ABSTRACT
State attitudes and policies towards popular culture are a significant factor in determining the construction of meaning in popular music. At the level of attitudes, State cultural policies are indicative of the various views held about the very concept of culture itself, debates over government economic intervention in the marketplace versus the operation of the 'free market', the operation of cultural imperialism, and the role of the State in fostering national cultural identity. As the Task Force Report on The Future of the Canadian Music Industry (1996) put it:
The internationalisation of the music industry has historically been equated with 'cultural imperialism', with local cultures dominated and to varying degrees invaded, displaced and challenged by imported 'foreign' cultures. The solution to this situation is usually seen as some combination of restrictions upon media imports and the deliberate fostering of the local cultural industries, including sound recording. These are illustrated here by Canada's MAPLE test and Federal policies supporting local music; and New Zealand's quota debate and subsequent operation ofNZ On Air. (For a further instructive example, see Breen 1999 on Australia. Fuller considerations of popular music and cultural policy, and a broad range of international examples, can
There are also examples of both the central and local State attempting to use popular music as one way to regenerate local communities, and stimulate community support for local music (see, for example, Cohen 1991, on Liverpool; Elderen 1989, on the Netherlands Pop Music Foundation; and Street 1993, on Norwich). For reasons of space, however, I have chosen to concentrate here on cultural policy at the national level.
