What is World Music and why do we have such a category?

The term 'World music' is deceiving as technically it covers every musical genre. Yet 'world music' has become a term used mainly to describe music which cannot be fitted into conventional music categories. The world-wide popularity of Anglo-American music, is taking over the music mainstream world wide. People in countries all over the world, (many where English is not their native language) will listen primarily to exported Anglo-American 'chart toppers' as opposed to their traditional music, often loosing their cultural identity. Although artists for example Paul Simon's in his album Graceland attempt to merge more traditional, exotic music with their own western sound, this rarely increases the general popularity of traditional music by a great deal. As a result of this, 'world music' becomes the music world's miscellaneous category, containing countless unrelated artists from around the world, clearly unworthy of their own categories, showing the music industries disregard for quality and high regard for cash.

Is Popular Music a Mass Produced Commodity or a Genuine Art Form?

Critics such as Adorno do see popular music as a mass produced commodity. Programmes such as 'X Factor' reinforce this view, as the contestants are constantly made to sing cover versions and are rarely (if ever) able to preform their own artistic material. However this theory is solely dependant on how we view art. If we see art as creative, individual, initiative flare then pop music cannot fit this category or can it? Artists like Andy Warhol show that art can be mass produced and still fabulous. Critics like Gendron believe that it is the artists themselves that turn popular music into an art form, providing individual meanings and styles the songs they cover, for example the conflicting approaches of the 'Sex Pistols' to Frank Sinatra's 'My Way'. This shows that yes popular music can be an art form but just like in 'conventional' art there will be good artists and bad ones.

How useful is a production of culture perspective in understanding the birth of Rock and Roll?

Richard A Peterson, in his article 'Why 1955? Explaining the advent of Rock music' he lists six categories of reasons, which he believes provide the perfect conditions for the birth of rock music. One of the main advances is in technology. With the birth of the Transistor, smaller, portable radios are produced allowing younger people to have control of what they listen to for the first time. Also the FCC become more interested in the idea of television, allowing radio to be flooded with various new stations. However he never mentions the actual music that was beginning to emerge. The main question that arises from this is whether the rock musicians made rock and roll or did the social circumstances surrounding them allow them to emerge as a success? The culture perspective is very useful in helping us understand why rock and roll was able to explode in the 50s but it does not explain to us why it was rock music that became popular at this time.

Is It Reasonable To Consider That Rock Music Is Gendered Male?

It depends how you view rock music. In general rock music does present itself as more masculine in its nature. Often using aggressive language and being very fast paced and loud. However rock can be very liberating for women, creating the rock chick persona which admittedly can be quite masculine in itself, yet is feminized and sexualized creating a whole new strain on femininity. Women in rock however are very few and far between and often not taken seriously in the rock ‘scene’. Beth Ditto for example is a rock artist but is mainly known for her appearance and antics rather than music. Acts like Pat Benatar are not overly popular in the mainstream but prove that female rock musicians can accumulate some success. Overall rock music is very male dominated, yet not exclusively so.