Critical examination of marketing strategies in world music

¶ … Music Lacks Attention in United States

Consider the idea of "world music," which is defined by David Byrne (1993) as encompassing everything except "Western" music. Then, in Byrne's context, most Americans know very little about the sounds of world music. It is not because they necessary are of Byrne's mind, who claims to hate world music, but who nonetheless adamantly defends its place in the world and in U.S. music stores; but it is because world music is known to people only insofar as they know about, or have studied, or visited another culture. We cannot identify other than Western music by its cultural roots if we have no experience with the culture from which it comes from; it does not mean that we dislike the music, but that we have no experience with it.

Byrne makes a good point when he says that all other music, other than Western that is, sold in U.S. music stores tends to be lumped together in a single pick-through it bin. This means that there is no real marketing effort in the United States to introduce Americans to world music, or to perhaps take some obscure work of music and to help produce it in America into a phenomenon. Such an undertaking by an American music producer would not only be of great benefit to a world musician, but would introduce the American music listening public to the sounds of other cultures that could, for some, or even many, be music that they want to hear more of. Byrne acknowledges this in his article found in the New York Times, October 3, 1999 edition.

Bruno Nettl (2004) makes essentially the same argument, but points more succinctly to the classics of Mozart, using the opera the Marriage of Figaro as an example of a work that is rooted in a European heritage, but, unlike contemporary works, is embraced by the American mainstream. An appreciation for the works of Moazart, Beethoven, or other European composer of classical music; is a reflection of one's individual good taste. It reflects, too, a maturity that one has acquired a taste for the classical works, above perhaps and certainly beyond, the Western mainstream pop or rock.

Certainly Western music enthusiasts will remember the former Beatle, Sir Paul McCartney, whose own portfolio of rock-n-roll greatness is a testament to his talent and creative genius. Who nonetheless felt compelled to venture across the divide between Western pop, rock, and European classical when, some years ago, he conducted the London Symphony Orchestra in a classical work that Sir Paul wrote. While it drew media attention to the event, there did not appear any great demand for Sir Paul to pursue his classical creative side in any way that could be described as meeting a consumer market demand. For a brief moment in time, however, the world held its breath in anticipation of what they expected would be, like the Beatles other masterpieces; a classical masterpiece. Watching the news clips, it was for me, and probably many others too, a deflating moment when Sir Paul's first attempt at classical music failed to be Mozart by any other name.

Nettl points out that Mozart was not widely recognized as a genius during his own life time; McCartney, however, has long been hailed a genius. Mozart wrote and played the music of his day; McCartney did likewise, but nonetheless felt compelled to at least demonstrate, if not a talent for writing classical music, at least to show off his classical maturity through appreciation of that music. His appreciation, we might say, of world music.

As Nettl writes, and Byrne concurs, our musical tastes are a product of where we are in time in our lives. Our musical preferences are a reflection of our values, our morals, but not necessarily, Nettl says, a reflection of those of other societies. Just as we can be sure that once we cross the border out of the United States the laws that we are governed by will not be our own; so, too, can we be sure that our cultural tastes in Western music will differ too amongst the people whose culture we enter as we leave the United States.

Like Byrne, Jeff Todd (ed., 1992), emphasizes the point that each culture will have its own music; Mexico and Latin America have Salsa, and other cultural music as we move south through South America, and into the Caribbean islands, like Cuba. In each of these places, we find folk and cultural variations of music that, in the context of their culture, are easy to enjoy, but not necessarily what we would choose to listen to at home instead of Bob Seger or Joe Cocker. Even the way in which music is referred to, varies; not all cultures call it music (Todd, 1992).

A picture then begins to unfold of world music as something very different than what we are used to; but not so different, so unique, as to cause us to pursue it a level of phenomena in the way that Americans often pursue things or interests of different, strange, or unique nature. Rather, Americans wait to be lured to new things, including music, through clever advertising, or in the case of YouTube, the internet self-expression sensation; then when one is caught completely off guard, candidly -- or as candidly as one can be with the knowledge that they are linked to the internet where thousands, or even millions of voyeurs will be peeking in on them. Such was the case some years ago of a young high school student who videotaped his self chair rocking/dancing to a Hungarian rock rhapsody, becoming a YouTube most viewed (at that time) sensation. Equally important, however, is that the young man cast into the spotlight a world music, to which he chair danced, and caused the song to be one of the most widely recognized songs in America -- even only briefly.