Feature Article

Music and the Global Village: How Music Bridges the Gap between Cultures

By Nicholas Tichy

Throughout history, there has been the exchange of culture, ideas, and goods. In fact, it is through this dialogue that cultures evolve. Yet, cultures are resilient and often adopt foreign influences while still staying true to local traditions. Some suggest that international media will help facilitate the creation of a "global village" of sorts. Our shared history, culture, and values have and will increasingly promote a global community. This trend is nowhere more evident than in music.

If music truly is the international language, it has done much to bring the peoples of the world together. It is almost impossible to listen to music and not hear the influence of other cultures. In an increasingly integrated world and with the rise of international telecommunications, it is more obvious than ever. The internet has created a forum for music to be shared around the world. Social networking sites such as Last.fm allow users to catalogue their listening habits, compare with others from around the world, and learn of new music from every corner of the globe. You can hear native hip hop, electronic, reggae, rock, and any combination thereof in practically every nation in the world. Artists from different nations are even collaborating, such as American hip-hop artist Kanye West and French electronic duo Daft Punk. These cross-cultural and cross-genre exchanges are acting to build bridges between cultures.

This is by no means a recent development, however. In an almost infinitely complicated linage, you can trace the roots of music to cultural exchange. From spirituals of southern African Americans came the Delta Blues of the likes of Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon, and Howlin' Wolf. Rock and Roll emerged from the Blues, with front runners such as Little Richard and Chuck Berry. These same artists would, decades later, influence younger generations of musicians around the world. British musicians like Eric Clapton, Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, and the Beatles adopted the sound of these artists from across the world, creating some of the most influential and popular music of the 20th Century.

Even music which we consider to be representative of cultures often times reflects this history of music as a uniting force. Consider Tejano music, the bass driven dance music which remains incredibly popular in Mexican culture. We hear the signature walking bass lines, accordion, and horns and identify them as Mexican. Yet, these are all elements of polka music brought to Northern Mexico and Texas by German, Czech, and Poland during the mid-19th Century.

In the late sixties and early seventies, the rock and roll revolution created an almost worldwide version of what occurred with Tejano music. The sounds of rock, psychedelic, and surf music influenced working class bands in Peru, forming a unique genre called "chicha." Bands in Brazil such as Os Mutantes pioneered experimental psychedelic music similar to the more avant-garde work of the Beatles. Numerous bands in Cambodia adopted the sounds beamed across the Vietnamese border on GI radios and created a unique blend of rock and roll and traditional Cambodian songwriting. These types of music exemplify how culture can adopt foreign influences and make them uniquely native.

Music is a universal form of expression. To appreciate music, you do not necessarily have to understand the language of the artist. It is also malleable, being adopted, changed, and sent out again in a constant feedback loop. As this historic cultural exchange becomes accelerated in the modern era, the potential for music to further bring the world together is growing.