Manu Dibango's "Soul Makossa" helped usher in the disco era in 1973. The funky French import was soon swamped in the US disco market by Eurodisco. The Transnational music industry, identity, and cultural imperialism.
Manu Dibango's "Soul Makossa" helped usher in the disco era in 1973. The funky French import was soon swamped in the US disco market by Eurodisco. The Transnational music industry, identity, and cultural imperialism.
Manu Dibango's "Soul Makossa" helped usher in the disco era in 1973. The funky French import was soon swamped in the US disco market by Eurodisco. The Transnational music industry, identity, and cultural imperialism.
Transnational Music Industry, Identity, and Cultural Imperialism Reebee Garofalo The people in my favorite Nigerian town drink Coca Cola, but they drink burukututoo; and they can watch Charlie's Angels as well as Hausa drummers on the television sets which spread rapidly as soon as elec- tricity has arrived. My sense is that the world system, rather than creating massive cultural homogeneity on a global scale, is replacing one diversity with another; and the new diversity is based relatively more on in- terrelations and less on autonomy (Ulf Hannerz, quoted in Clifford 1988: 17). There have always been occasional hints, even in the US pop market, that the international flow of popular music is more complicated than we like to think-like when Manu Dibango's "Soul Makossa," a West-African dance-floor hit that found its way to the United States and the rest of the world by way of Paris, helped usher in the disco era in 1973. 1 At that mo- ment, Dibango became the first African musician to have an international hit. Three years earlier the multi-talented Cameroonian artist had recorded "Tribute to King Curtis," in honor of the legendary African-American sax Garofalo . Whose World, What Beat 17 player who was responsible for a goodly number of those hot US rhythm and blues tenor solos in the 1950s. Here, the work of African diaspora was definitely in evidence, crossing continents in both directions, creating multicultural musical brews. Just as Curtis had influenced Dibango's play- ing, Dibango returned the favor with "Soul Makossa." As is often the case with musics that originate outside of mainstream channels, however, the funky French import was soon swamped in the US disco market by the smoother, sleeker, more produced sounds of what came to be known as Eurodisco (epitomized and exoticized by the chance intercultural alliance between European producer Georgio Moroder and transplanted African- American songstress Donna Summer). Nevertheless, Dibango's career flourished in other quarters as he went on to record with top jazz, salsa, and reggae artists, creating musical hybrids that stood as a testament to the power of his West African cultural heritage. The next generation of transcultural musical concoctions like these have now begun to penetrate advanced capitalist countries once again-this time as "world beat" or "world music." Such multilateral connections confront us with the reality that there are no easy answers to questions of cultural imperialism, even when one factors in the systematic global dissemination of US Top Forty. In their groundbreaking study of music industries in small countries, Roger Wallis and Krister Maim noted that the 1970s and 1980s were char- acterized by "the almost simultaneous emergence of what could be termed 'national pop and rock music'" in countries throughout the world (1984:302). It is tempting-though more often than not, inadequate-to explain this phenomenon on the basis of two related tendencies. First there is the inevitable drive on the part of all capitalist enterprises-in this case transnational record companies-to expand into new markets, a process that has been that much more encouraged in the current global fascination with market economies. Secondly, we have technology mak- ing the world a smaller place, propelling us ever closer to a global culture. Given such explanations, the transnational flow of music is often envi- sioned as a vertical flow from more powerful nations to less powerful ones, or as a center-periphery model with music moving from dominant cultures to marginal cultures, from developed countries-particularly the United States-to the rest of the world, with accompanying images of overpower- ing, displacing, andlor destroying local cultures. A number of researchers (Duany 1984, Padilla 1989) have described the development of salsa as a Latin-American working-class defense against the encroachments of rock. But while the seductively neat division of salsa as nationalist (as if this or that Latin American country "owns" salsa) and rock as imperialist 18 . the world of music 35(2) - 1993 (as if rock belongs only to the United States) speaks powerfully to a par- ticular moment of emergent Latin American ethnicity, further generaliza- tion denies the dynamic complexity of cultural development and change. Arjun Appadurai notes that "there are more Filipinos singing perfect rendi- tions of some American songs ... than there are Americans doing so" (1990:3). But he resists the obvious conclusion by theorizing the global cultural economy "as a complex, overlapping, disjunctive order, which cannot any longer be understood in terms of existing center-periphery models" (Appadurai 1990:6). The "disjunctive flows" that Appadurai talks about can be seen as the beginnings of a post-imperial model for analyzing global culture. 2 The purpose of this paper is to elucidate how we got from there to here with respect to popular music. The concept of cultural imperialism, according to Dave Laing, devel- oped as an idea of the left describing the cultural analog of international political domination. "It depends," says Laing, "on an analogy between the historical colonizing role of Western nations in politically subjugating the third world and the current role of transnational media and electronics corporations" (1986:331). Although the concept has proven to be attrac- tive and widely invoked, it rernains vague and limited as an analytical tool for a nurnber of reasons. First, there is a tendency to privilege the role of external forces, while overlooking the internal dynamics of resistance and opposition that work against domination. In this regard, it is assumed that post-colonial patterns of ownership continue to exist and that they deter- mine cultural forms and preferences. There is also a tendency to conflate economic power and cultural effects. In addition to underestirnating the power of local and national cultures in developing countries, this ten- dency assumes audience passivity in the face of dorninant cultural power and neglects the active, creative dimension of popular music consump- tion. Finally, the notion of cultural imperialism rests on the premise that the "organic" cultures of the developing world are somehow being corrupted by the "inauthentic" and "manufactured" cultures of the West. Each of these assumptions must be examined critically in order to arrive at a proper accounting on the balance sheet of cultural power. Wallis and Maim postulated the existence of cultural imperialism "when a culture, usually that of a powerful society or group in a society, is imposed on another in a more or less formally organized fashion" and when "the cultural dominance is augmented by the transfer of money and/ or resources from dominated to dominating culture group" (Wallis & Maim 1984:298-9). For Wallis and Maim, the concept has both a cultural and an economic dimension. With respect to popular music, then, the cultural im- Garofalo . Whose World, What Beat 19 perialism thesis would be inseparable from the pattern of internationaliza- tion which has characterized the operations of the music industry since its inception. The US recording industry has never been shy about exploiting its in- ternational connections. As early as 1878-just months after its creation- the Edison cylinder phonograph was demonstrated for enthusiastic audi- ences allover Europe. During the formative stages of the industry, how- ever, the United States was often on the receiving end of musics pro- duced elsewhere. Shortly after the formation of the Victor Talking Machine Company in 1901, producer Fred Gaisberg was recording in every music capital in Europe. Because of an elitist bias toward high culture, European art music was considered to be far superior to US popular music and in- ternational opera stars occupied the highest rung on the entertainment ladder. Accordingly, the top-of-the-line Victor "Red Label" series included songs and arias in every European language and many Oriental lan- guages, as well as recordings from the Imperial Opera in Russia. Colum- bia, the other major record label at the time, responded with a "Red Label" series of its own. Slowly, US popular music emerged from the shadow of European high culture and came into its own-first, through the efforts of Tin Pan Alley and, later, even more powerfully through rock 'n' roll and its many off- spring. During this period, the United States also achieved international dominance in the economic and political spheres. There has been an in- ternational audience for US popular music ever since that moment. Inter- national sales have always provided a handsome source of additional rev- enue for an ever-expanding domestic industry. But, until recently, the do- mestic market was still the centerpiece of the developing industry. The systematic exploitation of the world market as a condition of further growth did not become dominant until the 1980s. As early as 1977, both CBS and RCA were reporting that more than 50 percent of their sales came from their international divisions. At the time, there was still a marked division between artists who were aimed at the domestic market and those who were marketed primarily outside the United States. The surprisingly high international sales figures resulted from international artists like Julio Iglesias-artists who barely made a dent in the US market-outselling domestic product. Disco also tended to transcend national boundaries, but disco was, in many ways, a trans- national music right from the beginning. Its international success was based as much on the ubiquity of its international connections as a mar- keting triumph on the part of US-based record companies. By the 1980s, 20 . the world of music 35(2) - 1993 there had developed a more conscious strategy for internationalization based on the systematic exportation of Anglo-American popular music that was produced for the domestic market. The convergence of a num- ber of disparate social forces contributed to this reorientation. By the early 1980s, disco, then the defining sound of US pop, had be- gun to fall victim to the predictability of its own formula mentality as well as the racist backlash of hard rock fans. At the same time, punk, which earlier had infused the industry with a potential energy not seen in popular music since the 1960s, was born again as new wave, an umbrella category that included such diverse musical elements that it soon became virtually un- recognizable as a genre. At this point, the marketing categories of the US music industry were in sufficient disarray that, for a time, the term "new music" was used to describe everybody from Blondie to Michael Jackson. This can be a disturbing state of affairs for an industry that is structured according to marketing categories aimed at particular audience demo- graphics. During this period, the US music industry also suffered its first major recession since the late 1940s. Revenues from the sale of recorded music in the United States declined by 12 percent from an all time high of $4.1 billion in 1978 to a low of $3.6 billion in 1982 (RIAA 1986:4). The rest of the world soon followed suit, with total international sales dropping off some 18 percent from $11:4 billion in 1980 to $9.3 billion in 1983 (Hung & Morencos 1990:85). This was a fairly dramatic decrease for an industry that had more than doubled in size in the preceding five years. In re- sponse, the number of new releases in the United States was cut nearly in half, declining from 4170 in 1978 to 2170 in 1984 (RIAA 1986:5). Accord- ingly, production became significantly more restrictive, making it harder for new artists to break into the business. When the industry started to get back up on its economic feet, "the trade's recovery," according to "Billboard," "was due more to the runaway success of a handful of smash hits than to an across-the-board pickup in album sales" (January 14, 1984:4). It was, in fact, Michael Jackson's "Thriller" LP, released in 1983, which underscored the two most salient aspects of the industry's recovery: concentration of product and expan- sion into new markets. By 1984, with sales of $4:4 billion, the US music in- dustry had finally bounced back to its 1978 level. By this time, "Thriller," had earned a place in the "Guinness Book of Records" as the largest seIl- ing LP of all time, eventually reaching sales of some 40 million units world- wide. The US music business had clearly entered a new phase of interna- Garofalo Whose World, What Beat 21 tionalization, with "Thriller" signaling an era of blockbuster LPs featuring a limited number of superstar artists as the solution to the industry's eco- nomic woes. Interestingly, a significant number of these new superstars- Michael Jackson, Lionel Richie, Prince, Diana Ross, Tina Turner, and Whitney Houston, among others-were African-American. This was per- haps the first hint that the greater cosmopolitanism of a world market might produce some changes in the complexion of popular music at home. The lessons of multiculturalism were hardly wasted on Jackson. His most recent LP, "Dangerous," neither as interesting nor as popular as "Thriller," was, nonetheless, a model of international marketing, which has been riding the charts for well over a year. Following a superficial treat- ment of diverse cultural groups, the (edited version of the) video of "Black or White," the first single from the LP, ends with a masterful sequence of multicultural ':morphing" which makes it clear that the lowest common de- nominator of humanity can no longer be reduced to AnglO-Americans. But I digress. From 1985 on, the US industry resumed a pattern of more or less steady grow1h, and by 1990, according to "Billboard," it could boast year end sales of $7.5 billion in a world market estimated at well over $20 billion (April 6, 1991 :80). Given the reconfigurations of the global economy, how- ever, this recovery did not come about without some profound structural changes in the ownership patterns of the transnational music industry. A handful of transnational record companies have long occupied the power center of the international music business. It has been a fairly sta- ble estimate over the last decade or so that the five largest companies control roughly two-thirds of the world market. Each of these firms is, in turn, owned by a larger transnational conglomerate. EMI Records is a divi- sion of the British electronics firm Thorn-EMI, which also controls Capitol, Chrysalis, IRS and Rhino, among others. Polygram, which includes Polydor, Deutsche Grammophon, Mercury, and Decca as well as the re- cently purchased A&M and Island, is owned by the Dutch-based Phillips electronics corporation. The German Publishing conglomerate, Bertels- mann, bought RCA Records and its affiliated labels when the record divi- sion was dumped in the General Electric takeover of RCA. In 1987, Ja- pan's Sony corporation bought CBS Records (now Sony Music) for $2 bil- lion. At present, only one of the top five transnational record companies- WEA (Warner Bros./Elektra/Atlantic), a division of Time-Warner-remains in US hands, and in 1991, Time-Warner entered a partnership agreement with Toshiba and C. Itoh to the tune of one billion dollars. Further, with its $6.6 billion purchase of MCA in 1990, which also included Geffen Re- 22 . the world of music 35(2) - 1993 cords and Motown, Matsushita has also made a bid for a share of the in- ternational marketplace. To the extent that the United States is identified as the main imperialist culprit in the exportation of pop and rock, it must be noted that the United States is no longer the main beneficiary of the profits. The economic foundation of the cultural imperialism thesis is thus questionable. These new configurations also have implications for cultural represen- tation. When Michael Jackson recorded "Thriller" in 1983, Epic Records was US-owned. By the time "Dangerous" was released, the label had be- come a division of Japanese-owned Sony-CBS, which represents not so much a supranational cultural identity as a global manufacturing and dis- tribution network, ready to mass market anything that will sell internation- ally. Queries Simon Frith: "whose culture do Sony-CBS and BMG-RCA represent?" (1991 :267). Key to the success of these new transnational lei- sure corporations are the mass communication networks that crisscross the globe. It is in this context that technological advances become par' ticularly important to the discussion. In the early 1980s, advances in satellite transmission created the pos- sibility of instant national exposure for recording artists as well as the si- multaneous broadcast of performances on a worldwide scale, while the global penetration of cassette technology provided for individualized re- ception anywhere in the world. In the United States, the new transmission capability first became apparent in 1981 in the creation of the most pow- erful music outlet ever to be developed-MTV, which quickly became the fastest growing cable channel in history as well as the most effective way for a record to get national exposure. With 85% of its viewers between 12 and 34 years old, MTV also delivered the perfect consumers for a tight economy. Similar music video outlets soon appeared in Canada and Eu- rope. In the international music arena, the wonders of satellite transmission manifested themselves most dramatically in the phenomenon of mega- events-that string of socially conscious mass concerts and all-star per- formances, somewhat cynically dubbed "charity rock," that began in 1985 with Band Aid, Live Aid, and "We Are The World." Despite the humanitar- ian impulse which defined these events (or, perhaps, because of it), transnational record companies were aided significantly in their quest to find new markets, construct new audiences, and deliver new consumers by a most unlikely set of players-artists with a social conscience (Garofalo 1992). Exclaimed a jubilant Pepsi vice president John Costello in the monthly newsletter "Rock & Roll Confidential" in September 1985: Garofalo . Whose World, What Beat 23 "Live Aid demonstrates that you can quickly develop marketing events that are good for companies, artists, and the cause" (p. 1). At the same time, charity rock opened up possibilities for cultural poli- tics that were previously unthinkable, as evidenced in the themes for sub- sequent projects such as Farm Aid, "Sun City," the Amnesty International Tours, and more. No less a person than Nelson Mandela delivered his first international address outside South Africa at a rock concert in his honor. The global stage of mega-events also provided a moment of opportunity, albeit a limited one, where i.nternationa.iization itself was a two-way proc- ess. While Anglo-American music was disproportionately broadcast to a worldwide audience, the international sounds of artists like Youssou N'Dour, Aswad, and Sly and Robbie also gained greater access to the world market. It is, I think, more than a coincidence that the emergence of world beat paralleled the development of charity rock. Cassette technology has been another double-edged sword. The in- troduction of the cassette provided the transnational music industry with an efficient format for expansion into remote areas. Cassettes became the preferred configuration for music reception internationally in the mid- 1980s, and by the end of the decade they were outselling all other con- figurations three-to-one. However, precisely because the technology is portable and recordable, it has also been used in the production, duplica- tion, and dissemination of local musics and in the creation of new musical styles. In this way, the technology has tended to decentralize control over the production and consumption of music. Decentralized control holds out the possibility that new voices and new musics will find new avenues for expression. Why then does the cultural imperialism thesis persist? For many, there is the perception that the introduction of Western culture, technology, and organizational forms per se exerts a destructive influence, even in the ab- sence of strict economic control. There has long been an (often unstated) assumption among activists and supporters of cultural systems in the de- veloping world that mass mediation is itself a "bad thing"-a tool of impe- rialism whose inevitable cultural effect is one of devastation. I am aware that industrialization-which is to say commodification, commercializa- tion, and technological mediation of local cultures-introduces complicat- ing elements which can affect the use value of indigenous musics. Commodification can separate culture from everyday life. The establish- ment of a star system and the introduction of restrictive radio formats can further the process and limit the diversity of musics which are produced. Musics which have developed primarily in live performance and which 24 the world of music 35(2) - 1993 serve ritual social functions can now be packaged and sold to the world as entertainment (Garofalo 1992:21). In short, I take it as axiomatic that mass mediation exerts a transformative influence on traditional cultures. Whether or not such changes invariably negate the social utility of music, however, is quite another matter. One would be hard pressed to argue, for example, that reggae-itself a product of US rhythm and blues, commer- cialization, and Western technology-is a music that has been stripped of its political power and reduced to a mere commodity. On the flip side of this resistance to mass mediation one is presented with the presumably loftier task of preserving traditional cultures. To the extent that preservation is aimed at keeping alive that which is valued in the face of a rapidly changing world, the project is to be applauded. But I can't help feeling that there is often a thin line between "preservation" and "reification," the crossing of which can serve ends which are antithetical to the intended purpose. Commenting on early ethnornusicological research in West Africa, John Collins and Paul Richards maintain that an important element in ... ethnomusicological research ... was to conserve "traditional" (and therefore genuine) music against the impact of alien influ- ences ... against 'syncretist' adulteration. At another level it is, in effect, an as- sertion that change is an unusual, even improper process within African mu- sic. It would be easy to argue a crude functional link between this kind of scholarly work and the needs and requirements of European colonialism in Africa ... (Collins & Richards 1989:21). Collins and Richards pose the question as to whether such a perspective arises from a need "to construct the 'primitive' and 'traditional' as anti- dotes to the less desirable aspects of industrial progress" (1989:22). While ethnomusicological research has progressed since the period these authors are referring to, it is important to consider their comments in light of the force with which questions of identity, ethnicity, and locality have recently reappeared on the political agenda. "Nation-states are in trouble," says Stuart Hall by way of explaining what he calls the "return of the question of identity:" The nation-state is increasingly besieged from on top by the interdependence of the planet-by the interdependence of our ecological life, by the enormous interpenetration of capital as a global force, by the complex ways in which world markets link the economies of backward, developed, and overdevel- oped nations. . But at the same time there is also movement down below. Peoples and groups and tribes who were previously harnessed together in the entities Garofalo . Whose World, What Beat 25 called the nation-states beg'ln to rediscover identities they had forgotten (Hall 1989:13). It is in this dialectic of the global and the local-in the "disjunctures" that Appadurai describes-that new ethnic identities begin to emerge-identi- ties conceived not as essential, stable, static representations tied to a fixed place, but as a moveable, developing, relational process of identifi- cation that links the traditions of the past with all the dislocations of the world system. "So at one and the same time," says Hall, "people feel part of the world and part of their villages. They have neighborhood identities and they are citizens of the world" (1989:14). It is important to consider this conception of identity in looking at the question of cultural use, especially as it applies to US popular music. Can it be that the 25 million or so people outside the United States who bought Michael Jackson's "Thriller" were all simply the unwitting dupes of imperi- alist power? Or, is it conceivable that Jackson produced an album which resonated with the cultural sensibilities of a broad international audience. Taking a closer look at the roots of US popular music lends considerable weight to the latter proposition. The United States is a nation of immi- grants, willing and unwilling. Its cultural forms have historically come from many other places. The roots of rock 'n' roll-the formative influence of just about all currently popular styles-clearly reveal this multiculturalism. Among its defining characteristics are, of course, its Africanisms-an em- phasis on rhythm as an organizing principle, bent notes, syncopated phras'lng, the call and response style, etc.-brought forward through Afri- can-American genres and performance styles. There are also familiar Eu- ropean melodic and harmonic elements as well as a host of other influ- ences as diverse as Latin-American, French Creole, and Hawaiian (Garofalo 1990, Lipsitz 1982, Maultsby 1990). "It is difficult to argue, therefore," as Andrew Goodwin and Joe Gore point out, "that rock music is 'Western' in quite the same way that HOllywood cinema or British televi- sion news are" (1990:71). Part of the difficulty here arises frorn the fact that, until recently, popu- lar music has received scant attention in our atternpts to understand the international flow of culture and inforrnation. The actual social relations of popular music have either been disregarded cornpletely or inferred frorn that of other mass cultural forms. In fact, the social relations of popular music are quite unique in their complexity. Most mass cultural products, such as film or video, are generally produced and manufactured in one country and sold as finished products in another. This is to be contrasted sharply with popular music. According to Larry Shore, 26 . the world of music 35(2) - 1993 the vast majority of the international flow of music is not in the form of finished products but rather a master tape which is then manufactured locally. What is particularly important to an understanding of the international music industry in addition to this predominance of local manufacture, is that in many coun- tries the TMCs [Transnational Music Corporations] are thoroughly involved in marketing local music. It is true to say that a large share of their revenues comes from the sale of what are called international artists-usually American or British musicians-but in almost all countries in which they operate, espe- cially the larger markets, the TMCs need to generate local hits for the commer- cial success of their subsidiaries (Shore 1983:283-4). The exportation of international pop encourages the developrnent of a whole production and distribution infrastructure within the host country. The employees of the subsidiaries of rnultinational recording cornpanies, for example, are most likely to be residents of the host country. In order to make their facilities cost-effective, these multinational recording compa- nies typically get involved in the production of local musics. The availabil- ity of production facilities, in turn, also encourages the development of ancillary small businesses such as clubs and retail outlets, often owned and operated by local residents. On a deeper, cultural level, and particularly in those countries with strong musical traditions of their own, there is an interaction between in- ternational pop and indigenous musics which simply doesn't exist with other mass cultural forms. "The world had been flooded with Anglo-Ameri- can music in the fifties and six1ies," assert Wallis and Maim. "This influ- enced," they continue, "but did not prevent local musicians from develop- ing their own styles, adapted to their own cultures" (1984:302). The fact that various rock styles have proven to be so easy to export may be pre- cisely because they are relatively simple forms which are easy to indigenize. In this sense they may function either as something of a musi- cal template readily amenable to local content or as a set of stylistic ele- ments which can easily be incorporated into local musics. There are any number of examples which can be used to illustrate the specificities of this process. The early 1980s witnessed the development of underground punk subcultures throughout Eastern Europe, at a time when the importation of their formative musical influences was quite illegal, and transnational record companies derived no financial gain from the various black-market enterprises which distributed the music. Far from silencing local voices, these musics contributed to undermining decaying authoritarian regimes, as Anna Szemere (1992) argues in the case of the Hungarian punk avant- garde, "by creating, through the music, an alternative social and cultural Garofalo . Whose World, What Beat 'ZT space where the dramatization of a severe cultural and moral crisis preva- lent in contemporary Hungarian society was possible" (Szemere 1992:94). In the case of the rock nac/onal movement in Argentina, Pablo Vila (1992) notes that US rock styles served as the basis for the most co- herent and sustained oppositional cultural voice during the dictatorship of the late 1970s!early 1980s. In the People's Republic of China, a style called yaogun y/nyue-which roughly translates "rock 'n' roW-gained in currency during the growth of the pro-democracy stUdent movement. It is considered to be oppositional in both its lyric content and its aggressive (by Chinese standards) sound. Its most popular exponent, Cui Jian, is one of the artists who performed at Tiananmen Square (Brace & Friedlander 1992). While the connection between these examples and various rock styles is evident in the way they are named (and even more obvious when one hears the music), it is also the case that each is linked-by some combi- nation of language, concrete references, instrumentation, and perfor- mance styles-to an indigenous culture. Such cross-cultural contact may have been set in motion by the imperialist practices of the past, but, the results, at least as regards music, are usually closer to what Wallis and Maim call "transculturation"-a two-way process whereby elements of in- ternational pop, rock, and rhythm and blues are incorporated into local and national musical cultures, and indigenous influences contribute to the development of new transnational styles (Wallis & Maim 1984:300-1). Our difficulty in coming up with an adequate definition of world beat, de- scribed by Goodwin and Gore "as Western pop stars appropriating non- Western sounds, as third world musicians using Western rock and pop, or as the Western consumption of non-Western folk music" (Goodwin & Gore 1990:73), is a testament to the complexity of this process. How, then, do we position local cultures within the world system? James Clifford argues that research has tended to localize "what is actu- ally a regional/national/global nexus, relegating to the margins a 'culture's' external relations and displacements" (1992:100). As a corrective, he of- fers the concept of "traveling cultures," proposing not "that we make the margin a new center. but rather that specific dynamics of dwelling! traveling be comparatively analyzed" (1992: 1 01). One is reminded of the Jamaicans and Pakistanis in perpetual transit between England and their places of national origin or the Haitians and Puerto Ricans who carve out their existence between New York and their respective Caribbean islands. "Locality," for such groups, becomes a part spatial/part imagined "place" that exists at the intersection of geography, transportation, and mediated 28 . the world of music 35(2) - 1993 sounds and images. Pressing Clifford's notion of travel to its metaphorical limit, cultural location would involve a consideration of "forces that pass powerfully through television, radio, tourists, commodities, armies" (Clifford 1992:103)-and, I would add emphatically, music. This formulation of cultural location compels us to question another of the fundamental underpinnings of the cultural imperialism thesis- namely, the imagined "purity" of traditional musical cultures. When Paul Simon first heard South African popular music, he remarked that "it sounded like very early rock and roll to me, black, urban, mid-fifties rock and roll" (Feld 1988:33). This should not have been surprising since South Africa, like many other countries, was subjected to a steady stream of US musical exports in the 1950s and 1960s. Just as Simon's award-winning "Graceland" LP depended on an infusion of South African township jive, mbaqanga, kwe!a, and Zulu choral music, these South African popular styles were themselves heavily influenced by African-American rhythm and blues, soul, jazz, and gospel from the 1950s and 60s. Similarly the emergence of West African popular genres such as Nigerian Afrobeat and Ghanaian Afro-rock can be traced to the influence of the African- American end of the US popular music spectrum. It is probably more ac- curate to describe this process as the culture of the African diaspora re- turning home, rather than a clear-cut instance of cultural imperialism (Collins 1992: 189). If these emergent African popular musics call into question the pre- dominant image of a center overrunning a periphery, the example of reg- gae offers an even more powerful challenge to both the center-periphery model and its implied north/south flow. Having borrowed from Western technology and African-American and African culture, Jamaica's primary export has since extended its cultural tentacles both vertically and later- ally, influencing new wave subcultures in the United States and Eastern and Western Europe, and serving, like rock, as a global template that has given rise to the Afro-reggae of the Cote d'ivoire's Alpha Blondy and South Africa's Lucky Dube, as well as the reggae en Espano! of EI Gen- eral. More recently, similar multi-lateral flows have been documented among the popular musics of the Spanish Caribbean (Pacini Hernandez 1993) and the French Caribbean (Guilbault 1993). Particularly given the global penetration of music-related mass media in the last decade or so, the isolation envisioned by cultural purists is no longer even an option. Marcus Breen (1992) reports that the music of even the most isolated of Australia's Aboriginal groups, can no longer be reduced to discrete, folkloric cultural forms. Rather, they interact in a Garofalo Whose World, What Beat 29 highly complex fashion with the other cultural forms around them. It is in- teresting to note that the artists of the Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association (CAAMA) have embraced the use of advanced technology as a way of preserving traditional values. George Lewis (1992) pOints out that Hawaiian musicians have made a similar use of the technology that was put in place to meet the needs of the growing tourist trade. As I have ar- gued elsewhere, the cultural products which make use of this technology cannot be dismissed simply because they are commodities. Digitally con- structed recordings, worldwide broadcasts, and music videos must be seen as new forms of comrnunication which create new modes of interac- tion, unquestionably different than a "live" performance, but not invariably alienating. Musics thus produced are not less "authentic" than other musics; rather, our feelings about authenticity-like our copyright laws and our theories of culture-have failed to keep pace with technological advances (Garofalo 1992:24). So where does all this leave us? Like any enterprise whose main goal is corporate profit, the transnational music industry is certainly implicated in global economic inequities. But to argue that its cultural effect is inevita- bly one of depletion is to misunderstand the social dynamics of what Christopher Srnall calls "musicking" (1987:50). It is a concept which en- compasses not only composing and performing, but dancing, even listen- ing-in short, all the participatory activities that cut across the production- consumption continuurn. The concept can easily be extended to include appropriations of international pop and the use of advanced technolo- gies. What is important here is the notion that all the members of a given cultural group contribute something of themselves to the creative process and, in so doing, add to the vitality of a culture. My argument is not that oppression has ceased to exist, but rather that the cultural consequences of the emerging world system include chal- lenges and Opportunities as well as destruction and defeat. In this context, local cultures, according to Jocelyne GUilbault, are faced with developing a two-pronged strategy, "one directed to the protection, the other to the promotion of the local cultural capital and identity" (1993:34-5). Protecting tradition in the face of rnassive dislocation and deterritorialization often amounts to what Stuart Hall calls "an act of cultural recovery" (1989: 19). It is a projec,t that resonates with impulse toward preservation. The task of promotion, on the other hand, is a far messier project that forces a culture to engage the technologies and structures of the dominant culture in or- der to "participate in the workings of global economics and power" (Guilbault 1993:43). In this endeavor, there is always the danger of the 30 . the world of music 35(2) - 1993 greying or leveling of a local cultural form. On the other hand, as Louise Meintjes points out to regulate and incorporate subordinate groups, the dominant class is forced to reformulate itself constantly so that its core values are not threatened. In re- formulating itself it necessarily takes on some features of the subordinate groups that it suppresses (1990:68). Paul Simon's "Graceland" is a case in point. It is an album that incorpo- rates an incredible diversity of cultural influences ranging from quirky 1960's Long Island/Brill Building Simon lyrics, pedal steel guitar riffs from a Nigerian Juju band player via Nashville recordings, vocals from Sen- egalese Youssou N'Dour on break from recording projects with British pop star Peter Gabriel, and everything else from Synclavier samplers and drum machines to the Everly Brothers and Linda Rondstadt ... with exemplars of zydeco ... and East Los Angeles Chicano rock and roll ... (Feld 1988:33-4). While there may be cause for cautious optimism in this celebration of difference, it is important not to get swept away in the notion that multiculturalism per se suggests significantly more than the most bour- geois democratization of power. It must be understood that, in the reconfigurations of the global political and cultural economy, international capital itself is now multicultural. As capital becomes more accustomed to accommodating a broader range of cultural forms, as it surely must, the new diversity of global culture must not be allowed to paper over hierarchizations of race and ethnicity, let alone the age-old inequities as- sociated with gender and class. [Final version received: April 19, 1993J Notes 2 An earlier version of this paper was delivered at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Ethnomusicology, Seattle, WA, October, 1992. In Appadurai's model, the global cultural economy is comprised of a set of five ethnoscape, the mediascape, the technoscape, the finanscape, and the ideoscape, There is neither the time nor the space here for a further explication of Appadurai's categories. For a detailed applica- tion of Appadurai's model to the study of music, see Mark Siobin 1992. Garofalo . Whose World, What Beat 31 References Appadurai, Arjun 1990 "Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy." Public Culture 2(2):1- 24. Brace, Tim & Paul Friedlander 1992 "Rock and Roll on the New Long March: Popular Music. Cultural Identity, and Politi- cal OpPosition in the People's Republic of China." In Rockin' the Boat: Mass Music and Mass Movements. Reebee Garofalo, ed. Boston: South End Press, 115-28. Breen, Marcus 1992 "Desert Dreams, Media, and Interventions in Reality: Australian Aboriginal Music." In Rockin' the Boat: Mass Music and Mass Movements. Reebee Garofalo, ed. Boston: South End Press, 149-70. Clifford, James 1988 The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth Century Ethnography, Literature. and Art. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 1992 "Traveling Cultures." In Cultural Studies. Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson, and Paula Treichler, eds. New York: Routledge, 96-116. Collins, John 1992 "Some Anti-Hegemonic Aspects of African Popular Music." In Rockin' the Boat: Mass Music and Mass Movements. Reebee Garofalo, ed. Boston: South End Press, 185-94. Collins, John & Paul Richards 1989 "Popular Music in West Africa." In World Music, Potitics and Social Change. Simon Frith, ed. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 12-46. Duany, Jorge 1984 "Popular MUSic in Puerto Rico: Toward an Anthropology of Salsa." Latin American Music Review5(2):186-216. Feld, Steven 1988 "Notes on World Beat." Public Culture Bulfetin, Fall 1(1);31-7. Frith, Simon 1991 and its Discontents." Cultural Studies 5(3):263-9. Garofalo, Reebee 1990 "Crossing Over, 1939-1989." In Split Image: in the Mass Media. 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Wallis, Roger & Krister Maim 1984 Big Sounds from Small Peoples: The Music Industry in Small Countries. London: Constable. On Redefining the "local" Through World Music Jocelyne Guilbault 1. Why is Defining the "Local" a Major Preoccupation Today? 33 Since the early 1980s, much literature in the social sciences has sought to explain the processes involved in the restructuring and transfor- mation of the political and economic world order.1 Within this framework, many critics have emphasized the globalization of culture and, corre- spondingly, the cultural industries and new technologies involved in the process of change. What interests me, as an ethnomusicologist who has been involved mainly with the study of local communities, is how the sta- tus of the "Iocal" has been transformed within contemporary societies, but also why and for whom it has become vitally important to redefine it today. In this paper, I will use the phenomenon of "world music" as a case in point to assess the primacy of this question in the ongoing politics of popular musical culture. It is no coincidence that the question of defining the local has become such a pressing issue in the 1990s, not only for small and industrially de- veloping countries but also for traditionally dominant cultures. The globalization process of the 1980s has aroused fears worldwide, with varying reasons for different people, depending on their position in the scale of power and empire. For dominant cultures, the move towards a fundamentally delocalized world order articulated around a number of scattered production and distribution centres has imparted the fear that their traditional monopoly over the world financial and industrial system is being threatened (Robins 1989: 148).2 In relation to the music industry, the importance given by the intellectuals of the dominant traditions to defining the local can therefore be connected to a growing concern that this