Readings 2- WORLD OF IDEAS

1. Popular Music and Globalization by Yara El-Ghadban

Yara El-Ghadban is a Palestinian-Canadian novelist living in Montreal. She has published three
novels in French, but only Je suis Ariel Sharon (2018) has been translated into English. Her other
novels are Le parfum de Nour (2015), and L’ombre d’olivier (2011). El-Ghadban was born in
Dubai and moved to Quebec in 1989. She has a masters degree in ethnomusicology and a Ph.D.
in anthropology, both from the Université de Montréal.

Pop music is music appealing to the popular taste, including rock and pop and also soul, country,
reggae, rap, and dance music.

2. The globalization of popular music and transculturation Pop music transcends cultural and
economic barriers. In other words, the pop music industry has new opportunities to broaden the
global market and make significant profits as a result of globalization.
3. Yara el-ghadban focus in the following sections of the article on the music practices and
discourses through which contact, friction, and capital are articulated, contributing to the re-
imagining of boundaries of culture, place, and identity.

4. In this essay, I look back at the history of music as a result of cross-cultural encounters that took
place beyond the north-south axis and the time-frame of modernity that globalization as a
phenomenon tends to be limited in terms of its duration.

5. Through the use of new technologies, the author investigates how capital facilitates musical
interaction while also escalating conflict. This raises economic, political, aesthetic, and ethical
issues regarding authenticity, the representation of the Other, commodification, and ownership
of cultural forms like music through copyright laws.

6. Considering music to be popular is a value judgment that highlights the significant position
music holds in daily life as a highly subjective aesthetic experience, as a necessary component of
social interactions, and as a way to engage with power and Otherness (Harrington and Bielby,
2001).

Popular Music and Musicians in Society: From the Local to the Global

1. When the terms globalization and music are put together, they tend to conjure up critical
reflections regarding the notions of culture, place, and identity
Sociologists have been ahead of the game in their understanding of this relationship for many
years, but how do we get closer to a critical approach to cultural production content to the
cultural practices in and through which aesthetic materials were appropriated and used to
produce social life’ (DeNora, 2000: 6).

Articles by Paul Willis and Antoine Hennion -explore the ways in which music at once echoes,
enacts, communicates and comments on values and social formations.

The music of youth has been central to investigating the class, racial, and generational tensions
that permeate and inevitably lead to change in society. These studies led the way for socio-
cultural analysis of other genres of music like reggae, rock'n'roll, heavy metal, rap and hip-hop.
rt provides a sense of community and identity through the collective work of producing music
and other forms of art.

Howard Becker (1982) -demonstrates how any form of cultural production, including music,
results from the interaction of a large network of actors - even that which is individual in
appearance.

The political and economic undercurrents that run through popular music are explored head-on
by cultural studies scholars. As C. Lee Harrington and Denise B. Bielby note, their major
contribution has been in showing that consumers of popular culture are not passive dupes but
active participants in the creation of meaning.

Anthropologists and ethnomusicologists have directed their attention to the role of musicians
themselves and their status in society. Merriam's The Anthropology of Music (1964) discusses
the ambiguous social position of musicians. In other contexts, like the Arab world for example, it
is a deep belief in the power of music that has tended to shape perceptions about musicians.

he dynamics of centrality and marginality, power, and submission that continuously shape the
lives and livelihood of musicians. play out on a much larger scale, compounded by the
asymmetrical encounters made possible by globalization, postcolonial identity politics and the
commoditization of music. I will unpack these three components that together make the
globalization of music possible.

, Hall and Jefferson (1976) and Simon Frith (1981), among others, emphasize the links between
popular music and social change

, Hall and Jefferson (1976) and Simon Frith (1981), among others, emphasize the links between
popular music and social change