ABSTRACT
Global flows of music have become more rapid and numerous as movements of people, whether voluntary or not, have become more widespread. Diasporic networks now connect metropolitan communities across continents; migration maps out lines of cultural flow between cities and homelands. Meanwhile, marketing of cultural products (including distribution and tours) makes similar global connections. Globalisation is both multifaceted and selective. Some music has achieved a global reach, while other performers and genres remain distinctively local; some places continue to be isolated, and tangential to global trends, while others are centres of creativity, reception and transformation. This chapter examines the rise of ‘world music’, and the manner in which it was linked to particular places; perhaps better than any other style it exemplifies how music is simultaneously an agent of mobility and a cultural expression permanently connected to place. Equally the chapter traces the ‘pathways’ of musical flow from places perceived as marginal to the centres of Anglophone musical production, and the movement of music away from developing countries to meet the needs of the West for new sounds, sources of creativity and expressions of authenticity.
