‘I Changed My Olga for the Britney'

Is it possible to find an Eastern Occidentalism that works in a similar ideological manner, though from an inverted perspective, to Western Orientalism? If so, does this leave its trace in musical practices and musical styles? For Edward Said, Orientalism was a discourse very much linked to Western imperialism. ¹ Postcolonial critics have seized upon this connection in their studies of the ways Western imperial powers have perceived, controlled and represented their colonial subjects. But where is the equivalent postcolonial work on the Occidentalist discourse of Eastern imperialism? Scholars appear to have one theoretical model for the West and another for the East. Most academic studies of Occidentalism, examples of which I discuss later, are concerned with Western discourse about the West or with bigoted haters of the West. Few scholars have tackled the complexity of East–West musical interaction and its ideological ramifications in a manner that conceives of Occidentalism as an inverted form of Orientalism (as a discourse in which fear and attraction are intermingled).