Music: A Global Culture

Music is a timeless medium, one which continuously adapts and evolves in accordance with the ever-changing cultural climates of the world we live in. As humankind has advanced, so has our knowledge of ourselves. As time has progressed we have discovered that we, as people, are a greatly varied and diverse collective. Technology has graced us with the ability to travel the entire world: the earth seems to be a far smaller place than that which it was when civilisation began.

In the modern age, people are mobilised. Generally speaking, our personal concepts of the world have expanded greatly from local to global: no longer are lives considered as strictly within their birth-given context. Our lives can lead us far from where they began, with more fluidity and ease than has ever been previously possible.

People are ultimately the product of their environment. Regardless of where they are or where they will go in their lives, as individuals they will forever carry the personal heritage of where they began, and who they have been. It is in this way that cultures continue to adapt and flourish in an increasingly mobile world. People are vehicles which transport local cultures into a global context during the process of their lives.

Music can be seen as indicative of the major changes in global culture throughout history. All art correlates to its place in history, and can be read as reflective of both the local and global contemporary cultural climates. As people as a collective change and develop, so, too, do their cultures: their art, and namely, their music.

As art, music reflects the changes that the world has undergone in its journey throughout history. Music is a testament to the cultural influences and interactions that we, as humankind, have experienced and achieved through our progression as a race. As people, our increasingly eclectic cultures are our greatest achievement.

On this note, I ask you to consider the following videos. While they focus on typically ‘Western’ styles of music, I feel that the combined differences and similarities between the two pieces exemplify the notion of music as a means of identifying cultural progression and influence in a global context.

Consider the individual interactions, and transplantation of culture that influenced and transformed the origins of this music into that which you see now. People and their movement are responsible for changes in culture. Music is a celebration of history, and our diversity as people.

Music is the sound of history. It eminates the sound of its time, and exemplifies the sound of our own time. It is the sound of the individual, and the sound of the collective. Music is in us, and we are in music.

- Dominic O’Donnell