CHAPTER 1

. . . It is a question of the Third Wolld starting a new histo_

¡y of Man, a history which will have ¡egard to the some_
times prodigious theses which Europe has put forward, but
which will also not forget Europe,s crimes. . . .
Perspectives on the Study of
Frantz Fanon
Non-Western Popular Musics

Dcflnltious

Much has been written about the distinctions between folk, classical,
and more recently, popular musics. It is often easy to regard such dis-
cussions, whether iustifiably or not, as gratuitous exe¡cises in abstract
taxonomy, and it is clear that they are generally of more import to
musicologists than to performers or audiences. Nevertheless, world
musics often do lend themselves to broad, if occasionally ambiguous
taxonomies, the clarification of which helps us to understand the nature
of these genres in terms of the attributes they share or do not share with
others. Moreover, many cultures themselves do distinguish between
folk, art, and popular music styles. Hence such categories often can and
should be employed as "-emic" constructs in understanding ethnic mu-
sic from the perspective of its own culture. What shóuld be avoided is
not the use of clearly defined classifications, but rather the tendency to
attach ethnocentric, class-centric, or idiosyncratic values to such con-
cepts. At the same time, in order to understand the relationship be-
tween these different kinds of music, one must define the underlying,
generally unarticulated criteria which distinguish them.
Many of the handy distinctions between folk and classical musics
do not help us when the notion of popular music is introduced. In
traditional societies, it may be useful, for example, to distinguish folk
music from art music by regarding the latter as the music of the domi-
nant classes in a society, but the appeal of modern popular musics may
fall across a wide spectrum of classes. Similarly, popular music has been
distinguished from art music with the criterion that art music needs
some sort of subsidy, whether from state or private sources, whereas
popular music is able to survive commercially. Again, however, this
crite¡ion does not distinguish popular music from folk music, neither of
which needs subsidies. Hence, contemporary criteria for distinguishing
¡ropular music tend to be bascd c¡n other factors.
'I
2 popuLAR MUsIC oF THE NoN-wESTERN woRLD
While the term "popula¡ music" has been used in a general sense in
English-language writings to distinguish music "of the people" from art
music associated with elites, there is clearly need for a term, or the
narrowing of this term, to describe the new forms of music that have
arisen in this century in close relationship to the mass media. Referring
to the broad concept of popular music as "people's" music, the editors
of Popular Music write:
, . . there is at the ve¡y least a significant qualitative change, both in the
meaning which is felt to attach to the term and in the processes to which the
music owes its life, when a society undergoes industrialisation. From this
point of view popular music is typical of societies with a relatively higlüy
developed division of labou¡ and a clear distinction between producers and
consume¡s, in which cultural products are created la¡gely by professionals,
sold in a mass ma¡ket and reproduced through mass media.r
This statement articulates some of the most crucial distinguishing fea-
tures of popular music, especially its association with and dissemination
by the mass media, and the reproduction of popular musical products
(especially recordings) on a mass basis for marketing as commodities.
The alleged correlation between industrialization and popular music
should, however, be qualified if the statement is to be applicable on a
global basis. India, for instance, may have highly developed heavy
industry, but film music may be quite popular in some rural areas that
are not remotely industrialized. Similady, industrialization is extremely
limited in Afghanistan, but a sort of urban popular music (kiliwdli),
disseminated primarily via radio and cassettes, has indeed arisen there.2
More specific distinguishing criteria of popular music are offered by
Nettl:
. . . a working definition of popular music in Westem society appears to
have several ingredients: 1) it is primarily urban in provenience and au-
dience orientation; 2) it is performed by professional but not very highly
trained musicians who usually do not take an inteUectual view of their
wo¡k 3) it bears a stylistic ¡elationship to the art music of its culture, but a
lower degree of sophistication; 4) in the twentieth century, at least, its
diffusion has been primarily the mass media ofb¡oadcasting and recording.
It is normally assumed that popular music existed before these mass media
came into existence, but it is difficult, in the period before the twenüeth
centu¡y in Europe and America, to distinguish between the three styles
(i.e., classical, folk, and popula¡ music).3
These ingredients may constitute the basis for a working definition of
popular music in non-Western as well as Western societies, with certain
qualifications and clarifications. We should, for bxample, exclude the
notion of auto-didactic learning from the "training" which Nettl
Persryctíoes on the Study of Non-Western Popular Musics 3
describes as limited, since the education and learning of self-taught
musicians may be extensive. Further, a popular music may well be more
sophisücated in certain parameters than the art music of its culture;
aside from sophistication in such matters as producing and mixing of
recordings (which should not necessarily be regarded as extra-musical
parameters), there are, for example, certain kinds of rhythmic complex-
ity in a James Brown sont (not to mention iazz) which are not found in
Mozart's symphonies (although the reverse may also be true). More-
over, the realm of musics which are diffused primarily through the mass
media is distinctive and substantial enough that we may well wish to
exclude from our definition of popular music those related genres re-
ferred to by Nettl which predated these media, regarding them as urban
folk musics or, if need be, in a category of their own.
We may also wish to add other disünguishing criteria of popular
musics. First is the distinction-more meaningful in traditional societies
than in Western culture-that popular musics tend to be secular enter-
tainment musics whose production and consumPtion are not intrin-
sically associated u/ith special traditional life-cycle functions or rituals.
Further, popular music in capitalist societies usually involves a "star
system," wherein the media promote personality cults around the musi-
cian's life-style, fashions, or private life; ultimately, this promotion aims
to distance the musician from the public in order to weave an aura of
fantasy and glamor about him. Finally, high turnover of repertoire is a
characteristic feature of popular music, where the media strive to pro-
mote continual interest in the most recent releases of an artist.
Distinctions are bound to remain ambiguous in certain cases. Indo-
nesían kroncong and Portuguese fado, for example, existed as urban folk
musics well before the advent of the mass media. They have since,
howeve¡, been absorbed into recording and broadcast repertoires and
are marketed and consumed much like any other pop genre. Modern
fado rr.ay be "enhanced" with orchestral or synthesized accompaniment
in typical pop fashion, but many recordings of fado, and most of k¡'on-
corg, do not differ substantially in style or orchestration from their tradi
tional predecessors. Are we, then, to consider them popular even if their
present form is similar or identical to one we would call "folk"?
Similarly, classical and folk musics may well be commodified as
commercial recordings and disseminated extensively via the mass
media, and there are certainly many avid aficionados of art music who
seldom attend live performances. Distinguishing these genres from pop-
ular music may ¡est upon such factors as the relatively low Profit of
¡ecord sales for performers and composers, the peripheral relationship
of folk music to the commodity market, and, above al[, the fact that
traditional musics evolved independently of the mass media. Such inev-
itable ambiguities should remind us that generic categories are not air-
tight and are to some extent arbitrary.