On his book Secular Devotion: Afro-Latin Music and Imperial Jazz
Cover Interview of December 05, 2008
Editor’s note
Originally, this interview ran on the Rorotoko cover page under the headline
“Popular music is popular because it is influenced by neo-African religious practices.”
We highlighted two quotes.
On the first page:
“There is a scandalous fact underlying the largely negative images of Africa in today’s media: namely, that in the face of this wholesale dissing of the region, there is a massive African unconscious to everyday life and leisure.”
On the second:
“Only European classical music and jazz are ‘world’ music, for they are the only forms known everywhere as a result of first-world marketing muscle and military occupation.”
[M]odern art still commonly refers to a rather narrow range of meaning and scope. It basically focuses on developments in Paris (Impressionism etc.) in the nineteenth century, and to selected Euro-American movements in the twentieth century (Cubism, Abstract Expressionism etc). But if we understand modernity as a socially transformative condition that was in force across much of the world from the nineteenth century on, how are we to understand artistic practices that were associated with these momentous changes?Iftikhar Dadi, Interview of March 26, 2012
The two world wars of the twentieth century were a product of the dislocations brought about of modernization in an environment where great power competition and the drive for hegemony were conducted primarily by violent means. Now that this era has passed in Europe and is receding in much of the Pacific rim, and hegemony achieved by force is no longer considered a legitimate ambition, the security requirements and fears of great powers should decline.Richard Ned Lebow, Interview of October 4, 2010
Editor’s note
Originally, this interview ran on the Rorotoko cover page under the headline
“Popular music is popular because it is influenced by neo-African religious practices.”
We highlighted two quotes.
On the first page:
“There is a scandalous fact underlying the largely negative images of Africa in today’s media: namely, that in the face of this wholesale dissing of the region, there is a massive African unconscious to everyday life and leisure.”
On the second:
“Only European classical music and jazz are ‘world’ music, for they are the only forms known everywhere as a result of first-world marketing muscle and military occupation.”