For many people globalization means, in cultural terms, an American entertainment empire that places the many and varied cultures of the world at the mercy of transnational corporations and their marketing teams. Some people see globalization as the spread of a consumer democracy. Yet, should we not be concerned, as the writers are here, that local and regional music cultures face an unprecedented onslaught from transnational industries and their ever-increasing production of cultural goods for global distribution? And what about the popular musicians who are promoted by these industries? Does the music business now have them in a stranglehold? Are they no more than cogs in a corporate machine? In this study an international group of scholars are not seeking to provide easy answers to such complex questions. Instead, they are intent on deepening our understanding of the key issues concerning globalization. Their critical scrutiny ranges from the structure and strategies of the transnational music industries to an examination of the local and individual appropriation of global goods. They also discuss dissemination through migration and communities of interest, and the ideological and political use of different kinds of music. In addition, the book offers itself as an aid to future research in its presentation of theoretical models and methodologies for analyzing the globalization of music.
Contents: Preface; Introduction, Andreas Gebesmair; Structures and strategies of the transnational music and media industry: Global strategies and local markets: explaining Swedish music export success, Robert Burnett; The corporate strategies of the major record labels and the international imperative, Keith Negus; One planet - one music? MTV and globalization, Keith Roe and Gust de Meyer; Beyond the transnational music industry - the global use and abuse of popular music: Sampling the didjeridoo, Susanne Binas; Race, ethnicity and the production of Latin/o popular music, Deborah Pacini Hernandez; Popular music in ex-Yugoslavia between global participation and provincial seclusion, Alenka Barber-Kersovan; Globalization - localization, homogenization - diversification and other discordant trends: a challenge to music policy makers, Krister Malm; Music policy between safeguarding and chauvinism, Alfred Smudits; Approaches and methods: popular music research between ’production of culture’ and ’anthropology’: Up and down the music world. An anthropology of globalization, Joana Breidenbach and Ina Zukrigl; Globalization and communalization of music in the production perspective, Richard A. Peterson; Measurements of globalization: some remarks on sources and indicators, Andreas Gebesmair; Hubert von Goisern’s Austrian folk rock: how to analyse musical genre?, Harald Huber; Index.
Andreas Gebesmair, International Research Institute for Media, Communication and Cultural Development, Austria and Alfred Smudits, Institute of Music Sociology, University of Music and Performing Arts, Austria Contributors: Andreas Gebesmair, Robert Burnett, Keith Negus, Keith Roe, Gust de Meyer, Susanne Binas, Deborah Pacini Hernandez, Alenka Barber-Kersovan, Krister Malm, Alfred Smudits, Joana Breidenbach, Ina Zukrigl, Richard A. Peterson, Harald Huber.
Reviews for Global Repertoires: Popular Music Within and Beyond the Transnational Music Industry
'Global Repertoires [is] not only interesting for the information and analysis [it] provides, [it is] as all books presenting research in progress are, stimulating because of the questions [it] brings to the reader's mind.' The World of Music
