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I guess the ke phrase in this sentence is the possessive - whose music is it anyway? I find it very scary when folks on this list bash globalization and in the same breath gloat that the music form concocted by the US entertainment industry is taking over countries on distant continents, such as Africa and Europe. If I gloated that the US political institutions, such the US brand of "free market" is taking over the rest of the world, I would probably be banned from lbo-talk for life :-). This, btw, tells me that the fact that some lefties have no power whatsoever is not such a bad thing, because if they did people like me would be running for cover.
The Mac-donaldization of the entertainment industry has two very negative aspects. One is the homogenization of culture which kills the local traditions, and forces the local artists to toe-in the line and get a franchise from Hollywood to stay in business. I guess a performer wants popularity, but the popularity offered through US controlled franchise system is a very slippery slope, indeed.
Another negative aspect is taylorisation. Classically trained musicians are highly-skilled workers - however, the US-style mode of cultural production severely limits their employment opportunity, and instead promotes mass-produced genres, in which low skill musical assembly workers - which includes not only low skill musicians but also the whole entourage of technical personnel mass produces McMusic for the masses. While some of the rock and pop performers may have considerable musical skill, many do not. But the bottom line is that, regardless of the musician skill level, the mass-produced McMusic replaces the music produced by more skilled artists on a local scale, just like the assembly line killed artisan shops, and Wal-mart killed local retailers.
While we are talking about Wal-mart - because of its huge market share, Wal mart exec now are in the position to tell the record labels what kind of McMusic is or is not acceptable, and the records labels listen!
All that Taylorization, Mac-donaldization and Wal-martization business is, of course, nothing new - a standard fare in the long list of left complaints against US-style capitalism. What I find rather odd, however, is that when the same process occurs in the production of culture, the folks who decry McDonalds and Wal-mart, suddenly become ardent supporters of Macdonaldized culture and music. That tells me that these folks are either blinded by their own ideology and cultural preferences or disingenuous - thuggery is acceptable and even fun as long as it is our thugs who do it.
Wojtek