Global vs. Local Music: World Music and Mass Media's Impact

Introduction: The Global and Local Music Divide

It can be difficult to create a meaningful distinction between global and local music today. While some music is clearly created for local consumption — usually because of language barriers, cultural references, and distribution limitations — music itself is easy to transmit around the world using modern communications technologies. Furthermore, musicians draw their influences from other musicians as much as from their own cultures, and these influences are often multicultural in nature. It is unusual for a musician to be influenced only by other local musicians; international influences almost always exist.

Globalization as a phenomenon has brought more people to more places, and with this human migration comes greater exposure to different ideas and products. We still maintain the distinction between "world music" and local music, but it is not necessarily accurate or meaningful. Much of what we consider to be "our" music is actually produced for global consumption. Popular music from the West — artists from the U.S., UK, Canada, and Australia primarily — is consumed the world over. Not everything that succeeds in the West transfers to the global market, but enough does that it cannot be considered distinct from the category of global music. International pop often bears so many similarities to Western pop — in how it is made, marketed, and consumed — that the differences lie only in language and cultural references.

Critiquing the 'World Music' Label

David Byrne (1999) examined this issue in his essay "I Hate World Music," in which he decried the use of "world music" as a term meaning non-Western music. He argues that the term ends up being a way to compartmentalize non-Western music into a quasi-genre that a listener either consumes or does not. Implicitly, he argues, the term infantilizes world music, positioning the Western above the non-Western, as if the latter is more a curiosity and inferior in some way. This, he contends, perpetuates a Western-centric view of the world, leading potentially to "exploitation and racism." Treating music as music, regardless of its origins, is perhaps a better philosophy — rather than viewing all non-Western music through a singular lens that at best dramatically understates its diversity and at worst represents a form of institutionalized racism.

Bohlman (2002) also notes the inherent absurdity of the classification: "world music can be folk music, art music or popular music; its practitioners amateur or professional." Yet his argument still treats the broad world of music as a singular entity — a curiosity whose availability in the West is simply an example of globalization. Arguably, however, the consumption of that which is foreign is not really an example of globalization at all, but something humans have done for centuries. True globalization would mean not seeing a product as foreign at all — not even thinking to compartmentalize it as distinct from one's own culture. A genuinely global culture rejects the very idea that things are "foreign."

Globalization, Hybridity, and Musical Identity

On the other side of the debate, the world music market demonstrates that a distinction is still made between "global" — used as a code word for foreign — and "local." This distinction need not exist, and in many cases represents an outright false dichotomy. Several years ago, the most celebrated "world music" album was Amadou and Mariam's Dimanche à Bamako. While Amadou and Mariam are well-known Malian musicians, much of the work on that album was done by Manu Chao, a Parisian of Spanish descent. Other "world music" figures, such as the Buena Vista Social Club, play music that is wholly rooted in their homeland, yet they reached broad public consciousness via Westerners — in Buena Vista's case, Ry Cooder, and for other artists, figures such as Mickey Hart or Bill Laswell. What we commonly call "global" or "world" music is, in practice, a mixture of influences from across the globe, not something wholly foreign.

It is also worth considering whether people outside the West view Western music as foreign. This seems to vary by country. In some countries, such as Russia, there is a strong distinction between local and Western music — mirroring the way Westerners often frame the issue. In other countries, however, this distinction does not exist. Western music is simply one of many musical forms within a broader pantheon, and distinct genres of Western music are readily recognized and absorbed without being lumped together as a single foreign category.

Some forms of music are genuinely global in nature, though not all. Metal, for example, tends to have only limited distinctions based on geographic origin. For the most part, artists perform to genre rather than to country — black metal or death metal sounds much the same regardless of where the artist comes from. Other forms are less global, so there may well be some meaning to the local/global distinction. However, that distinction is not necessarily what we traditionally assume it to be, nor is it entirely logical. David Byrne's instinct is correct: the sooner we start thinking of music simply as music, the more it will become truly globalized, and the less imperialistic our views on the vast world of music will be.

Conclusion: Toward a Truly Global Music Culture

Thus, while mass media's initial influence on music was mainly negative — leveraging its oligopoly to reduce supply and ignore niche markets — ultimately those areas that mass media ignored flourished with the freedom that being ignored gave them. Today's vast diversity of music, spanning so many different styles, is in part a reflection of that backlash, albeit one also facilitated by lower transaction costs that have allowed people to produce and distribute music without the influence of major media corporations. As David Byrne suggests, thinking of music simply as music — without the artificial boundaries of "world," "local," or "global" — may be the most honest and productive way forward.

References

Byrne, D. (1999). Crossing music's borders: "I hate world music." New York Times, October 3, 1999.

Bohlman, P. (2002). World music: A very short introduction. Oxford University Press.

Middleton, R., and Manuel, P. (n.d.). Popular music. In Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press. Retrieved October 12, 2015, from http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com