Music and the Global Order

Often music is used as a metaphor of global social and cultural processes; it also constitutes an enduring process by and through which people interact within and across cultures. The review explores these processes with reference to an anthropological and ethnomusicological account of globalization that has gathered pace over the last decade. It outlines some of the main ethnographic and historical modes of engagement with persistent neoliberal and other music industry–inspired global myth making (particularly that associated with world music), and argues for an approach to musical globalization that contextualizes those genres, styles, and practices that circulate across cultural borders in specific institutional sites and histories.