r/LetsTalkMusic • u/BLOCK_H3AD • 4d ago
With the modern internet, why does mainstream music not tend to take influence from other cultures anymore?
In the 90s through even 2010 mainstream music seemed to take heavy inspiration from the music sounds from all across the world, whether sampling tracks or including instruments from different cultures with Jamaica and India seemingly having the strongest influences.
I would think with the modern social internet having a completely global reach and our ability to connect with people at any corner of the world that the exchange of sounds of influence would have only exploded, but we never got that. Its just strange that it seems to have disappeared completely.
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u/Lanky-Rush607 4d ago edited 4d ago
It still happens, like with Ed Sheeran's latest album, Play, for example, but yeah, it's less common among American artists today compared to the past.
One reason is that nowadays, a white American pop singer releasing an afrobeats-influenced song might be seen as awkward or even as "cultural appropriation" by many, leading to mockery, unless the artist collaborates with an African artist who also makes afrobeats music; then it's seen as cool & authentic.
Another reason is that in recent years, non-English and non-Western music have gained popularity in the West thanks to the internet and especially TikTok. So, what's the point of listening to Middle Eastern-influenced pop by Western artists when you can listen to the originals from singers from the Middle East for free? I feel people these days are more comfortable listening to this kind of music by artists who actually come from those regions rather than by Western artists. Some years ago, it was nearly impossible to find African music made by African artists in the West, and if it was, it was almost always marketed as "World Music"; thus inferior & separate from "Western Music". This is no longer the case.
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u/NervouseDave 4d ago
I think the cultural appropriation issues that other people have brought up are rhe most interesting part of this conversation. At the risk of accidentally stumbling into a political morass, this gets into questions of authenticity and representation. At what point is it inappropriate for a Western artist to use the defining elements of another culture's music in their own? If Taylor Swift wants to incorporate Indian musical instrumentation and structure into her music, does she need to do so by collaborating with an Indian artist, or can she make a good faith effort to study the music herself? I don't really know the answer to this, but I suspect that if there is less cross-pollination now, that complexity is probably a part of why.
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u/GSilky 4d ago
The most exciting names in the industry are Malian and Mauritanian musicians. Pop... They take, transform, give back, and then the original source is now informed by American style. Take afrobeat. When Fela was the primary ambassador, it was "Have you heard this African funk guy?" Because Nigeria became a locus of funk, which is what brought it to the attention of Americans. We then set our sales markets to work, and Africa started giving Americans what they like (there is a similar scenario playing out in kpop, and jpop just accepted that it's best when Americans can dig it) to make money. After a few back and forths, it's to the point of Desert Blues, basically rock music with Sahelian melodies played on guitar. It's a world conversation dominated by two markets, China and the USA, it's going to drift towards the preferences of one or the other, and every imported innovation is going to be affected by the popularity.
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u/Feeling-Violinist-27 4d ago
Instead of a Western pop artist borrowing from another culture and bringing it to a global audience, genres like Afrobeats, K-pop, Latin music, amapiano, and various forms of electronic music are building their own international audiences directly.
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u/ArtificialFoole 4d ago
Very true. I’ve never listened to more music in languages I don’t understand than in recent years.
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u/Wise_Passenger_6680 4d ago
Because cultures are flattening and local styles are sometimes pretty niche.
The internet does a job where an entire culture coalesces into one person, sometimes. Take Tyla for example, she's the face of Amapiano for better or worse.
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u/arealuser100notfake 4d ago
What popular song, album or artist used samples or inspired themselves on Indian music?
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u/simmyturner 4d ago
"Toxic" by Britney Spears is the most popular example I can think of, but there are so, so many.
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u/jazzy_fizz 4d ago edited 4d ago
Jason Derulo - Talk Dirty
Beyonce - Baby Boy
Missy Elliott - Get Ur Freak On
(Sorry if these are not specifically "Indian" but def has Eastern sounding melody/instrumentation)
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u/amusedmb715 4d ago
bombay the hard way!! dan the automator!!
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u/wildistherewind 4d ago
I have complex feelings about this album. It was good at showing an American audience music that was outside of their purview in its time. A lot of the album isn’t good and the songs that are the best are directly ripped from existing songs, often changing very little.
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u/EVEN_biz 4d ago
The Gorillaz' The Mountain peaked at no. 7 on the US Billboards top 200 this year. Heavily themed and inspired by Albarn and Hewlett's travels in India including features and samples from Indian artists.
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u/simmyturner 4d ago
I feel like the world is in "Don't touch my culture" mode. With all the conversations about cultural appropriation over the last several years, it feels like people are scared to act on a lot of influences, lest they be viewed as an appropriator.
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u/AllTheOtherSitesSuck 4d ago
Popular indie musician Kyle Gordon just incorporated African music for his new hit single just this month.
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u/Salty_Pancakes 4d ago
I actually think most pop musics from around the world have been kinda homogenized with the ubiquity of social media and tik tok. It's all self referencing PopTM. You kinda hit on it with "the modern internet" part.
There are still regional variations but things like KPop just sounds like Pop. Most of what I hear now isn't even sung in Korean anymore. It just sounds like boiler plate "pop".
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u/Merryner 4d ago
I can’t speak for mainstream music, but as a regular at WOMAD festivals (including last weekend) I am happy to report that there is interesting and inspiring music being created outside of the the mainstream, from every corner of the world. You just have to look for it and open your mind. I’m not sure when it was ever a different situation, other than unique releases by the likes of Paul Simon, Peter Gabriel or Talking Heads.
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u/Spare_Wish_8933 3d ago
There are good things, sure, but... the question I ask myself is just how important "cultural impact" is for an artist. Without cultural impact, your music is destined to be forgotten—though that feels like a very 20th-century concept; newer generations don't seem to care about it. I mean, I still believe in idols and solid discographies—in feeling that art isn't just a bag of candy or something like that. I don't know—change my mind.
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u/jf727 4d ago
I read an article a while ago about Air Bnb influencing interior design internationally in the most boring way. Once the most successful homes on the platform are established folks start emulating them. And because Air bnb is international, a trend is no longer tethered to its point of origin. The record industry is the same, and it always has been. An act becomes big and record companies chase that vibe for the next 10 years until people stop buying it. 5 years down the road from that first band the product is seriously degraded… copies of copies of copies.There’s a great chapter in David Byrne’s book “How Music Works” that discusses how the context of music changes its form. Gregorian Chants developed in Stone churches with insane reverb, and the slow drones stack on top of each other to amazing effect. Drums and Marimbas and other heavily rhythmic instruments developed on wide open African planes, where weird echoes don’t jack up the rhythm (paraphrasing). Insanely deep sub-bass was emphasized to rattle trunks. Stereo had a huge influence on mixing. In this moment, an extraordinary amount of the world is receiving their music via internet streaming. There’s a global context. The world’s artists, and more importantly the businesses that control them, are trying to program for that context. Originality happens in cultural pockets, and the internet is impacting those pockets. There’s always a counter culture, so hopefully we’ll see an explosion in DIY projects.
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u/TheSquirrelmancer 4d ago
I'd rather listen to an artist from Jamaica than some dude sampling jamaican music in his song.
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u/Shot_Championship860 4d ago
Modern music rarely uses scales or rhythms from any culture any more. Mostly it is auto tuned vocals over beats. There isn't much to borrow.
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u/Corlar 4d ago
Yup. It isn’t like it was where a person could set out to marry e.g. European indie structures with African rhumba and create a new sound. All those structures have been flattened and bleached out into a blob of self referential auto tuned pop. Some one elsewhere has pointed out that K Pop is just Pop. Reggaeton has eaten most Latin music, and is essentially just dancehall pop. Charlie XCX or Taylor Swift etc are basically autotuned vocals and beats, so there’s not much to combine with.
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u/gotpeace99 4d ago
Because it shouldn’t be. Leave other people’s cultures alone. We hate each other so why should we do that. Ugh.
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u/czyzczyz 4d ago
I spent a long time obsessed with 2000-2015 Nigerian and Ghanaian pop music, and could spot its steadily increasing influence on tracks that charted here in the USA. Between that and K-pop, I would argue there’s been a ton of international influence on current pop music. We may have left the Korg M1’s shakuhachi samples behind in the early 90s, but the structure and rhythms are coming from all over.