3 - Western music as world music

Summary

Western music was involved in developments outside the colonial possessions of the enlarged Europe that came to define itself as the West. The most fundamental aspect of musical modernization lies in the influence of Western aesthetic values. The Western pop basis of world music, the real common practice style of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, provides a structure that is as ubiquitous and universal as Western science and engineering, while local elements merely add exotic color. Both indigenous and Spanish musics were performed on ceremonial occasions in the missions of sixteenth-century Florida, while European visitors frequently commented on the general excellence of Indian musicians, singers and instrumentalists. The twentieth-century Africanization of popular music represents a massive countercurrent to the established hegemonies of global capitalism. Western classical music is a form of musical utopia and can therefore act as world music.