Modern Music Culture

During the 20th century, most music has become accessible worldwide through a technological revolution that has produced high-quality sound and video recording, radio and television, and computers. It is difficult to overstate the importance of these innovations on musical cultures around the world. It has become possible to record music of the many musical cultures in the world, including music that has traditionally been learned and passed on orally or aurally. On the other hand, the boundary lines among many cultures, and between subcultures, have shifted dramatically and in some cases have disappeared. There has always been some cross-fertilization among musical cultures, and this is often a sign of healthy cultural and artistic growth. One well-known example is the musical mixture of Hispanic and Germanic cultures in the American Southwest during the 19th century, which produced the conjunto or Tex-Mex style still popular in the region today. Traditional conjunto bands perform at social dances and consist of a virtuoso accordionist, a bajo sexto (12-string bass-rhythm guitar), bass, and drums.

It has been almost impossible for at least the past few decades to find a folk-level musical culture within which listeners are exposed to only the music of their own culture and no other. In the early 1980s, an Australian music scholar traveled through the Australian outback for two days looking for a remote Aboriginal village where he could study non-Western music listening habits, only to find that most of the villagers regularly listened to Western popular music on their portable tape cassette players. Our global culture is producing a musical multiculturalism that takes a number of forms. Hybrid musical forms cross the boundaries between classical and folk or pop subcultures within the various cultures they bridge. For example, South Indian cine, or motion-picture music, combines Indian and Western musical instruments and mixes classical Indian melodies with Western rock- and jazz-influenced accompaniments. Popular benga music of Kenya and juju music of Nigeria illustrate how Western instruments such as the electric guitar and electric bass have been employed in place of traditional instruments of the region.

With all of the cross-fertilization among musical cultures, some people worry that music will eventually drift toward a single, global music that is bland and unvaried. Others argue that there is a growing countermovement to preserve the diversity of cultural heritages, including traditional musical genres.