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Why isn't Asian music more popular?
Going back to some old requests, Eric H., a loyal and perceptive MR reader and commentator, asks:
Why do the US (a wealthy country) and Africa (a poor continent) put out more influential modern music than Asia (a populated continent of both wealthy and poor extremes)?
1. Most African music has scales very similar to those of European music and thus we are arguably considering a unified and indeed accessible style.
2. Many African musics emphasize rhythms and rhythm is arguably the most universal element of music and thus it is relatively easy to export. American music has in this regard a strong African component, for obvious historical reasons.
3. The micro-tonal musics, as we find in India and the Middle East, don't spread to many countries which do not already have a micro-tonal tradition. Cats wailing, etc., though it is a shame if you haven't trained your ear by now to like the stuff. It's some of the world's finest music.
4. Many Asian musics, such as some of the major styles of China and Japan, emphasize timbre. That makes them a) often too subtle, and b) very hard to translate to disc or to radio. African-derived musics are perfect for radio or for the car.
5. African music is really, really good. And America is really, really good at entertaining people. It's an unstoppable alliance.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on July 30, 2008 at 06:19 AM in Music | Permalink
Comments
I'm sure you'll eventually explain the distinction you make in #5 between being "really, really good" and being "really, really good at entertaining people".
I mean, it isn't like you to assert such judgments without any supporting argumentation...uh, oh. right.
Posted by: Student at Jul 30, 2008 8:24:25 AM
Student, the first claim is a judgment of quality; the second can be seen on any balance sheet of American exports...
Posted by: Tyler Cowen at Jul 30, 2008 9:04:44 AM
Can anyone recommend an itunes-available Asian music starter set for someone who wants to train his ear?
Posted by: josh at Jul 30, 2008 9:04:59 AM
If you can find it, there's a techno/tabla cross-over band called 'Tabla Beat Science' that's fun to listen to in the car. I've got them as a seed for a Pandora channel that plays some interesting Indian music.
Posted by: Xmas at Jul 30, 2008 9:06:23 AM
You could say the same about Brazil and Cuba.
Posted by: meter at Jul 30, 2008 9:07:18 AM
Of course there are many, many Asians performing Western music, especially classical.
Posted by: Peter at Jul 30, 2008 9:33:25 AM
josh
Given Tyler's statement that micro tonal music requires pretty good acustics to appreciate, I'd expect that anything on iTunes wouldn't be a very good representation because of the compression (rythem based music compresses quite well because you just need enough of the tone to generate a rythem which is far less than what you would need to establish a series of chords).
Posted by: nelsonal at Jul 30, 2008 9:36:20 AM
"American music has in this regard a strong African component" -- this can't be emphasized enough.
I'm sure that virtually all of what makes U.S. music so popular can be traced to the mysterious percolation of Scots-Irish and African elements somewhere between Appalachia and the Mississippi Delta.
If American music were based only on the 19th-century Anglo-American songbook, it wouldn't have any worldwide impact.
African music + Yankee ingenuity (Leo Fender and Les Paul) + Jewish media-promotional genius (Alan Freed, David Geffen, Norman Granz, Bill Graham, Phil Spector, Rick Rubin, Clive Davis, Leonard Chess) = success of American music
Posted by: BenjaminL at Jul 30, 2008 9:49:00 AM
josh: Can anyone recommend an itunes-available Asian music starter set for someone who wants to train his ear?
Are any of the Rough Guides to World Music available on iTunes? Their sets are usually quite good. They are excellent for a broad perspective on the sounds involved and good for furthering your own research by using services like Allmusic, Lastfm, and even Pandora.
Posted by: Levi at Jul 30, 2008 10:56:59 AM
"Cats wailing, etc., though it is a shame if you haven't trained your ear by now to like the stuff. It's some of the world's finest music."
Huh? Cats wailing? Finest music? Maybe that's a clue....
Posted by: Mike at Jul 30, 2008 11:14:51 AM
I'm not personally convinced that the explanandum is true. Yes, America puts out more influential modern music (and movies, and dramas, and books, and...) than other parts of the world. But Africa? "Influential" is cheating, of course, since one can always say "Oh, very few people *listen* to modern African music, but it's very influential..."
I know dozens of people who love J-pop and Korean pop. (I don't like it myself, but...) I can think of many movies with scores marked by traditional Asian motifs, both East Asian and South Asian. There are several Indian songs that have become as popular at mainstream parties as "Toxic" was in 2003. The only big hole is China, but why would they have a culture industry comparable to their market size when they have a censorship-happy government?
Compare this to modern African music. Are we just talking about lateral influence on the music of America and Latin America in the 19th and early 20th C.? Contemporary African music is less influential than techno.
Posted by: andthenyoufall at Jul 30, 2008 11:25:26 AM
No question that there's a lot of "Africa" in "American" music. Look at Ned Sublette's great recent books about Cuban Music and New Orleans or, for all kinds of cultural carryovers (not just musical) from Africa to the Americas, any of Robert Farris Thompson's equally great books. But I can't help thinking there's something else going on here.
What most people think of as African music is the post-colonial pop musics: various kinds of pop bands that use electric guitars, electric bass, drum kits, maybe some traditional indigenous instruments or not, and vocals in a pop music style, sometimes in English, sometimes not. There's a lot of overlap between audiences for this music and audiences for reggae. Comparatively few Westerners listen to the more exotic traditional musics of Africa.
What most people think of as Asian music is still the more exotic traditional musics, performed on the exotic traditional instruments. For the most part, Asian pop bands using electric instruments, drum kits and vocals, have made headway in the West only among smaller musical subcultures, like punk, metal, avant garde, etc.
Posted by: Herb Levy at Jul 30, 2008 11:25:53 AM
Dear loyal and perceptive MR reader and commentator Eric H.: Define "more influential."
Seems to me by the responses thus far that this definition has been interpreted to mean:
"More likely to be played at a dinner party by 'over'-educated Occidentals so that their guests can consider them worldly."
or
"More easily integrated into the iTunes playlists of honkey folk."
;)
Signed,
Me Rub You Wrong Time
Posted by: Anittah at Jul 30, 2008 12:17:28 PM
BenjaminL, you read my mind. Don't forget the Jewish Tin Pan Alley/Broadway tradition of lyrical virtuosity (Jerome Kern and Irving Berlin through Carole King).
Elvis Presley represents your point perfectly.
Posted by: NNM at Jul 30, 2008 12:31:58 PM
If we can't dress in skimpy clothes and dance to the music, we're not interested.
J-Pop has heavy western influences.
Posted by: Hei Lun Chan at Jul 30, 2008 12:35:13 PM
As for influence, its not direct, but Asian music has certainly found its way into American music to much success - Indian ragas in 60's psychadelia and Timbaland et al's proclivity for sampling Middle Eastern and South Asian music come to mind.
I propose a related question, though: Why do countries like Sweden and Canada punch outside their weight when it comes to popular music (especially, in the case of Canada, in the indie rock sphere)?
Posted by: John Voorheis at Jul 30, 2008 1:11:56 PM
You wrote:
"The micro-tonal musics, as we find in India and the Middle East..."
Almost no one in the Middle East listens to any music which does not utilize the western scale of music, and I challenge you to produce the name of a single popular musician in the Middle East who does. You will, it is true, in for instance Rai music of North Africa and France, hear instruments being used where quarter tones are played, but these are always in a piece which uses the western scale of music. Just go on Youtube and doe searches for "Rai," "Rachid Taha,' "Cheb Khader' (or for that matter ,just do a search for the name Cheb), "Hayfa Wahbe," "Nancy Ajram," "Tarkan," "Bulent Ersoy"... well, I could go on. But listen to them. They don't use quarter tones or micro-tones.
As for Indian music, that I don't know nearly as much about, but the Ballywood music that I nave heard generally employs an identifiably western scale of music as well.
Posted by: Lars at Jul 30, 2008 1:12:09 PM
Lars,
I am pretty sure he is talking about traditional music, which incidently makes comments about "j-pop" irrelevant.
Posted by: anomdebus at Jul 30, 2008 1:24:38 PM
The Japanese music industry is the 2nd largest in the world. How is this not influential?
One very simple measure of influence is % of global music spending. I think Japanese music generates the 2nd most in revenue after American music.
Or we just looking at the influence of traditional music? So then we have the western scale and african beats taking over global music production.
Posted by: jim at Jul 30, 2008 1:38:20 PM
Or we just looking at the influence of traditional music? So then we have the western scale and african beats taking over global music production.
And African beats mostly through Western music, mind. Are we going to say that when Chinoiserie was all the rage in the Belle Epoque (Turandot and Das Lied von der Erde and The Lark Ascending and those soppy French composers), and exotic pentatonic scales were in fashion, the Asian musical tradition became influential? Not really, even though that tonality is pretty common today. Neither African nor Asian music are particularly influential of themselves, I think -- it's all dwarfed by the influence of Western music.
And if we're talking about modern music, rather than traditional music, J-pop's awful tinkly synth sounds have cast a dire shadow over the entire East Asian pop scene.
Posted by: Taeyoung at Jul 30, 2008 1:51:34 PM
Most western music is african. Check" Creative Destruction: How Globalization Is Changing the World's Cultures" for the fact of cross fertilization between Angola and Cuba.
Rock, r&b came from jazz.and jazz if the music of african slaves descendant in the south.
Salsa came from african music and saloon music thht came from jazz
Posted by: k at Jul 30, 2008 2:05:10 PM
Dear Anomdebus:
You are, of course, partially correct in saying that he seems to be referring to classical music when referring to Middle Eastern and Asian music. However, the precise post which started this says:
"Why do the US (a wealthy country) and Africa (a poor continent) put out more influential MODERN MUSIC (emphasis mine) than Asia (a populated continent of both wealthy and poor extremes)?"
Comparing contemporary popular American music and African music on the one had with (now non-popular) classical Persian or Chinese music on the other, and then asking why so many more people listen to popular American music than to now non-popular Chinese music is a bit of an unfair (not to mention slightly silly) comparison, isn't it?
On a more empirical point, I would also question the extent to which American music really is more exportable than other forms of music. This seems to be an assumption behind this post and the larger discussion. Indian music is in fact quite popular in parts of the Middle East. And Middle Eastern music is (I've been told) increasingly popular in Europe.
Finally, Jim with his post correctly points out that Japanese music is in fact quite popular outside of Japan. Which brings me to my final pioint: how about some empirical evidence? My own experience is that this stuff about American music being popular outside the United States tends to be exaggerated, and other forms of foreign music are underappreciated. I know this is the case for the Middle East and Russia, where people overwhelmingly listen to home-produced music. How about some comments from someone who has actually listened to pop music in China or Japan or Singapore weighing in and telling us how popular Chinese or Japanese music is?
Posted by: Lars at Jul 30, 2008 2:07:52 PM
I like to think I have a pretty eclectic taste. I can listen to country music, gangsta rap, indie, punk, pop, classical (my favorite), but I cannot stand most Asian music. I'm ok with most world music, I can go as far as India, and the Middle East. BUT I would rather pierce out my eardrums than listen to a Chinese opera. In fact, listening to Chinese opera would have the same effect so I might as well do it myself. Western is the only way when it comes to music. There is no internal logic in most instrumental pieces out East.
Posted by: Carolynn at Jul 30, 2008 3:53:44 PM
There's lots of good Chinese punk and metal.
American/British music is popular because it is in English and there are many artists who achieve wider fame once they release an album in English.
Posted by: 8 at Jul 30, 2008 4:02:06 PM
Levi,
Thanks. The easternmost rough guide available is the guide to "the music of Iran." I have no idea what to make of the samplings, but it might be worth 9.99 as an experiment.
Posted by: josh at Jul 30, 2008 6:00:55 PM
