Branding 'Western Music', Peter Lang Verlag, 2024.

2017

The three-day conference Branding 'Western Music' aims to foster an interdisciplinary dialogue on the intersections between Western music and the institutionalised management of culture. Whilst the entrepreneurial aspects of genres as opera or world music have been largely described, the emergence of the trademark 'Western Music' in relation to the commodification of leisure, the institutionalisation of academic discourses, and the politics of culture remains understudied. Particularly deserving of further attention are the ways in which international events, such as festivals, world fairs, diplomatic acts, or mass broadcasting have created possibilities for homogenisation and globalisation of a corpus of musical practices labelled as Western. The conference seeks to analyse the extent and the repercussions of a way of thinking about the social life of music, firmly established at the turn of 20th century, that has been taken for granted and therefore neglected in research. We invite proposals for papers addressing, but not limited to, the following themes:-Arts management and the commodification of Western music-Music and sociability: professional and amateur agents, societies, and institutions-Musical industries and creative practices: individuals, mediators, consumers-Emergence of academic disciplines: musicology and ethnomusicology-Music and materiality: production and circulation of musical objects and devices-Music and tourism: space and marketing-Concert programming trends Please send an abstract of no more than 300 words and a biographical note of no more than 100 words to Alberto Napoli ([email protected]) by 23 November 2016. Notices of acceptance will be sent by 19 December 2016. Bursaries to cover travel expenses may be available to assist postgraduate students presenting papers. The conference is part of the research programme of the interdisciplinary SNF-funded project:

This paper draws a perspective view on the position of Western classical music tradition in the world. It corrects a number of inaccuracies in modern scholarly views on Westernization of World music, and traces the historic development of music market from Middle Ages on, marking the most important achievements. The key notions that distinguish Western music from the rest of the world are identified and discussed in relation to their contribution to the world's culture. The role of Western popular music in Westernization is analyzed in comparison to the influence of Western classical music.

2012

In many ways the relatively recent phenomenon of “world music” has become the soundtrack for globalization, not only because it gives western consumers worry-free access to faraway places and sounds, but also because of the way that it mirrors the various sorts of extraction and appropriation that have come to be associated with late-industrial capitalism. The idea of music as a soundtrack, however, does not go far enough in terms of explaining how cultural products actually function in a global era. Like other forms of cultural production in the context of globalization, music is not merely a manifestation of global processes and dynamics, but one of the terrains on which globalization is produced.

2007

"Postnational Musical Identities gathers interdisciplinary essays that explore how music audiences and markets are imagined in a globalized scenario, how music reflects and reflects upon new understandings of citizenship beyond the nation-state, and how music works as a site of resistance against globalization. "Hybridity," "postnationalism," "transnationalism," "globalization," "diaspora," and similar buzzwords have not only informed scholarly discourse and analysis of music but also shaped the way musical productions have been marketed worldwide in recent times. While the construction of identities occupies a central position in this context, there are discrepancies between the conceptualization of music as an extremely fluid phenomenon and the traditionally monovalent notion of identity to which it has historically been incorporated. As such, music has always been linked to the construction of regional and national identities. The essays in this collection seek to explore the role of music, networks of music distribution, music markets, music consumption, music production, and music scholarship in the articulation of postnational sites of identification."

2019

In recent years, the globalization of music has become an important research topic for both musicologists and historians. On the one hand, scholars have followed the traces of music on its journey around the world and studied how musical genres have developed in a world shaped by coerced and deliberate migration. On the other hand, they have dealt with the conditions for the global dissemination of music and examined the influence of music on societies across the globe. From June 27 to 29 2019, historians and musicologists met at the Bauhaus University of Weimar to elaborate on these approaches by discussing questions concerning the cultural condition of music in the ‘age of empire’. The conference, funded by the German Research Foundation and convened by Claudius Torp (Kassel), evolved around three main concepts that were crucial throughout the period spanned by the conference: hegemony, creativity, and change. All panels and contributions covered – each in its own way and with its...

World music-the umbrella category under which various types of traditional and non-Western music are produced for Western consumption-has been waiting to happen for a long time. At least since the invention of new technologies of reproduction at the turn of the twentieth century and the realization soon after that records, far from simply a means of selling phonographs, were in fact themselves a lucrative and renewable resource. Relatively little is known about the mar ket ing strategies of the first international record companies, but clearly these companies distinguished early on between "exotic" music for affluent European and North Ameri can audiences and music-perhaps no less exotic-intended for people elsewhere who wanted to hear the sounds of their own culture ). Yet today, listening to the various forms of music being marketed under the label "world music," something appears to be different about this historical moment. From our current perspective, world music gives the impression of opening our ears to a vast realm of cultural and po liti cal possibilities but at the same time seems to usher in vaguely familiar forms of cultural expansionism and exploitation. If world music has indeed become the soundtrack for globalization, then music is not merely a manifestation of global processes and dynamics but is the very terrain on which globalization is articulated.

JCDSKAR, 1(1) 2020 January, 27-38 pp [email protected], 2021

This paper aims to clarify the term 'World Music' from different perspectives such as the academic, the educational and the perspective of the popular music market. Investigating a few examples recently presented during the largest World Music fair WOMEX and set into relation with terms used locally in a cross-functional context, some suggestions will be made to provoke further discussion in the field of music practice and transmission. The UNESCO Global Alliance for Cultural Diversity points out that WOMEX is "The most important international professional market of World Music of every kind. This international fair brings together professionals from the worlds of folk, roots, ethnic and traditional music…" Knowing that World Music is primarily an item created for global business, processes and transformations take place that should not be neglected academically. How much world contains World Music? Whose world? Which music? Under the banner of World Music, ethnic labelling and global promotion structures replace often an individual appropriation of musical products that might be of high potential in music education. Focusing on this possibility, the discursive presentation is based on live observations, interviews and most recent literature.

Art and the Challenge of Markets: How Cultural Politics and Art Worlds Have Adapted to the Market-Based Turn in Society, Volume 1 , 2018

Various scholars have described an array of social and cultural changes in Western societies that have contributed to the erosion of traditional cultural hierarchies. Some fear that the once-vaunted positions of the performing and visual arts, for example, are being undermined by commercialization—whereby crucial choices about the production and dissemination of works are increasingly informed by the economic bottom-line rather than by aesthetic concerns. Alongside the declining hierarchy and growing commercialization of the arts, some scholars point to the rapid expansion in the volume and variety of cultural goods in the global marketplace and the weakening of national boundaries and cultures, which, to an unprecedented extent, has destabilized and “deterritorialized” global cultural flows to an unprecedented extent. Of course, the impact of the heightened pace and reach of globalization on cultural fields remains a topic of debate in the literature. Certain scholars take a more positive view when arguing that globalization serves to “relativize” national boundaries and strengthen a sense of belonging to a world society, while others take a more negative view when arguing this international flow is better described as an asymmetrical imposition of cultural goods from the United States and other affluent countries on the non-Western world. Yet, amid this vibrant debate, a growing body of comparative research shows significant cross-national variation in both the degree of change in cultural hierarchies as well as in the extent and impact of cultural globalization. However, most studies focus on a single country or on a single point in time, thereby making it difficult to examine the territorial and temporal aspects that lie at the core of the globalization debate. By focusing on changes in the musical field in four countries from 1955 to 2005, our aim is to build on upon cross-national comparative research that addresses how cultural hierarchies change over time and, in particular, to explore what relationship such changes have to the degree of international orientation to musical actors. Music provides an interesting case by which to explore such changes because it has experienced considerable “de-hierarchization,” as indicated by the waning status of classical music relative to popular music. Using media coverage in elite newspapers in the four countries from 1955 to 2005 as an indicator, this chapter considers whether there is an increasingly global orientation towards musical “actors” (e.g., soloists, ensembles, composers) over time in the United States, France, Germany, and the Netherlands. If so, to what extent has this occurred and how is such attention distributed temporally? Is there a greater attention towards “non-Western” countries in newspaper coverage of music, as suggested by de-territorialization? By exploring such questions, we aim to address the relationship between cultural classification systems and cultural globalization from the vantage of these nations, while taking into account their respective relationships with music from other nations around the globe. Much of the debate about the impact of globalization on cultural fields focuses solely on popular cultural forms (e.g., hit songs; Achterberg et al. 2011). We diverge by focusing simultaneously on forms of both high culture (e.g., classical music) and popular culture (e.g., rock music). This makes sense because the emergence of Western high culture and popular culture as salient distinctions went hand in hand (DiMaggio 1982, 1991). Hence, the creation of a field devoted solely to “transcendent” music of the past occurred alongside the creation of a large-scale field devoted to “faddish” music of the present, with the former emphasizing a “logic of consecration” and the latter a “logic of commodification” (Dowd 2011). Their connected trajectories continue in the present, including a “blurring” of their boundaries. For example, scholars have noted a shift towards consecration occurring in popular music—as when some (but not all) rock is celebrated as art (Schmutz 2005; Schmutz & Faupel 2010; Van Venrooij & Schmutz 2010)—and a shift towards commodification in classical music—as when orchestras perform music from Hollywood soundtracks (e.g., Star Wars) in an effort to offset shrinking audiences and declining funding (DiMaggio 1991; Dowd & Kelly 2012). Indeed, the “de-hierarchicalization” mentioned above deals squarely with the relative positioning of classical and popular musics. Hence, we shall see below how both fare in the face of globalization.

African Music: Journal of the International Library of African Music, 2007

Critical studies in mass communication, 1998

Music in the twentieth century means, among other things, big business of mass communication that crosses global boundaries. Several theories address the possible effects of such global corporate influences on local culture. This essay reviews such theories and evaluates them in relation to popular music as a cultural product. Specifically, we review the history and structure of the popular music industry, examine applications of the cultural imperialism theory to popular music and the subsequent debate, and survey newer theories that developed as a result of the debate. These theories are then assembled and organized along a continuum to establish the progressive relationships between the numerous forms musical flow can assume. The resulting model is meant to be a heuristic so researchers can keep in mind that not all cultural exchanges are sinister. Factors that may help to mitigate the predictions posed by cultural imperialism theory in the global flow of music are also examined.