Book description
"World music" emerged as a commercial and musical category
in the 1980s, but in some sense music has always been global. Through
the metaphor of encounters, Music and Globalization explores the
dynamics that enable or hinder cross-cultural communication through
music. In the stories told by the contributors, we meet well-known
players such as David Byrne, Peter Gabriel, Sting, Ry Cooder, Fela
Kuti, and Gilberto Gil, but also lesser-known characters such as the
Senegalese Afro-Cuban singer Laba Sosseh and Raramuri fiddle players
from northwest Mexico. This collection demonstrates that careful
historical and ethnographic analysis of global music can show us how
globalization operates and what, if anything, we as consumers have to
do with it.
"'Music and Globalization' includes stimulating
contributions, such as Barbara Browning's discussion of Fela
Anikulapo-Kuti and Gilberto Gil in relation to metaphoric and literal
forms of 'infectiousness'; Richard Shain's examination of Laba
Sosseh's project of Cubanising African popular music; and Daniel
Noveck's pondering of beliefs mediated through the place of the violin
in the lives of Ramámuri people in southern Chihuahua." -Julian
Cowley, The Wire, June 2012
Bob W. White is Associate Professor in the Department of
Anthropology at the University of Montreal and author of Rumba Rules:
The Politics of Dance Music in Mobutu's Zaire.
