ABSTRACT
These stories first and foremost are about the uneven rewards, the unsettling representations, and the complexly entangled desires that lie underneath the commercial rhetoric of global connection, that is, the rhetoric of “free” flow and “greater” access. They present stories of how music’s forms of local, regional, and social distinction are more and more tensely poised, living the contradictions encountered through embracing and resisting dominant hegemonic trends in the global popular music industry.
