Planet Pop

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Planet Pop

• 3 Mystic Erotic Exotic
• (Representation in World Music)

Lecturer Katherine Brown Email
k.r.brown_at_leeds.ac.uk Room 2.21
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Todays Lecture

• Representation in world music marketing how
  world music is packaged in order to sell it
• Stereotypes of non-Western/non-metropolitan
  people and music used to sell records
• Case study Le mystère des voix Bulgares
• Commercial exploitation of non-Western musicians
• Case study Paul Simon Graceland

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Commodification and appropriation

• to understand or appreciate world music, it
  has not only to be presented by an intermediary
  but commodified. Tim Taylor
• To commodify to turn into an object that can be
  sold
• Intermediary one who stands between the product
  and the consumer, who interprets

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Commodification and appropriation

• Assumptions of world-music marketing to sell
  non-Western music to a Western audience
• 1) it cannot be appreciated on its own terms (or
  in academic, scholarly terms)
• 2) it needs to be explained by a Westerner
• 3) it needs to be sold to Westerners on THEIR
  terms, in terms they understand, not those of the
  creators appropriation

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Commodification and appropriation

• Music has no inherent meaning the meaning is all
  added by culture.
• Appropriation is the act of taking the music of
  another and giving it meaning by understanding it
  in ones own cultural framework (e.g. drone
  Eastern mysticism)
• HOW use of old, familiar stereotypes
  (misrepresentations) of non-Westerners generated
  in the era of European colonialism

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Aladdin negative stereotypes
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Aladdin positive stereotypes
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Mystical, magical (spiritual) utopia
I can show you the world Shining, shimmering,
splendid Tell me, princess, now when did you
last let your heart decide? I can open your eyes
Take you wonder by wonder Over, sideways and
under on a magic carpet ride A whole new world
A new fantastic point of view No one to tell
us no Or where to go Or say we're only dreaming
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Erotic the belly dancer
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Orientalism

• Same, more positive stereotypes of non-Western
  people used to market world music
• BUT these representations bound up in a history
  of colonial exploitation that can be replicated
  in the world music industry and in listeners
  consumption of stereotypes about third-world
  people that have real (economic/political)
  consequences

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Orientalism and exoticism

• Edward Said Orientalism (1978)
• Western representations of the East (and by
  extension any non-Western cultures)
• Difference East as Other (and, by definition,
  inferior in relation to governance sometimes
  superior in relation to nature and spirituality)
• Believed to be true, bolstered by writings of
  travellers, officials and (some) scholars
• Used to underpin the colonial enterprise

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Spiritual
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Spiritual
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Spiritual
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Buddha Bar China Dream
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Buddha Bar Nature Deep Believe
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Natural
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Ancient/primitive/timeless
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Erotic
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Celebration, dance

• All of this is dance/chillout/trance music
• All of it apparently celebrates world peace,
  globalisation and hybridity as celebration, world
  oneness

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Authenticity, utopia
All of this presents non-Western cultures as not
only essentially different, but as providing a
utopia, a haven, for tired-out Westerners, and
doing so on the basis of restoring a lost
authenticity, roots, from an earlier, less
stressful age
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The techno-explorer
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The techno-explorer
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Le mystère des voix Bulgares
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Paul Simon Graceland
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Paul Simon
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Ladysmith Black Mambazo
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Graceland controversy

• During South African boycott over apartheid Paul
  Simon expressed no interest in South Africa or
  political situation, and is thought to have
  reinforced white-black inequities
• Economics Ladysmith got paid a flat fee for
  recording and Zimbabwe concert Simon got
  royalties and international video rights
• Creativity Ladysmiths authorship only credited
  on Homeless, Simon on all the rest

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You can call me Al

• Pennywhistle South African kwela (black urban
  improvisational street genre of 1950s and 60s
  black townships in worst era of apartheid)
  ironed out for Western tastes
• Bass guitar style South African mbube (Zulu
  choral style prominent bass, call and response
  pattern, characteristic glides)
• Together, basic backing of the song township
  instrumental jive mbaqanga

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