16 the world of music 35(2) - 1993

Whose World, What Beat: The

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
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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