What is world music?

Jan Fairley suggests that the relationship between global and local popular music is becoming more complex in the modern era. World music can mean two different things:

1. Anglo-American pop music that can be heard anywhere. These artists are owned by multinational record labels who try to create music that will play everywhere and therefore they try to make the music similar as possible.

2. Local indigenous music that is a cultural identity. This can involve going to hear a local band at the pub. It could also be a more cultural sound for example, bagpipes in Scotland, Country & Western music in Tennessee.

These types of local music are becoming more global through the Internet and through the homogenous record labels who have recently started taking these types of music adding a more “pop beat” to it and releasing it for the whole world to hear e.g Taylor Swift.

Therefore I would suggest that world music in fact refers to all music.

Is popular music a mass produced commodity, or a genuine art form?

Adorno said that “the whole structure of popular music is standardized,” that it was symptomatic of the politically and aesthetically destructive nature of the capitalist mode of production. The industry is an all-consuming production line that churns out mass produced inferior commodities. One of the biggest popular musical events of the modern era is The X Factor. Simon Cowell builds up new popular music ‘stars’ who exhibit part-interchangeability and pseudo-individualization, they all fit into the same cookie-cutter model, singing old songs that have been re-versioned. Winner Joe McElderry sang The Climb by Miley Cyrus which was written for her by an employee of Columbia records.

However, the “production” side of the music industry is becoming less important with the infiltration of the internet, where popular music that hasn’t been created by a massive record label is becoming more freely available. So maybe popular music is moving back to becoming a more genuine art form than we have seen recently.

How useful is a production of culture perspective in understanding the birth of rock and roll?

Was Elvis popular due to cultural perspective or just because people wanted to “Rock Around the Clock”? “(Such an) Easy Question”. Peterson came up with six factors that influenced the birth of rock and roll through analyzing cultural perspective. In the 1950’s, Vinyl Records were cheap to produce, less fragile and could be shipped in bulk. Independent distribution companies and record shops were formed because of the demand for the music.

However, there’s more to look at than just the culture of the time. Rock and roll had a massive impact on the mass audience who were “All Shook Up”; other musical genres didn’t have that. “It’s Impossible” to tell whether the birth of rock and roll came out of Peterson’s factors or if the factors came about because of rock and roll. Therefore, it is useful to be aware of cultural perspective when understanding the birth of rock and roll, but there are other factors that influence its popularity.

Is it reasonable to consider that rock music is gendered male?

From Led Zeppelin to Black Sabbath, the one most noticeable similarity between these acts is all the performers are male. People generally like music or films that they can relate too, or can idolize the lead performer, therefore, rock is regularly seen as male gendered. This goes further, and even guitar shops to rock guitars themselves are designed with men in mind. The shops are male terrain with mostly male assistants all focusing on the gendered nature of “cock rock”. But this is changing.

On the flip side women nowadays also live up to “rock music” stereotypes through creating a “rock chick” image, which includes clothes, makeup, hair and social behaviour with women embracing more of the “rock music” lifestyle.

In the past rock music could have been gendered male, but more recently women have become more involved. Even now the word “rock” evokes the idea of men but this is shifting.