Global Repertoires : Popular Music Within and Beyond the Transnational Music Industry

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.