not groupthink that makes mtv programming less effective, i assure you. they are too efficient for that. they experiment with how to best target the desired demographics [white kids who want to watch hip blacks, and all the spring break/real world stuff] and they drive the video-making culture that emphasizes consumption [cars, jewelry, clothes] which makes the demographic they draw even more desirable.

just like mcdonalds, microsoft, etc. they innovate constantly - tinker with the very minute parts, revamp the ad campaigns, etc. - but the innovation is all on the contentless side of the operation.

in a way, the problem with a company like mtv is a lot like the problem with a giant powerhouse political party. it must constantly focus on its own success, but unlike GE or boeing, that success isn't caused by making a good product but simply being more popular than its rivals. so instead of innovating on its ideas, the democratic party's big innovation courtesy howard dean was innovating on a fundraising tactic. the parties can't innovate on ideas - because they are already branded. the important thing is to stay on message, reinforce the brand, fine-tune the product in focus group...

anyway, back to the article's point. it's a bit reminiscent of those sad people in the late 80s / early 90s who would constantly overpromote acts of marginal appeal because they were culturally diverse... like youssou n'dour, ziggy marley, etc. not that that's a bad thing, it's just sort of idiotic to believe there's some sinister mechanism that dictates all multi multi millionaire singers happen to speak english. it's just a wild hunch, but i bet the 10 richest novelists in the world are all english or american. why should they be anything else?

a depressingly conservative set of values: conspicuous consumption, the primacy of the English language, the implicit acknowledgement that America is probably best.'

really, what he means by this is, the u.s. media terrorists have already won. also, to whom are those values conservative? to him, perhaps, but to the 14 yr old african youth, probably those values are rather exciting or strange or something.

i totally understand the sentiment, though; for me it's the amazingly vacant and unbelievably successful hollywood movies which stand for depressingly conservative values... but i don't try and rationalize that snobbism into some sort of meaningful point, because you just can't do it.

very contentless piece, actually

tell that to any metal fan who abandoned the stateside product years ago....

I'm having trouble unraveling your comments. Are you saying that the product/music doesn't matter, only the marketing? Because I would guess that it's when the marketing dictates the product (and from what I can tell that's what you're describing) that we tend to see this 'blanding' occur, and this is just one type of the groupthink that I think has an effect on the type of product/music that tends to emerge from a large corporate climate. (Or sometimes from smaller, market-oriented labels like K or Warp; idiosyncratic though much of the work may be, much of it does lean towards the uninspiring.)

Or are you saying that it's the nature of a large corporate climate to produce a product that will appeal to as large a group as possible, because it needs more resources to survive? Again, I would guess that there are as many different economic models for music as there are CDs, but the demands of making a product that appeals to wider and wider groups of people tends to strip it of its individuality.

And as far as the Democratic party goes: there's nothing stopping them from innovating on ideas but their own conservatism (though this goes for industry as well).

And Doug: 'European music sucks'. What, period? ;)

You never know; 'if the 60s' battles had been fully won', we might have seen more radical music flourish on a far wider commercial scale; Radiohead is surely an example that people will take to 'difficult music' of a sort.

When thinking specifically of Britain; a generation or two's childhoods were musically informed by the work of the Radiophonic Workshop, with its avant-garde, really quite frightening and intensely innovative/avt-gde music. And "Telstar" - no mainstream production or sounding record, even today - what of that?

I think certain examples show that people have some degree of openness in GB to 'different' musics from the norm, but it is the institutional frameworks which surround music and mediate between it and the 'consumer' (in our consumer world of today) = perpetuation of existing trends. Robin would rightfully bring in as historical context the blanding-out of the charts in 1968, which resulted from the closedown of diverse, experimental offshore radio stations and a traditionalist BBC hegemony [though I would point out that '69 was a rather stronger chart year, with an influx of reggae, Jimmy Webb etc.].

Doug is quite bizarrely deluded if he feels that 'the consumers' = loads of individuals each with very personal choices; and also if he feels that they have any ounce of power. At best, they are complicit in allowing the current system to go on as it is. And what a general shame it is, that those with power aren't doing much worthwhile with it at the moment. This isn't an age of risk-taking where it matters, commercially speaking; it's no 1964, 1969, 1977 or 1982. And is there a way out now that the hegemony is so rigidly set? I suppose at least we should be thankful there's been so much great pop in the last 5 years... but this has clearly been a cyclical phase, and not one built on lasting strategies or artistic planning by the big label bosses, or in the media. The system that perpetuates the current album and singles charts is hidebound in short-sightedness; there may be some good music coming out of it, but where is there any ethos you can sign up to? £ and $ are sadly *all* one can see at the forefront of influential people's minds.

-Large corporations just make much, much bigger mistakes than smaller ones.

-There are two types of people in the world: those who like things because other people like them and those who like things for other reasons.

-While diversity in the music industry suffers, make your own music! Or read!

-There's so much good music out there right now; someone's gotta hook Mr. Harris up with a mix.

Furthermore, your argument about experimental radio also only works if consumers like what they hear. The masses in England generally don't rush down to HMV to pick up whatever wierd gabba or noise metal etc John Peel is playing, it's simply outside of their tastes. Whereas things from leftfield that do strike a chord, eg O Brother soundtrack or the Buena Vista Social Club discs etc, have gone platinum.

I'm not a Clear Channel apologist - modern radio is crap. But there has to be some reason why people don't flock en masse to the internet stations and Sirius/XFM.

evan, sorry if it seemed garbled. i'm not saying the quality of the product doesn't matter - it certainly does in the sense that a catchy radiohead single will get far more airplay on a modern rock station than a noncatchy one - but it isn't groupthink, or lack of imagination, etc., that keeps a modern rock station from programming adventurously. it's like everybody complaining about radio stations always playing the same songs 10 times a day. they do that for a very good reason - more people listen to the station, sad but true.

i guess i'm saying, the work of the big media companies sometimes seems mysterious and foolish, and sometimes it is [when paying mariah carey, dumping wilco, whatever], but by and large, the results do speak for themselves: it's insanely profitable to be that corrupt and narrow-minded. it doesn't do us any good to say, "well, why don't they figure out how to be more creative?" i was agreeing with siegbran saying, they are creative, but on the product delivery side, not on the product itself.

-There's so much good music out there right now; someone's gotta hook Mr. Harris up with a mix.

but i think his point is more political, he probably likes all sorts of new records. [he probably likes coldplay] anyway he probably could think of a group of more ethnically diverse folks who deserve to take the places of the people he names. and he's sort of saying [wrongly i think] that the big media system limits itself to mostly american stars with maybe a token brit, and therefore these stars become aesthetically cheapened because of it [rather like the way conservatives view affirmative action, i guess]. just as the ceo of a company maybe contentwise is progressively doing great stuff to keep his company strong, and therefore in a certain way deserves our respect, if that company is despicable, he is too.

We're in a paradigm shift, right now. And I think that's why it may be hard to conclude this debate. The music business is changing as we type. Irrevocably. To the faithful I say: hold that thought. Things will become clearer later.

Yes, marketing isn't everything, and there are some bands who can sell loads of albums without a massive advertising budget, but those albums that are now at the top of the album charts are now those that have caught the attention of people who don't normally buy albums. To get their attention, the record company has had to pay for expensive ads on tv, and in the national press.

A very good example is Jamie Cullum. 'Jazz' has been around for ages, and there's been Michael Buble who's doing pretty much the same thing recently, but why has Cullum been able to sell so many more albums? Advertising.

One planet, one music. Heh. Ein Welt, ein Musik. MTV sloganeers, what jokers.

Smaller companies or labels can change their essential identity more quickly and decisively (I think you alluded to this in your comments on the Democrats) and their lack of organizational complexity allows them to run through more bad ideas more quickly; in theory, getting to the good ones faster as well. But what they're doing isn't necessarily any different than what a large company can do. They're just freed from the constrictions of large-scale groupthink and bureaucracy which tend to suffocate thought which may be truly innovative, but presses against the otherwise valuable status quo that enables large groups of people to work in tandem.

I think the overwhelming swell of anti-corporatism is, in part, due to this inability to change direction. Large corporations have shown that they will not change until they absolutely must, and the larger they are, the more they can spend in order to delay making any fundamental change -- at times putting their own needs above those of the people who support their existence through labor and spending. At this scale, protest, boycotts and yes, terrorism, should be seen as more than just obstacles to overcome but also as signs that something is wrong with the direction of the organization. In fact, they should be happy that on some level people are still paying enough attention to them to resist their actions, because it shows that there's still time to change before somebody, somewhere comes up with better ideas and dooms them to irrelevance.

Telling someone they're oversimplifying things is not a comment on their intelligence, since merely disagreeing doesn't mean one thinks the other is dumb.

To me, it's obvious that you weren't willing to give the article a chance because of your already proclaimed biases in other threads.

the whole Good Charlotte watered-down pop-"punk" scene is an easy example of this.

Are you joking????? QED.

My experience, when I listened to the radio on the way to school (45 minutes each way, no radio in my car) was that I'd hear a million bands with no identity on local rock radio. They were literally interchangeable in terms of style and sometimes, I couldn't tell who was who. Occasionally someone with an identity sprung up, that stood out, but that was it. It doesn't even have to do with innovation or originality, necessarily, but personality and creativity in songwriting.

I felt the same experience with hip hop radio

A cursory glance at the pop charts will show quite a range of music being made by people from quite a range of backgrounds and countries, not to mention quite a range of styles of music. More than Uh's record collection I'm willing to wager.

hahahahahahaahahahahahahahahhahaha.

Ok, I'm out of this discussion. You clearly have nothing to say. You are just merely being reactionary right now because the opinion rubbed you the wrong way, and you are refusing to actually *discuss* it without ad hominem flinging or dodging the point.

I have nearly 1000 albums in general spanning many many genres. I go from death metal to original broadway cast recordings. I couldn't even begin to list all the stuff I have in my collection. Your presumptuous nature is rather annoying.

You really are an utter fuckwit you know that!

Certainly, even non-mainstream genres have similar artists spring up, but I certainly don't feel that metal is a homogenous genre, due to the sheer breadth of the different styles, subgenres, and even the sheer differences between many of the groups WITHIN subgenres. I'd never confuse My Dying Bride with Anathema.

I see much less variance on rock radio, which doesn't seem to cover much ground at all.

and re:namecalling, you began the insults. anytime you feel like actually responding to my posts instead of repeating the phrase "non sequitur" and saying I haven't actually said anything feel free.

also that USA swastika is bordering on offensive.

I don't see much in the way of stylistic diversity on pop radio. Keep in mind I work in a store that plays that crap daily on the loudspeakers, and I hear it daily. It sounds just as boring and stale, not to mention generic, as it did to me 4 years ago.

As far as popular culture goes, it's the easiest culture to absorb because it is all around us. You hear the music everywhere...the radio, inside stores/shopping malls, television commercials, television shows, almost any public place. It gives me a fair representation of what it is.

A look at some of the more popular artists will show what I mean. Currently, Usher has the most popular single in the nation, and I consider it one of the worst songs I've ever heard to go #1, much less one of the weakest songs I've heard in any medium in the past year.

It's a very hip-hoppy dance r&b track with a rather uninventive melody, and a typical "chantable" chorus. Nothing as much wrong with the format as much as it is the rather bland execution. In fact, Usher is one of the most generic and faceless R&B artists to succeed at the level he has in recent years. His voice is unmistakable, but the style he sings is rather trite and the songs tend to repeat themselves over and over again, not to mention the fact that his melodies are far from creative. And yet the sad thing is, he's not even one of the people I would be most indictful of in this respect.

Pop radio right now seems to be full of the same things it always was, "divas", teenybopper pop, and adult contemporary, full of the same cliches.

The article in question in this thread was one that you read and merely said "OMG IT JUST SAYS POP MUZIK SUX", without even daring to critique the person's individual points and say why, just "reacting".

Yes, there's not homegeneity in the exact sorts of people making successful mainstream music; they are not of an easily pigeonhole-able background. But, the sonic texture of the music is very much homogenous in something like popular 'nu-rock' or neo-punk. Or indeed pop-idol pop or the Melea/Cullum axis of 'jazz-pop' for middlebrow Radio 2 sorts. In such genres, very little individuality stands out for me in the productions or performances... and there's also a promotional 'sameness' to the marketing aspect. Obviously, there are also people with mainstream success in the last 5 years who are defiantly individual in sound and approach; Eminem, Neptunes, Timbaland, Jay-Z, Outkast, Kanye West...

I myself would like an influx of character and characters; people not afraid to take positions and do something unusual with or within the pop mainstream. Whither the Spectors, Horns, Morleys, Enos, Bowies, Morrisseys, Meeks, Martins? Imagine a Morley-fronted Pop Idol...? ;)

There are comparable people in the hip-hop field, possibly, but I don't see people with such vision in the mainstream pop field or indeed in the UK at all, for example. Few artists it seems are willing to try and change the rules of the pop game; some who may be capable settle back and play to loyal non-mainstream audiences, rather than trying to bag a wider platform...

It's highly possible, I'd imagine, to believe pop to be breeding homogeneity and to really like the music, since it's actually a matter of who is singing the songs, what language they are in, what nationality/gender the singers are, what ethnicity the music in the background is.

So yes it's a matter of opinion but my point is it does not hinge on whether you like pop music or not. Ironically you slate me for reading the article as "omg it just says pop muzik sux" and yet to you the issue is purely based on your own opinion of what you hear on the radio.

Another ill thought out and oft-repeated anti-Americanism we hear over here is that Americans are small minded and constantly thinking in an insular manner. It's also ironic that while agreeing with one cliched anti-Americanism you conform to another.

Not the same.

Again, I'll have to disagree there. Yes, I've heard many of the same things you have in metal, too, but most of these artists aren't touted as the heavyweights of the genre, either. In pop music, a large portion of the artists considered the "crem de la crem" are nothing special and are indeed themselves part of the same homogeneity. Many of the metal acts you mentioned are just up and coming bands, many of which who will never make it. A comparison of established groups in both genres would paint a very different picture, in my opinion.

And I'm not trying to say OTHER genres don't experience any homogeneity, but I'd be hard pressed to see the same magnitude of an "assembly line" feel in extreme metal rather than pop music, even if it does admittedly occur in the former as well.

I don't generally find genres to be "inherently superior" to each other, but in terms of homogeneity, some clearly exhibit this more than others. I feel pop has covered a lot less distance in exploration in the last few decades than metal has, and I am not even saying I consider metal the most "progressive" genre on the planet (because I don't. A lot of it is just ear candy. But it's the example I can do the best with due to my familiarity with it.)

Prove this.

At least in his article above he attempts to take in race and language, but I've seen nothing here to see that you even understand the argument here, since everything you have said is a musical opinion and this is not solely a musical issue.

I never implied that it was. I have linked homogeneity to musical boredom. I have stated that the lack of exploration, recycled ideas, and generic output have contributed to the level of boredom in music. And I've always expressed my opinion of the "end result". If you've missed this, you're not reading.

"It's highly possible, I'd imagine, to believe pop to be breeding homogeneity and to really like the music, since it's actually a matter of who is singing the songs, what language they are in, what nationality/gender the singers are, what ethnicity the music in the background is."

It would be if you were someone that wasn't looking for diversity in your collection or didn't mind having a load of the same-sounding thing in your collection.

"So yes it's a matter of opinion but my point is it does not hinge on whether you like pop music or not. Ironically you slate me for reading the article as "omg it just says pop muzik sux" and yet to you the issue is purely based on your own opinion of what you hear on the radio."

Um, pardon me, but isn't pop music largely played on the radio? Do I not suffer through it 8 hours a day at work, too? Did I not just mention in the other message that there are various other environments where we hear pop music daily? Yes. And you ignored it, again.

If you keep taking out of my statements merely that I think the genre is boring, then you've missed the comments I've made regarding the "generic" and unadventurous or repetitive nature of a lot of the music, and that's your fault, not mine.

I don't think I've heard the diversity between a band like Pain of Salvation and a band like Anathema on pop radio recently, though

Alex Parks, Gates and Michelle McManus - as well as countless other forgotten ones - are better examples of the sort of thing I mean; is there really much variance in production and sound for these artists? I would hardly say there was anything that different about Hearsay too, expect chronologically, in that they developed from an earlier phase of the genre.

You're the one refusing to argue now, when I have decided to do so.

It would be if you were someone that wasn't looking for diversity in your collection or didn't mind having a load of the same-sounding thing in your collection.

This point is merely circular and only applies if you've proved your argument already, for it to be valid one must already agree with you.

Do you think people who listen to pop only listen to pop music? Furthermore, as I said, can you prove pop music sounds generic?

Can anyone prove how a particular type of music sounds. The only way in which one can attemt to prove homogeneity is through documented discussion of the background of the artists who make the music, or the language it's in. Even still I feel this is not a science.

x-post: I agree with you about gates and mcmanus and co, to a point, I don't think that necessarily proves the argument though. At some point I think that we as human beings are not hearing the same records, when one comes on the radio, the way in which they are recieved, collectively and individually, will always prevent any real homogeneity.

The writer, as noted above, is absurd to ignore the proliferation of electronic music in the last 5-10 years, which has more often than not been of European origin. Leading to the mainstream's appropriation of it with "Can't Get You Out Of My Head" and Kylie's other recent singles... but can we say Kylie is representative of Australia...? She doesn't seem to be definable any more by any given geographical place... If anything, that single transcended concerns about place. Was it actually big in the States, or not?

And I'd like to put it on record that I don't take a little-Englander anti-American stance. I may oppose Bush etc. and a certain amount of ethos about US popular culture, *but* one must realise you take some of this on board if you have liked pop of any decade... And by and large, there are far more US artists working on some very individual music that pushes pop's boundaries, *within the mainstream*, compared to the UK.

Also like, if the point of music was anything other than to make you happy or to sound good, and if that's his opinion, surely he SHOULD be championing techno!

But it doesn't work like that, fair enough, our aesthetics and political beliefs are not congruous.

now it needs to get a life

A Carmodian (sounds like an instrument!) collision within a band's aesthetic of some mainstream US influences, and a romantically British - whether socialistic or romantic Tory - core world-view, could create some very interesting pop, potentially. :)

I can imagine somebody making a comment like that, Jean-Luc, at any time during the last 40 years. Golden Ages are always imaginary.

Several months ago I was abroad on business, in a culture where the low-brow seemed to be a matter of sheer reckless indulgence. And I, having been sucked into this trap indulged my palette with too much ale. The shanty I found myself dancing to near disgusted me.

Is this state of bestial incoherence really something to strive for? Where is the ornate sculpture which has been a joy for our forefathers to behold?

J-L: Well, it is only exceptional visionaries who really can remould pop in the mainstream to higher artistic standards... these talents don't come along easily. It is a, perhaps *the*, moot point as to whether the doors of the industry are more closed to these sort of people than in previous eras...

Popular music will always take inspiration from non-mainstream genres. Look at the appropriation of Indian/Bollywood sounds recently. Arguments about authenticity are irrelevant to Pop culture.

I assumed Jean-Luc was taking the piss 3 posts back. You didn't have to overdo the irony, sunshine.

:) this is a dogmatic statement based on a philosophic standpoint which is hardly universal, ronan. "it must be scientific! or at least, you must offer some sort of proof based on pseudoscience like an anthropological viewpoint!" well, not really. a pragmatist would counter, look, consensus is often a very useful way of arriving at agreement... and that's how science works of course, not discovering universal truths but just cobbling consensus.

ok then, confronted by someone telling you that top 40 in england/us is quote unquote homogeneous, your hackles rise. i submit to you the proper attitude is to meet them on their terms, and not try and pull some bogus philosophical end-run around the argument. because you are trying to convince them, and doing an end run is just going to make them mad, right?

you put in a few asides about top 40 artists having diverse ethnic backgrounds. very well. in the context of the article we are discussing, the man's points run something like:

the superstars are american with token brit band [he names those he considers to be "only the handful of international superstars"]. they sing in english. they are selected by the media to be the stars, rather than by the audience. pop music used to be anarchic with mind-boggling diversity of choices, it is now a hegemonic monolith. it is sad that the superstars, even the ones like rem who inherit punk sensibility, are the face of globalization.

your counterarguments have really been mostly, "hey, top 40 is actually quite diverse, ethnically and imho sonically, though unfortunately the latter cannot be proved." i think harris would say, top 40 is not as diverse as it should be, and he would prefer that the list of definitive superstars would be like, half of them from the third world. he would probably grant you that top 40 is neat because it plays both hip-hop made by poor blacks made good, and suburban whites rockin with guitars and pop with pianos by blacks and by whites, and even some dance music by euros and the occasional reggae crossover or latin crossover. this is far more diversity than 1950s radio for example. but he simply wants more diversity.

and then, he thinks there is a political consequence of the list of definitive superstars selected by the media all being american english speakers.

personally, i have lots of problems with the argument. some of which i stated above - and we shall return to the mcdonalds comment you mocked. the argument also is rather confused on this idea that folk music was once a wild anarchic world of choice - seems to me that it was the opposite except to those who could travel and sample. but the basic premise i think is pretty sound, though it is based on cliche and snobbism.

ok, on to the question of consensus used to evaluate this feeling that many people have, that top 40 is homogeneous. we do it by making arguments based on aesthetic judgments, and expanding these arguments into sweeping generalizations, and responding to the counterarguments. if enough people hear the generalizations and counterarguments, and agree, then consensus is approaching. that's how it is in science and history both, though it is fuzzy in history.

for example, architecture critics might say, the building practices of the mid-20th century were too homogeneous, and postmodernism shook that up. other people will say, "how can you say it was homogeneous? look at le corbusier!" or whatever. but they cannot just say, "homogeneous! bosh. that's just an opinion!"

it is one of the characteristics of this article that the author is not specifically describing in what way he thinks his select group of superstars are aesthetically similar, or top 40 as a whole is homogeneous, compared to a theoretical musical meltingpot that includes more african and latin american and european and asian artists. you seem to be saying, hell, top 40's good enough, and harris can't really draw any conclusions sociopolitically about globalization because he's just wrong...

back to mcdonalds and aesthetics [ie the crossroads of ethics and aesthetics on mass production/marketing of music]: you mock that anyone could think top 40 is bad for the planet. if the themes of top 40 would be charted and collated, would they mostly be consumption, sex, a little violence and rebellion and depression? if the production styles have gotten ever more slick and technological, manipulating voices and creating disorienting soundscapes, do you begrudge some critics for trying to argue that that means something? [if so, fine; but that's how criticism of the arts works, right?] if the dissemination of american music supplants indigenous consumption to a certain extent, music produced in state of the art studios for thousands of times the cost of an african-made or mexican-made record, forcing the autochthonous music industries to upgrade or die... copy us music or face marginalization... can we not say, "this is the mcdonald-izing of music"?

mig, this would be all well and good, but have you read what the fella has written about Hip-Hop? He doesn't really want more diversity, he just wants fucking Gay Dad soundalikes on top of the charts in the name of diversity!

Can anyone prove how a particular type of music sounds. The only way in which one can attemt to prove homogeneity is through documented discussion of the background of the artists who make the music, or the language it's in. Even still I feel this is not a science.

I sort of disagree with this also, I mean it's true on a purely philosophical level but really, there are factors (like song structure, instrumentation, lyrical subject matter, etc.) that *can* be used to define whether or not two songs sound similiar in a way that almost everyone would agree with. I mean, I can still say that to me Good Charlotte and Usher sound very very similar, and that's as valid an opinion as any, but w/o any tangible arguments it can't really be used to justify any sort of theory.

the main flaws in uh's argument is that he jumped from "mainstream genres are homogenised" (which I'd agree in some cases, especially if you're talking about current Pop-Punk) to "the mainstream is homogenised". Yeah you can say that Good Charlotte sound a bit like Busted who sound a bit like Simple Plan, but can you really say that Good Charlotte sounds like Usher, or that Usher sounds like The Darkness, or that The Darkness sounds like Will Young, or that Will Young sounds like Sean Paul etc etc etc

Culturally of course the top40 *is* homogenic to a degree, but has there ever been a time when all countries were equal as far as the spreading of their kulcher goes? "Wow, there's a lot of english speaking, mostly american artists in the top40" = "wow, there's a lot of french fellas in the 19th century literary canon"?

is it REALLY valid without tangible argument tho?

What kind of proof are you looking for? Scientific formulas that analyze the chord progressions of every song from the last 50 years? I can give you a laundry list of a million groups I think similar or alike, and you're still going to say "omg, u need proof lol"

I mean, the amount of music outside of the top40 is always going to be more diverse than the one within the top40, how the fuck could that ever not be so???

this sort of thing gets difficult to argue because then you get down to giving examples of groups that sound alike only to have someone respond "no they don't", and vice versa. Or the responding poster roots out the one or two exceptions to the rule.

No, because as I've outlined above, there are arguments to be had about this which *can* go beyond the subjective.

One could say "the lyrics are juvenile" and cite certain lyrics, and the other person will go "those aren't juvenile".

That's perfectly valid, though, because I understand that the point of the topic is "debate".

However, me merely mentioning a large amount of bands who sound alike still doesn't really prove the point.

I could say "Good Charlotte sound like New Found Glory" and list about 10 other bands that sound copycat-ist and somebody could say "well that doesn't prove anything".

That doesn't mean I can't draw parallels between bands but it's almost important to note that even if a band cannot be compared directly to another band in terms of sonic quality that it is not free of the "generic" tag, since oftentimes "generic" music is the melding of the stereotypes of many bands, not just one.

Hahaha that's pretty much the definition of genre. They're sort of made up of conventions. And if they didn't hold to at least some of those conventions well then they wouldn't be of that genre.

look at metal. In metal, we have a band like Anathema, and a band like Cryptopsy, neither of which remotely even sound alike. Nor would I ever mistake melodic death band In Flames with Cryptic Slaughter. My Dying Bride sounds thirty worlds apart from Exodus. And nobody in their right mind would confuse Annihilator with Dream Theater.

in punk, NoMeansNo and Black Flag are about a zillion light years apart, much like the Minutemen and The Descendents.

Second of all, I would say the examples I gave are much wider in scope than the ones you did. The rap artists you've listed are in much more similar ballparks.

anywho, this topic is getting tiring to me at the moment.

Maybe to someone not familiar with hip hop they would be.

That's because the first person fucked up their argument from the get-go by including a value judgement. You can't have an "objective" standard of what a "juvenile lyric" entails, but you CAN discuss lyrical subject matter nonetheless - as in, "Good Charlotte's lyrics are frequently about problems written from a teenager's perspective" or "'Yeah!' by Usher is a song about meeting a girl in a club". You can of course say in both of these two examples that that's not ALL they are, but it'd be pretty willfully contrarian to not admit that they are *also* that.

look at metal. In metal, we have a band like Anathema, and a band like Cryptopsy, neither of which remotely even sound alike. Nor would I ever mistake melodic death band In Flames with Cryptic Slaughter. My Dying Bride sounds thirty worlds apart from Exodus. And nobody in their right mind would confuse Annihilator with Dream Theater.

Yeah, and in Hip-Hop you have Li'l John and Outkast and Kanye West and Missy Elliot and 50 Cent, who all don't really sound much like each other, and in Pop you have Britney and S Club 8 and Robbie Williams and Justin Timberlake, who also don't.

xpost oh I see Alex already made this point for me.

[the beat kicks in]

you think you're so slick, that you won't have to pay
you slay, get a baby, then run away
oh, but i got a trick for your monkey ass
the boys that don't pay get cased up fast
you ?answer to? janet reno and she lays the law
and when she's through with you, you'll wish you never saw
me or the baby or the place where we met
digging up old gold that you wish you could forget
the proof is here, it's livin and breathin
and janet reno's makin sure that i start receivin
all the money you get, all the checks you make
janet reno will make sure and take

*singing to the tune of "yankee doodle"*
janet reno comes to town collecting all the money
you stayed one day, then ran away, and started actin funny
she caught you down on 15th ave., you tried to hide your trail
she found your ass and locked you up, now who can post no bail?
(bust it!)

you're out in your 'vert, dickin her down
you start to get ?babblin? when reno comes around
you start changing your looks, your clothes and your car
you're not a mama's boy, you're a projects star
it's time to pay your dues, i mean pay in full
janet's in control, you ain't got no pull
you can't boss around like the boys on the ave.
and slowly but surely i'm gettin all that you have
from your bad-ass suits to your revlon cologne
your diamond rings, gold rope and everything you own
will get taken and then you be sad to the max
and i'll even get your income tax

*singing to the tune of "charlie brown" by the coasters*
he walks in a courtroom, cool and slow
and calls janet reno a no good dirty hoe
she locks yo ass up, now you don't know what to do
the boys on the ave. are sure dissin you
(hit it!)

janet reno gets justice for all
you can solve your problem with a phone call
so if you have a problem that you want resolved
just straighten it out when you get in court
put your faith in her and you won her respect
and if it's up to her you get all your checks
she helped me out of a jam, i'm doin well on my own
it could be the same for yours, been proven and shown

*singing to the tune of "this old man"*
yes my man had a brougham
but this time he's not drivin it home
with a knick-knack-slam-splack, you hit it, now you're gone
now i'm 'round town just pushin your brougham
the next time you start to make a selection
make sure that you got some protection
think twice the next time before you jump right in the bed
take a minute out to put a rubber on your head

yeah this is the big IF here, and harris doesn't answer it, he doesn't have a clue and doesn't care. another little englander complaint

I am Brazilian and foreign artists don't sell too much music here. Only artists like u2 or celine dion sell more than 100.000 cds.
People prefer brazilian music. Rock and roll groups are not big sellers - only bands like Legião Urbana (the biggest brazilian rock group of history, a cross between smiths and joy division) sells a huge number of cds.

But samba and mpb (brazilian popular music- ex: caetano veloso, tribalistas) artists can sell as much as 2.000.000 albuns.

And btw, AOL did not have the sucess they expected here - UOL, the biggest latin american internet provider, continue to be number one here. And Terra is number two.

-- Elvis is Dead (hello.bab...), May 10th, 2004 7:30 PM.

some hegemony!

The Guardian guy is misreading the essential contradiction between global corporations and nationalist governments. He's not the only one, of course; the corps. and the governments tend to get confused too, because they often find alliances in their short-term interest, and so they don't really think through what each other's warring ambitions mean in the long run. But, for e.g., consider the way U.S. brands have insulated themselves from anti-American sentiment by casting themselves as "global." I guess you could argue that their globalism is partly a ruse, but it's also partly not -- the trade-off goes both ways.

I'm no big fan of multinational corporations, and I'm all in favor of better international regulation to counter their influence. But I think it's a mistake to see them as instruments of nationalist governments; the relationship tends to be more nearly the reverse. Which is why globalization is happening economically a lot faster than it's happened politically -- which is, of course, as it's always been. Anyway, from what little I know of Brazil, I don't think it has a lot to fear from AOL. Or R.E.M.

You see I'm not sure I agree with this, or with Mig's (very eloquent) point on this front. We're talking about the world here, and people who don't even speak English. I'm not sure we can analyse the semantics of lyrical content purely on this level.

Usher's track contains a whole load of different vocabulary, not to mention being packaged in an entirely different way. The way in which we recieve this records simply has to be different, as far as I see.

Also I disagreed with the final paragraph of your post Mig

if the production styles have gotten ever more slick and technological, manipulating voices and creating disorienting soundscapes, do you begrudge some critics for trying to argue that that means something? [if so, fine; but that's how criticism of the arts works, right?] if the dissemination of american music supplants indigenous consumption to a certain extent, music produced in state of the art studios for thousands of times the cost of an african-made or mexican-made record, forcing the autochthonous music industries to upgrade or die... copy us music or face marginalization... can we not say, "this is the mcdonald-izing of music"?

I am not sure "ever more slick and technological" makes sense here, I mean is there actually a link between technology and lack of soul or actual artistic decline or is this just an essential part of arguments like Harris's (and yours?? I'm not sure to what extent you agree with him). Also surely American music is not forcing industries to upgrade or die, is there any suggestion in the article that there is no room for alternative music?

I apologise for my glib comments upthread towards the beginning, this is clearly going to be a very interesting discussion.

file me under 'neither' sweetcheeks. still, this is one of the most engrossing internet discussions i've ever had the pleasure to come across.

Usher's track contains a whole load of different vocabulary, not to mention being packaged in an entirely different way. The way in which we recieve this records simply has to be different, as far as I see.

Well I don't really think that takes away from the idea of objectivity or the possibility of a consensus here - sure, non english speakers can't tell you what the song is about, but this doesn't mean that they actually have a *different* take on the lyrics, except as just another sound triggering emotion (and thus subjective.) You're right tho, lyrics might be the worst example to offer in a discussion about globalism, and I used them mostly cos I'm lazy and they're easier to talk about thanmusic. But what of the elements that don't require language to be understood? Instrumentation, song structure, type of vocal harmonies and/or lack thereof...these things (which I admtidely with my less than stellar knowedlege of musical theory always feel a bit intimidated to discuss, mind you, thus the lyrics example) can be understood universally, and using them as a standard I think it'd be pretty hard to argue that the current mainstream is homogenised, unless you're using arguments that would basically render the entirety of current Pop music, successful or otherwise, as generic.

"Rock criticism is driven by the need to differentiate: music is good because it is different, different from the run of 'mainstream' pop, different in the special intensity of feelings it brings about. It follows that most judgments of music are simultaneously explanations of music: the judgment is the explanation, the explanation is the judgment. Musical descriptions are routinely couched, for example, in sociological terms: 'bad music' is so assessed by reference to a 'bad' system of production or to 'bad' social effects; critical evaluation works by reference to social institutions or social behavior for which the music simply acts as a sign."

"'[F]ormula' or 'standard' production that is not capitalist is not, in this discursive context, usually judged bad: the fact that all disco numbers in the late 1970s 'sounded the same' is a mark of unhealthy (commercial) formulaic production; the fact that all folk songs collected in east Norfolk in the late 1870s sounded the same is a sign of their (healthy) roots in a collective oral history. More generally, we could say that such 'formula criticism' tends to be genre-centric: minor variations in teeny-bop music (the fact that the stars have different vocal registers, say) are taken to be quite insignificant; minor variations in rural blues guitar phrasings are taken to be of great aesthetic importance."

...and I can just sense another Scottish figure on the horizon now, waiting to read this and post...

surely American music is not forcing industries to upgrade or die, is there any suggestion in the article that there is no room for alternative music?

quite so. this is part of what's fascinating to me about using a political approach to music [i never call it what it is, a marxist approach, because people laugh]. the alternative musics [in america and abroad] resist the impulse to upgrade, to copy the blockbuster chart hits, etc. and they are quite successful at it. this is the holy grail of liberal theory - the success of quality over quantity, the continued employment of artisans who fill the niches around the giant corporations. manufacturing doesn't work this way, obviously: given the current paradigm, all independant foreign carmakers will eventually be put out of business, bought out, or retreat to such a small underground that they cater to leisure class types who buy car kits or whatever [subsidization and patronage].

now, we also see things like iranian carpet-making becoming debased. traditions of musical instrument building becoming mechanized. all sorts of crafts following the upgrade or die paradigm. in music, movies, etc., the pressure is still there, and to be sure the globalization of the entertainment industry sucks some local entertainment dollars out of communities and puts it in the pocket of rich men in l.a. and new york, but it doesn't suck all the money, and alternatives thrive.

i mentioned yesterday that i agree with the principle of the article but see its point as relatively shallow/obvious - the lack of diversity of the big media exportation industry is a pity, it's probably damaging in those subtle ways that are hard to quantify [or even reify, apparently!], etc. you can disagree with the article but i think you're really just arguing that the damage is negligeable.

and so, counterpoints like "brazil/japan will always have a healthy indigenous music scene, u.s. superstars are marginal there" seem to dance around the point, from my perspective. nobody's saying that mcdonald's will put all the restaurants in brazil out of business, either. if you think the phrase "_____ is the face of globalization" is vacuous, fine; but if you are interested in globalization and its discontents, in resistance and analysis, maybe you'd better explain better why you think it's vacuous.

because you can fit mcdonald's in that _____, or coke, or a picture of a u.s. soldier and an iraqi prisoner, or a picture of g.w. bush and kofi annan shaking hands, or a picture from the mtv music awards. they all fit depending on the context of which front of the resistance we are looking at.

and in the context of music, i don't think it's too hard to figure out what that picture of mtv means... not that harris or i was discussing that yet; we're not putting the cart before the horse! if we were discussing what it means, what its effects are, we would talk about how nationalist politicians abroad fucking abhor the thematic content of american music and the way its singers dress, and use that as a straw man [not that it's really straw] to rail against the u.s. we would talk about how the homogeneity of american production values resembles the self-censorship of western media. how the ongoing lockout of hispanics and asians from the upper tiers of superstardom fits the american foreign policy agenda, or is caused by it. just some examples of things i don't want to discuss yet - if we can't agree that top 40 is homogeneous, for example, we can't talk about what i really want to talk about...

thematic point of harris' that i agree with, y'all disagree with: if it is a given that folk musics were village-based and aligned with local resistance of the power of central authority, and competed for legitimacy / traded ideas with the court music of academy training / state propaganda, in today's world, we must reorganize this outmoded dialectic into alternative musics vs. corporate music[s], both of them based on folk music song-style [the state music has abandoned academy training and all that].

it's good to have these sorts of objections raised because it helps to keep our heads clear. remember there are those who go to the concert hall and enjoy equally clementi and mozart - they can't tell the difference. does this suggest then, that there is no difference? that for hundreds of years, we have music critics and composers who have believed erroneously that mozart is deeper or better than clementi? we know that bach was dismissed for a long time, perhaps clementi will be rediscovered as well, when tastes change. why, indeed, is rural blues more expressive or more content-laden than "teeny-bop music"? well, why is shakespeare better than coward? [coward's a deliberately provocative choice; i could've said congreve or marlowe] in a void, or to aliens or computers, or humans with no connection to our culture, they are of equal value, certainly. shakespeare, mozart and robert johnson have been argued into importance. people have said, when robert johnson did x, he was making expressive musical acts which carried meaning. it is up to the fans of teeny-bopper music to say, well look, this is interesting for similar or other reasons. but as i said to ronan, you can't pull a philosophical trick and try to say, it's all subjective b.s.

I think we have to disentangle the aesthetics from the economics, though. Aesthetics is a quagmire. I think Harris was right to focus on such things as the English language. Because we aren't going to agree on whether the Top 40 is aesthetically (let alone ideologically) homogenous. (I think the answer to that is something like 'Whatever styles the big 5 promote become the 'court music' of our times.')

But we can easily quantify what language pop is in, and specifically what proportion of songs in a given country are in the language spoken in that country. We'd then get a profile which, if you tallied all the countries together, would show a flow, with English-language pop music flowing around the world, exporting always more than is imported. You would get a picture of a sort of cultural trade deficit: although the Japanese market share of English-language pop from the US is (say) 30%, the US market share of Japanese language pop is around zero.

Your feeling about that will depend on whether you think that culture is 'an exchange' or 'a wooden horse'.

naturally we part ways at the "wooden horse" notion: if I saturation-bombed the U.S. airways with ads & celebrity endorsements for Vegemite, for example, I don't think Americans would eat much more Vegemite (which is perfectly cool with me because this means MORE VEGEMITE FOR ME). The rest of the world is absorbing American/western/English-language culture 'cause the rest of the world likes it, and looking for more ominous meanings seems unscientific to me - is Tupac a folk hero in a few troubled African countries because Death Row has been so effective in marketing 'Pac to them? I don't think so. If western culture is a wooden horse, its body was built by the very countries into which the horse rode, so to speak.

'In 1993, the total turnover of the fifty largest audiovisual companies worldwide was $118,000 million (Statistical Yearbook, 1995, Strasbourg, European Audiovisual Observatory, 1995), but four years later, the seven major media conglomerates alone reached the same turnover figure (The Economist (company reports), 21 November 1998).  Furthermore, in 1993, 36% of the companies were based in the USA, 36% in the European Union and 26% in Japan. In 1997, over 50% of the firms were based in the USA.'

A massive concentration of power.

Best Whitehouse album by a country mile

if you are far-left, you have feelings of misgiving about globalization. you try and learn more about it, to better articulate those feelings, to second-guess your kneejerk prejudices too. we are talking about how the superstars of music play into it; how big media plays into it. when momus says "wooden horse", you can either try and think what he means that would be rational, or you can just pick one of many possible meanings out of the air, and show how dumb that one meaning is. so play along, it's more fun.

The rest of the world is absorbing American/western/English-language culture 'cause the rest of the world likes it, and looking for more ominous meanings seems unscientific to me

yeah, africans just happen to like tupac, he's the right fit for them aesthetically? better than any other conceivable musician in a non-anglo culture? don't you see it's a bit rigged towards anglos? harris asks you, do you like the fact that it's rigged? you guys all say, yeah, cos top 40 is great. harris asks you, what are the implications of foreigners knowing that it's rigged? you guys all say, dunno, they must like it.

The upside to this of course being that English allows communication between all sorts of countries who don't share a language. Like, I have a swedish friend who's hipped me to a lot of swedish artists, and much as I love, say, Hakan Hellstrom or Timbuktu, I still ended up liking the artists who sang in english (especially Marit Bergman) more, because even after he translated me the lyrics, the fact that I couldn't sing along to 'em just made things a whole lot harder. Same thing the other way around, too: the portuguese artists that he learned to like during his tenure here were ppl like David Fonseca and Gomo, who sing in english, not José Mário Branco or Clã. Yeah it's sad that ppl neglect their mother tongue but, until a real esperanto comes along (or unless you'd prefer every country to just keep its music to itself), it's necessary.

Sort of reminds me of the european trip that me & my swedish mate went on last Summer - Portugal, Spain, Germany, whateva, everyone spoke english, everyone had a way of communicating (except for the fucking french of course - HEY GUYS, IT'S NICE THAT YOU'RE FIGHTING THE USUK HEGEMONY AND ALL THAT BY REFUSING TO LEARN ENGLISH, BUT IT DOESN'T REALLY AFFECT THOSE DREADED IMPERALISTS, WHO USUALLY ASSUME THAT PPL OUTSIDE OF THEIR BORDERS DON'T SPEAK ENGLISH, ANYWAY, SO MUCH AS IT DOES THE POOR GERMAN KID CAUGHT IN THE CROSSFIRE WHO REALLY REALLY NEEDS TO KNOW WHERE THE BATHROOM IS.)

Going back to Harris' question: 'Who decides?' Expanding it: in culture, the big successes go to those who articulate universal themes. But the big question is, which particularity is going to get to stand for the universality? Why should a backlot in Burbank stand in for the whole world? (85% of screened films worldwide are now Hollywood products, according to UNESCO.) Why should ten stars be expected to incarnate the whole human story? Why should five audiovisual companies be entrusted with 'human music production and distribution'? Why should 'modernity' and 'the American way' be synonyms? Why should the American black underclass become a metonym for all underclasses? And why should we scrabble around for arguments to justify the one-way cultural street we see ever more clearly dominating our media landscape? Just because we feel powerless to change things?

Also who exactly is promoting pluralism here, what's your solution to the problems you highlight? Because I can't think of any which facilitate choice rather than restrict it.

You don't have to be 'obsessed with pop culture' or even pay much attention to Hollywood movies to see that that's, basically, a monopoly situation. It can be corrected by exactly the kind of cultural policies UNESCO and the EU promote, and which are called by their enemies of 'cultural protectionism'. We've already had someone on this thread bashing the french for this and telling them to speak English in their own country to facilitate tourism.

Or did you get into the rhythm of those last 5 or 6 sentences and get kind of dramatic!

So you think countries shouldn't make any concessions to tourism whatsoever (keep in mind I *was* talking about ppl in jobs that deal w/ tourism, I don't expect the average man on the street to speak english of course)? How does learning to speak english destroy french?

My great-grandfather and his father were not mother tongue English speakers. They spoke Gaelic, and in fact both won the bardic crown at the Mod for their poems in that language. Their children learned to speak English. What harm in that? But now Gaelic culture is more or less dead. We still have that bardic crown in our house, but it represents a vanished culture. What harm in that? What harm in extinction? What harm in monopoly? Isn't it obvious?

The 'benefits' are things like uniformity, conformity, convenience. The disadvantages are culturecide, pluricide, over-concentration, monopoly, political co-option, vulnerability to viruses, and a general deadening and cheapening and commodification of the whole texture of life.

(I do apologise for the comment about the french, tho, since it's based on very unpleasant personal experiences that I had which surely don't really reflect anything, I mean I was just unlucky w/ the ppl I interacted with.)

jeez, that's not a fair way to argue!

do you have the same attitude towards military imperialism as you do towards cultural imperialism?

I wouldn't call it 'balance', but I accept that the global culture has completely reconstituted the local cultures. Some call this 'glocalism'. It is a postmodern phenomenon, and I believe even fundamentalist Islam is part of it -- this is not the Islam we knew 100 years ago, but a specific reaction to globalism, an exaggerated and, I think, cheapened version of Islam. A gaelic revival of sorts is part of this 'glocal' movement, but as I said way up at the top of the thread, culture which is self-conscious of itself as 'the alternative' or 'the designated Other' is already compromised and circumscribed. It's dancing to someone else's penny whistle, whatever jigs it chooses to do.

Without wanting to get all apocalyptic, are the forces that MTV represents interested in diversity? No. Will they continue to expand until they achieve global hegemony unless forcibly prevented? Probably.

My point is that these cherished notions of "gaelic culture" etc have as much potential to lead to conformity, uniformity, and convenience as do ideas of global culture.

These really are the questions, I think, but I don't think their answers are easy to digest. Extinction/change is the way of the world: not in a cold capitalist "the big fish eats the bigger fish, get used to it" sense, but in a rather more philosophical "change is constant & this is an observable natural phenomenon" way. Does this mean, for example, that I don't think old castles (say) should be spared the wrecking ball? No; but I don't think consolidation of media power is the single most important factor (or even the second or third) in American/western culture's recent posited takeover of the rest of the world. Which, vide Brazil Malaysia Japan Greece et al., isn't a fait accompli or even an inevitability necessarily.

So much - so much to be discussed around these issues - so much of the western cultural tradition depends on these very issues and in framing them in a certain way (e.g. "With rue my heart is laden" from Housman, perhaps the rest of late 19th/early 20th cent Eng Lit as well)

NB M please to not read this in "John ornery, disagrees with Momus" voice as same is not intended here - this line of inquiry is certainly worth real (& ludic one hopes) investigation

It's dancing to someone else's penny whistle, whatever jigs it chooses to do

'How shall we tell the dancer from the dance' to thread

rambling now rather badly I suppose

I guess there must be a happy medium.

you mean, the way of nature. preservation of tradition is the way of man and his culture [lineage, the book, law & constitution]

Isn't this inevitable, tho? I mean, what good will ignoring the imperalist power do? You have to in some fashion if you wanna adress the outside world, and staying in your own comfort bubble would right now be an even more guaranteed method of cultural suicide than adapting to some of the "empire"'s rules.

Let's hope Java does as well in its battle against forcible Microsoftization.

vs.

belgian band sings in their native tongue, get small national fanbase, then get run over by MTVAOLMcDonald's.*

* not that there's anything wrong with that, I'm just sayin' that the other option isn't automatically worse.

but everything you cite is transitory! thank God for the malleability of the Constitution: I wouldn't want to live in an original-intentions Constitutional gov't; law, too, changes constantly; the book has been wonderful but its days are numbered, no?

Momus hang on to your "s"s, the "z"s have no flavour haha

if only Nino Scalia got his way...

I've always pronounced Z as "zee" rather than "zed". I blame Sesame Street.

What about the ecomonic benefits? There are certainly numerous cultural loses involved with globalization, but many "victims" of world trade have been happy to forgo a little local culture for economic stability. And globilization, whether cultural or economic, as J0hn pointed out, require the globalized to make that choice. While the "general deadening and cheaping and commodification of the whole texture of life" is a very real potential byproduct of "one planet", to assume that citizens of culturally rich, economically poor natious would automatically choose the uniqueness of their heritage over a job and something to eat requires the arrogance of someone used to the conviences of an industralized nation. This tradeoff doesn't have to occur with music, though; choosing hip-hip over djabdong doesn't effect Senegal's economy like their trade agreement with France. But pretending convenience is the only reason developing nations choose free trade ignores the drastic effects that globalization can bring.

yes, people from other cultures actually like american/homogenized/globalist culture and as i think momus said earlier in this thread, globalism not only increases cultural homogeneity, but also increases cultural fragmentation and pluralism. (the rise of the microgenre anyone?)

When anglo-centric media, be it film, music, whatever, moves into a small country with its own indigenous culture and customs, is the result usually more an all-out absorption of the larger power's culture or more of an amalgamation of the two into something unique? what does history show us?

I'm sorry if that's a bit wordy and awkward, I can't think of a better way to phrase it at the moment.

Though I'm in danger, I suppose, of falling back on the whole "can't we all just get along" routine, that's not my intention at all. I don't *want* to get along; when our paths cross, I'll want to fight you big boring corporate pop imperialist apologists until I'm too tired to fight anymore, then I'll want to get up in the morning and fight some more! 'Cuz, dammit, it's fun sometimes, and when we're done I can throw in some music that I won't hear in the corner sports bar and it will all be okay again. And if those days pass then I'll find something even more personal and obscure to keep my cultural needs occupied. But dammit, I need you bastards. God bless ya, every one. :)

i don't think it's cultural superiority so much as it's the ability to press into service so many more people into making the stuff, so that the range of possibility of differentiation (and the bar for success or impact) is great. doesn't the idea of 'punk,' a whole sector of pop making that is somehow against the rest, seem like an astonishing luxury? oh bondage! back to the fields, peasant. (i know i can't be the first one to have said something like this)

But really, is it possible to compare, say, Western sampling with African polyrhythms and say one is 'better' or makes 'better music'? I can admire a lot about the musical products of the big 5 western labels (all that ingenuity, all that training, expense, marketing!) and still think that almost everything they release is tawdry in some way, because it comes out of a culture which wants everything to be a plastic commodity, and which is essentially ugly. How can a culture that really only 'does' money do music well? I think the answer is that it can't, no matter how hard it tries.

I'm looking forward to your Gaelic gamelan record.

well but to be fair here doesn't exoticism enter into the question a little here: you don't imagine you'd find the music as fascinating if you'd grown up with it & heard it used in liturgical circumstances which you might, to go out on a limb, like about as well as you like the liturgical world of the culture in which you were raised? -especially considering that the more "traditional" the culture, the less secular the music, etc