Popular Music and

Globalization
CHRISTOPHER ALLEN S. MARQUEZ
School of Teacher Education and humanities
Social Sciences and Philosophy Department
 What does
it mean to
be a
musician
today?

What does it take to be recognized as one

on a global stage fraught with colonial and
post-colonial power relations?
 Music Place

GLOBALIZATION

Identity Society
 Globalization and music tend to conjure up
critical reflections regarding the notions of
culture, place and identity

Elucidates the complex

Music ‘plays
dynamics of globalization
out’ a sense of
common
nationhood or
..extremely mobile and
belonging in a
resourceful form of capital
context
Intimate relationship between musical structure
and social structure (Adorno, 1991).

‘signaled a shift in focus from

aesthetic objects and their
Production of content to the cultural
Culture (Tia practices in and through
DeNora) which aesthetic materials
were appropriated and used
to produce social life’
 Role of The Anthropology
musicians and of Music
their status in (Merriam,1964)
society
Musicians: wandering
Western Musicians between marginality
(17th and 18th and power
centuries) were
subject to religious or
royal patronage (20th century) capitalize
on marginality and posed
as representatives of a
future society
 Today: the dynamics of centrality and
marginality, power and submission that
continuously shape the lives and
livelihood of musicians, perceptions of
their work and the social place it occupies
play out on a much larger scale,
compounded by the asymmetrical
encounters made possible
globalization, post-colonial identity
politics and the commoditization of
music.
Re-Reading the History of Music and Globalization
 u s t
i c j o f
us i o n
m a t e ly
r ld loit r g
w o x p f l a
Is er e es o ial y
t h tu r o n ns b
r
fu cul t co tio iest l
h e o s n a l t h
t p ing e a
lo p ’s w s ?
v e rld i e
de wo nom
h e e c o
t
 Jean During:
transcultural music The Arabic
tradition emerged in the maqams, the
9th century as the Indian ragas and
Muslim expanded out of the Persian radifs
the Arabian Peninsula, which have been
westward towards North canonized as
Africa and eastward all national traditions
though central Asia and
the northern tip of the Neglected in
contemporary histories
sub continent into China
of globalization
Western music tends to emphasize its
emergence in Europe and subsequent
expansion to North America

..undermines the impact of

its encounters with other
music traditions of the world
and the intercultural relations
that contributed to the
making of Western musical
canon
 Reciprocal transfer of
cultural knowledge and
influence in terms of
Cultural
techniques, styles and
Exchanges
aesthetic value judgment in
continued
arts and crafts endured over
for
a period of at least three
centuries
centuries between the
Venetians and various
representatives of Arab and
Muslim sultanates and
caliphates
 Does world music open doors to
the discovery of musical genres,
styles and sub-genres that many
would otherwise not hear, while at
the same time providing an
income for musicians and
bolstering music-making?
 Processes such as
metropolitization and
urbanization have been
fundamental in making cross-
cultural musical encounters
possible in the past are still the
principal operating processes
that inform the globalization of
music today (During, 2011).
 Expansion of Islam,
thousands of
In the capital cities,
musicians from the
their music met
provinces and rural
and mutually
peripheries (in the
influenced each
history of the Muslim
other, giving birth
empire) travelled to
to new genres
metropolises such as
anchored in the
Baghdad in the 9th
urban and
century, Istanbul or
cosmopolitan
Tabriz in the 14th
realities of the
century and Delhi
imperial metropolis
during the Mughal
era.
Capital: The Technologies and Ethics of World Music
 “World music” (1987): music industry
actors in the UK decided to market a
growing number of recordings fusing
Western and different types of non-Western
music that defied the categories of genre
that were established then; recordings
whose sales were demonstrating an
increasing interest by audiences for
‘third world’ artists.
 Therefore…

World music as Discourse of

capital raises celebration
ethical questions of
opportunity versus
exploitation,
mutuality and Discourse of anxiety
reciprocity versus
hegemony
 Cosmopolitanism:
‘being in the
Discourse of world’
celebration

Discourse of anxiety Cultural

capitalism:
redefining culture
in the era of
globalization
Technologies of transport, of information and of
mediation, including social media platforms, have
made possible the unprecedented circulation of
cultural commodities such as music from around the
world, which are then consumed to gain cultural
capital and social status.

Music may reinforce unequal relations of power,

leading to hegemony and homogenization just as they
may provide possibilities of subverting them resulting
in the emergence of entropic forms of musical
expression that had not been imagined before.
 Activity: Chorus Writing
Duration: 15 minutes
Mechanics: Each student will be writing a
chorus of their song that is centered on the
concept of music and globalization (ie,
hidden propaganda of western music, loss of
local arts because of western music
dominance, role of music in perpetuating
good cross-cultural values). The chorus
should be limited to at least four (4) lines.