Skip to main content

User login

Timothy D. Taylor: New Capitalism, Globalization, and the Commodification of Taste (Sept. 29)

Event Start: 
Thu, 09/29/2011 - 12:00pm - 2:00pm
Location: 
701C Dodge Hall, Center for Ethnomusicology

Please join us Thursday September 29 for the Center for Ethnomusicology's Fall 2011 Colloquium series, presenting:
 
New Capitalism, Globalization, and the Commodification of Taste

Prof. Timothy D. Taylor (Musicology/Ethnomusicology, UCLA)

Thursday, September 29, 2011
12.00 - 2.00 pm
Center for Ethnomusicology, Dodge Hall, 701 C

Description:
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, myriad discourses emerged that attempted to understand the present: was it postmodern, the information age, the postindustrial era, an era of the new capitalism? Many influential publications adopted and fleshed out these various perspectives. "Globalization" as a way of viewing the present and recent past appeared relatively recently, yet it has come to dominate considerations of the present, both in and out of academia, eliding some aspects of other perspectives. This presentation examines what is lost when globalization as an analytical framework becomes dominant. "Globalization" as a perspective and related body of theory can help us understand how musics travel, for example, but is less useful in explaining what happens once world music has traveled and entered the Euro-American music industry in an era of the new capitalism. With the explosion of music available on the Internet and the difficulty of finding what one wants, what emerges, among other things, is the importance of what people in the culture industries call "search": the means of finding music or other cultural products. The importance of search has resulted in the increasing commodification of taste, both in the form of music supervisors, who choose music for use in films and television programs and who have become increasingly influential in the entertainment industry; and the rise of complex algorithms that help consumers find music to listen to based on their prior purchases or listening habits, and those of others.

___________________
Timothy D. Taylor is a Professor in the Departments of Ethnomusicology and Musicology at the University of California, Los Angeles. In addition to numerous articles on various musics, he is the author of Global Pop: World Music, World Markets (Routledge 1997), Strange Sounds: Music, Technology and Culture (Routledge 2001), and Beyond Exoticism: Western Music and the World (Duke University Press 2007). Two new books will appear in the spring of 2012: Music, Sound, and Technology in America: A Documentary History of Early Phonograph, Cinema, and Radio, co-edited with Mark Katz and Tony Grajeda, published by Duke University Press; and The Sounds of Capitalism: Advertising, Music, and the Conquest of Culture, published by the University of Chicago Press.

Upcoming Events

No upcoming events available
Premium Drupal Themes by Adaptivethemes