ABSTRACT
Scholars from all over the world gathered in Newcastle upon Tyne to hear some 50 papers which examined a wide range of popular world musics in their social, political and musical contexts. This chapter examines the way of theorizing the dynamics of the national, nationalisms and nation-states as one of the critical frames that popular music has articulated. It uses a troubled synonym of global capital, late capitalism, as understood by the so-called liberal scholarship, which frames this emphasis on and desire for the local/human. The material forces that both enable and constrain the movement of music and musicians about the globe are not always easy to comprehend. Global forces, as represented in this scholarship, can be appropriated only precariously, and prising open and forging new and precarious inroads into global networks is always difficult when the human/local is left to carry this burden alone, without mediation.
