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.

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