G L O B A L R E P E R T O IR E S

Global Repertoires
Popular music within and beyond the transnational
music industry

E d ited by

AN D REA S G EB ESM A IR
M ediacult, In tern a tio n a l Research In stitu te fo r M edia,
C om m unication a n d C u ltu ra l D evelopm ent, A u stria

A LFRED SM UDITS
Institute o f M usic Sociology, U niversity o f M usic a n d
P erform ing Arts, A u stria
First published 2001 by Ashgate Publishing

Published 2016 by Routledge

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Copyright © Andreas Gebesmair and Alfred Smudits 2001

The author has asserted his moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to
be identified as the author o f this work.
All rights reserved. No part o f this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any
electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and re-
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ers.

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Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identifica-
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British Library C ataloguing in Publication Data

Global repertoires : popular music within and beyond the
transnational music industry. - (Ashgate popular and folk
music series)
1. Popular music 2. Globalization
I. Gebesmair, Andreas II. Smudits, A.
781.63

Library o f C ongress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Global repertoires : popular music within and beyond the transnational music industry /
edited by Andreas Gebesmair, International Research Institute for Media,
Communication, and Cultural Development, Austria and Alfred Smudits, Institute o f
Music Sociology, Austria.
p.cm. - (Ashgate popular and folk music series)
Contains materials presented at a conference on music and globalization organized by
the International Research Institute for Media, Communication and Cultural
Development (Mediacult) and held Nov. 4-6, 1999 in Vienna, Austria.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-0-7546-0526-3 (alk.paper)
1. Popular music-History and criticism-Congresses. 2. Music trade-Congresses. 3.
Globalization-Congresscs. I. Gebesmair, Andreas. II. Smudits, A. 111. MEDIACULT.
IV. Series.

ML3470 G56 2001

306.4*84 2001022817

ISBN 13: 978-0-7546-0526-3 (hbk)

Contents

List o f C ontributors vii

General E ditor's Series Preface ix
Preface Xi

Introduction
Andreas Gebesm air 1

Part I: Structures and strategies of the transnational music

and media industry

1 Global strategies and local markets:

Explaining Swedish music export success
R obert Burnett 9

2 The corporate strategies o f the m ajor record labels

and the international imperative
Keith Negus 21

3 One Planet - One M usic? M TV and globalization

Keith Roe and Gust de M eyer 33

Part II: Beyond the transnational music industry -

The global use and abuse of popular music

4 Sam pling the didjeridoo

Susanne Binas 47

5 Race, ethnicity and the production o f Latin/o

popular music
D eborah Pacini H ernandez 57

6 Popular music in ex-Yugoslavia between global participation

and provincial seclusion
A lenka B arber-Kersovan 73

V
 7 G lobalization - localization, hom ogenization -
diversification and other discordant trends:
A challenge to m usic policy m akers
K rister M alm 89

8 M usic policy between safeguarding and chauvinism

A lfred Sm udits 97

Part III: Approaches and methods:

Popular music research between ‘production of culture’
and ‘anthropology’

9 Up and down the m usic world. An anthropology o f globalization

Joana Breidenbach and ¡na Zukrigl 105

10 G lobalization and com m unalization o f music

in the production perspective
Richard A. Peterson 119

11 M easurem ents o f globalization:

Som e rem arks on sources and indicators
A ndreas G ebesm air 137

12 H ubert von G oisern’s Austrian Folk Rock:

How to analyse m usical genre?
H arald H uber 153

Index 171

vi
List of Contributors

Alenka Barber-Kersovan, Germany

Executive Secretary of the Arbeitskreis Studium Popularer Musik, Hamburg
Susanne Binas, Germany
Research Assistant and lecturer at the Forschungszentrum populare Musik,
Humboldt-Universitat zu Berlin
Joana Breidenbach, Germany
Anthropologist - journalist living in Berlin
Robert Burnett, Sweden
Professor of Media and Communication Studies at University of Karlstad
Gust de Meyer, Belgium
Associate Professor at the Department of Communication of the Catholic
University of Leuven
Andreas Gebesmair, Austria
Research Assistant at Mediacult, International Research Institute, Vienna
Harald Huber, Austria
Assistant and lecturer of popular music at the University of Music and the
Performing Arts, Vienna
Krister Malm, Sweden
General Director of the Swedish National Collections of Music, Stockholm
Keith Negus, UK
Senior Lecturer at the Department of Media and Communications, Goldsmiths
College, University of London
Deborah Pacini Hernandez, USA
Associate Professor of American Civilization and Urban Studies at Brown
University
Richard A. Peterson, USA
Professor of Sociology at Vanderbilt University
Keith Roe, Belgium
Director of the Media and Audience Research section of the Department of
Communication Sciences of the Catholic University of Leuven
Alfred Smudits, Austria
Professor at the Institute of Music Sociology at the University of Music and
Performing Arts, Vienna
Ina Zukrigl, Germany
Social anthropologist living in Berlin

vi i
General Editor’s Series Preface

The upheaval that occurred in m usicology during the last two decades o f the
twentieth century has created a new urgency for the study o f popular music
alongside the developm ent o f new critical and theoretical models. A relativ-
istic outlook has replaced the universal perspective o f m odernism (the inter-
national am bitions o f the 12-note style); the grand narrative o f the evolution
and dissolution o f tonality has been challenged, and em phasis has shifted to
cultural context, reception and subject position. Together, these have con-
spired to eat away at the status o f canonical com posers and categories o f high
and low in music. A need has arisen, also, to recognize and address the em er-
gence of crossovers, mixed and new genres, to engage in debates concerning
the vexed problem o f what constitutes authenticity in music and to offer a cri-
tique of musical practice as the product o f free, individual expression.
Popular m usicology is now a vital and exciting area o f scholarship, and
the Ashgate Popular and Folk M usic Series aim s to present the best research
in the field. Authors will be concerned with locating musical practices,
values and meanings in cultural context, and may draw upon m ethodologies
and theories developed in cultural studies, sem iotics, poststructuralism , psy -
chology and sociology. The series will focus on popular m usics o f the tw en-
tieth and twenty-first centuries. It is designed to em brace the w orld’s popular
musics from Acid Jazz to Zydeco, whether high tech or low tech, com m er-
cial or non-com m ercial, contem porary or traditional.

Professor D erek B. Scott

C hair o f M usic
University o f Salford

Visit Project Pop: http://w w w .salford.ac.uk/FD TLpop/w elcom e.htm

ix
Preface

T his is an im portant and timely publication in the A shgate Popular and Folk
M usic Series. For many people, globalization m eans, in cultural term s, an
Am erican entertainm ent em pire that places the many and varied cultures of
the world at the mercy o f transnational corporations and their marketing
teams. Some people see globalization as the spread of a consum er dem o-
cracy. Andy Warhol once com m ented that no am ount o f wealth or power
could buy you a better Coca-Cola than the one the next person was drinking.
C om pare that with the social elitism associated with F rance’s best-know n
drink, C ham pagne. Yet, should we not be concerned, as are the w riters here,
that local and regional music cultures face an unprecedented onslaught from
transnational industries and their ever-increasing production o f cultural
goods for global distribution? And what about the popular musicians who are
prom oted 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 book an international group o f scholars are not seeking to provide
easy answers to such complex questions. Instead, they are intent on deepen-
ing our understanding o f the key issues concerning globalization. Their
critical scrutiny ranges from the structure and strategies o f the transnational
music industries to an exam ination of the local and individual appropriation
o f global goods. They also discuss dissem ination through m igration and
com m unities o f interest, and the ideological and political use o f different
kinds o f music. In addition, the book offers a valuable aid to future research
in its accom plished presentation o f theoretical m odels and m ethodologies for
analyzing the globalization o f music.

Professor Derek B. Scott

C hair o f M usic
U niversity o f Salford

Xi
Introduction
Andreas Gebesmair

M ediacult, the International Research Institute for M edia, Com m unication

and Cultural Developm ent based in Vienna, organized a conference o f ex-
perts on ‘M usic and G lobalization’ in Vienna from 4 to 6 November, 1999.
The conference, which took place in the context o f an ongoing research pro-
ject at the institute, focused on the changing conditions o f music production
and distribution in a globalized world.
M ore and more cultural goods are produced for and distributed on the
world market. This developm ent is boosted by transnational culture indus-
tries which are not only seeking to reach increasingly larger m arkets but also
appropriating the creative resources in different parts o f the world. Facing
these global strategies, the questions arise o f how local and regional m usic
cultures are affected by these strategies, if and under which conditions they
can be sustained and which opportunities are given for a global dissem ina-
tion o f local music - within and beyond the m ajor industry.
The papers presented at the conference were put together in this publica-
tion according to the distinction defined above. The articles in Part I are
mainly concerned with the structure and strategies o f the transnational m usic
industry, whereas the articles in Part 11 widen their focus to aspects of global-
ization beyond that industry: the dissem ination through m igration and com -
munities o f interest, the local appropriation and the ideological and political
use of different kinds of music. Furtherm ore, several approaches and m eth-
ods of analyzing the globalization o f music are presented in Part 111.
Keeping in mind that the placem ent o f each contribution within a chapter
tends to be arbitrary and that there is no strong distinction betw een the three
parts, the following introduction gives an overview o f individual aspects of
globalized music production by drawing on the articles in this publication.
Names in italics refer to the authors o f articles o f this publication.
As expressed in the subtitle, this publication focuses on popular music.
W ithout providing an exact definition, it should be m entioned that the arti-
cles are concerned neither with so-called classical music (in the occidental
tradition) nor with traditional folk music. The music discussed later on is in
one way or another connected to the rock aesthetic (Regev 1997) which has
been in the center o f the transnational music industry since the 1950s, al-
though it may rely on aspects o f traditional folk or classical music.
2 Global Repertoires

Structures and strategies of the transnational music and media

industry

W hen discussing globalization it could be useful to begin with an analysis of

the transnational m usic industry. This industry is the main force in global
m usic distribution, deploying m ass com m unication technologies, especially
sound carriers, satellite broadcasting and the Internet, to reach m arkets all
over the world. Like the developm ent in other industrial areas, the process of
globalization is accom panied by an extrem ely high concentration. O nly five
m ajor com panies hold about 80 percent o f the world market. Furtherm ore,
grow ing vertical and m ultim edia integration, as evidenced by the m erger of
W arner and AOL - a huge Internet provider - secures their high profits under
changing technological circum stances.
Additionally, the m ajor com panies have at their disposal a global web of
local subsidiaries and affiliated labels that serve as local distributors o f their
products as well as a pool for recruiting new artists. As R obert Burnett states
in his contribution, com petition betw een com panies is being increasingly re-
placed by internal com petition betw een subsidiaries trying to push their local
artists into the global m arket. Thus Sweden, though a very small country,
gained a strong position on the international market.
T his exam ple shows that the global repertoire o f the m ajor labels no long-
er represents the culture o f a certain country but is fed by different sources.
W hereas the industry follows the expansion logic o f all capitalistic enterprises,
the distribution o f m usic can no longer be expressed in term s o f ‘cultural im-
p erialism ’. ‘We can no longer sensibly define the international music market
in nationalistic term s, with som e countries (the USA, the UK) im posing their
cu ltu re on others. This does not describe the cultural consequences o f the
new m ultinationals: w hose culture do Sony-CBS and B M G -RCA represent?’
(Frith 1991).
B ut how m ight we describe the culture o f the transnational music indus-
try? W hat is the so-called ‘international repertoire’ distributed on a world
m arket and how does it sound? W hat criteria must it satisfy? Keith Negus re-
fers to the international departm ents o f m ajor labels which develop a set of
im plicit criteria to evaluate m usic and artists. Through the aesthetic ju d g -
m ent o f the international staff, a certain ‘cu ltu re’ has been established which
has a high influence on local subsidiaries and hence on the production o f mu-
sic. To gain support from international departm ents, the m usic has to fit their
standards w hich include a recognizably m elodic structure, the ballad form, a
voice w ithout accent and a globally com prehensive image.
N evertheless, the m ajor labels also produce so-called ‘local rep erto ire’. In
order to satisfy local dem ands on different m arkets, the com panies diversify
their repertoire. In som e countries the share o f local repertoire is fairly high.
W hile in som e countries such as A ustria and C anada the share does not ex-
 Introduction 3

ceed 15%, in others, like Japan, the UK, Brazil, or Russia, the dom estic share
accounts for more than 50% of the national markets. The category ‘dom estic
share’, however, does not necessarily mean that this music sounds unlike ‘in-
ternational repertoire’ (see Andreas Gebesmair).
The effort to adjust the repertoire to regional markets has its limits in the
m edia industry. C ontent analysis o f regional M TV program s undertaken by
Keith Roe and G ust de M eyer has shown that the regionalization o f the media
industry does not mean that program ing is getting more ‘regional’. Even
though M TV-Europe abandoned English as their dom inant language for
m oderation, little has changed in term s o f the origins o f artists and the lan-
guage o f the songs purveyed: Anglo-Am erican and English repertoire is still
predom inant.

The global use and abuse of popular music - beyond the transnational
music industry

The analysis of the music industry has shown the following: there is indeed a
globally expanding ( ‘im perialistic’) music industry which seeks to distribute
standardized products all over the world at high profits. But this industry has
no identifiable cultural center: Their products do not represent the culture of
a single country. Additionally, the industry considers local dem ands and pro-
duces local repertoire to satisfy this demand.
Yet there is a third argument for rejecting the ‘cultural im perialism the-
sis’: The dom inance of the m ajor industry and its repertoire does not mean
that local culture has vanished. Beyond the interests of the majors, there are
multiple ways o f using international music. Describing the developm ent o f
‘A ustropop’, Edward Larkey (1992) identified four different stages o f the in-
tegration o f international repertoire into local contexts: consum ption, im ita-
tion o f the im ported music by local artists, de-Anglicization and re-
ethnification. In this last stage, international repertoire merges with local tra-
ditions to form new genres which rely on different sources. This phenom e-
non o f ‘hybridization’ caused by new com m unication technologies and
global industries has struck all over the world since the seventies and eighties
(Wallis and M alm 1984, G arofalo 1993, Taylor 1997) and has given rise to an
abundance o f new genres from Bhangra to Zouk, from Reggae to Rai, from
Austro- to Turkpop. (See also the exam ples in the contributions o f A lenka
Barber-Kersovan, Susanne Binas, Deborah Pacini H ernandez, Harald H u-
ber, K rister M alm , Ina Zukrigl and Joana Breidenbach.)
But what chance has this music to reach the ears of listeners beyond the
im m ediate environm ent o f its origin?
The record industry has of course recognized that there is a profitable
global dem and for music with local color. But this process has also been
4 Global Repertoires

boosted by m ovem ents beyond the transnational music industry. In the eight-
ies for instance, w hen many D om inicans began m igrating to the USA , new
m arkets em erged for the distribution o f meringue, the D om inican R epublic’s
m ost com m on genre o f popular music. Deborah Pacini H ernandez argues
that m igration is a key but often under-appreciated aspect o f globalization.
K rister M alm also points to the translocation o f persons rather than sound
carriers. He reports o f ‘interlocal com m unities o f interest’ which exist be-
yond the transnational culture industry. Fans o f Trinidad carnival m usic, soca
and steel bands, have established a global web o f m utual exchange which
connects such distant countries as Sw eden, C anada, and Trinidad. The Inter-
net has proved to be an im portant device w hich supports this global ex-
change. Follow ers o f the Syrian O rthodox C hurch living in diaspora all over
the w orld created a virtual Syrian nation on the W orld W ide Web, which sat-
isfies all prerequisites o f a real nation from anthem s to children’s books.
B ut popular m usic, especially so-called ‘dom estic’ repertoire, is also sub-
je c t to political use and abuse. M usic and the term s w hich denote it are used
to strengthen ideological positions. Ideological content was transported for
exam ple in Serbian popular m usic production by relying on folk music ele-
m ents, w hile C roatian music production avoided references to Balkan folk
m usic by using international repertoire form s (A lenka B arber-Kersovan).
M ore generally, A lfred Sm udits shows that definitions o f 'dom estic reper-
to ire’ differ according to econom ic and political interests, ju st as ideological-
ly biased m arketing categories (like ‘Latin m usic’) represent a certain
‘h eg em o n ic’ view w hich som etim es contrasts with the dem ands o f ethnic mi-
norities (see D eborah Pacini H ernandez).

Approaches and methods: Popular music research between

‘production of culture’ and ‘anthropology’

W ithout regarding the w ide range o f different approaches and methods in the
history o f popular m usic research (see e.g. Shuker 1994, Negus 1996), I’d
like to touch on som e m ethodological aspects m entioned in the following ar-
ticles.
As described above, two different research areas are connected in the
analysis o f the globalization o f music. On the one hand, the transnational
m usic industry, its w orldw ide structure and the resulting conditions o f music
production is concerned. On the other hand, the diversity o f consum ption and
production on a local level is o f great im portance. Hence two different ‘ap-
p ro ach es’ seem to converge in the study o f global music production: one
which concerns more the ‘structural constraints’ through which m usic is
form ed and one which looks at the daily routine o f music activities and the
production o f 'm ean in g ’ in different cultures. Richard A. Peterson, Joana
 Introduction 5

Breidenbach and Ina Zukrigl give a short introduction to the basis o f each ap-
proach, term ed ‘production o f culture’ and ‘anthropology’. R ather than
forming opposing research traditions, their m erger provides som e advan-
tages for the study o f globalization. Recent anthropology dealing with global
cultural exchange (e.g. A ppadurai 1990, Hannerz 1992) has considered the
role of industry and technology. On the other hand, sociologists in the pro-
duction-of-culture tradition take also m odalities o f consum ption into account
(Peterson 1994).
Though the articles in this publication represent a wide range of ap-
proaches and their authors em ploy different m ethods, I ’d like to mention
three aspects which could be considered a com m on thread running through
the discussion.
First, the cultural developm ent is seen neither as a product o f solitary cre-
ators nor as an im m ediate consequence o f social change. C reation and con-
sumption o f cultural goods are interm ediated by a variety o f relatively
autonomous m ilieus or fields of production which deserve special scrutiny
(Peterson 1976, Becker 1982, Bourdieu 1983). Keith Negus explains how
popular music emerges from a com plex and conflict-ridden process o f bar-
gaining between different actors within the music industry. Furtherm ore, the
production process is constrained by a num ber o f factors such as industry
structure (Robert Burnett), m arketing strategies (K e ith R o e an d G u s t de
Meyer, Deborah Pacini Hernandez, Richard A. Peterson), legal and political
circumstances (Alenka Barber-Kersovan, Alfred Sm udits) and, m ost prom i-
nently, technology (Susanne Binas, Krister M alm, R obert Burnett).
This production process does not end with the delivery o f products but is
extended to consum ers who appropriate these cultural goods. In this sense
we can regard reception too as a process where the m eaning o f culture is pro-
duced and som etimes reappropriated by the transnationals. (See the term
‘autoproduction o f culture’ in Peterson 1994.)
Second, the research presented in this book relies on em pirical research
instead of a speculative and som etim es arbitrary search for ‘traces o f uncon-
sciousness’ or ‘preferred readings’ in m usical texts. The m ethods range from
the quantitative analysis o f industry statistics to participant observation, from
the qualitative interviews to style analysis. It is im portant to say that all these
approaches rely on a kind o f ‘controlled observation' o f reality and research
is accom panied by a continuous discussion of reliability and validity o f indi-
cators (Andreas Gebesmair). Even the interpretation o f m usical texts is
based on the analysis o f different m usical dim ensions which has to be de-
fined as exactly as possible (Harald Huber).
Third, the authors o f these articles hesitate to dem onize m ass culture (as
representatives o f the Frankfurt School have done) as well as to rom anticize
creative subcultures (as Cultural Studies academ ics have done). As Simon
Frith (1992) noted, the high affinity of some academ ics to youth culture and
6 Global Repertoires

the resulting m yth o f resistance are more reflections o f the situation o f intel-
lectuals than o f the reality o f young m usicians. Therefore, a closer look at the
m eanings people attribute to cultural goods is indispensable in understanding
different cultures. A nthropologists call for a so-called ‘em ic’ perspective, or
as B ronislaw M alinow ski put it: The goal o f ethnography is ‘to grasp the na-
tive’s point o f view, his relation to life, to realize his vision o f his world.’ (See
Joana Breidenbach/lna Z ukrigl.)

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