Global Musings on a picture

I know this picture to a Western eye is at best bizarre and possible disturbing but I feel compelled to comment on it.  In all likelihood this picture is posed but some components of it are quite probable, the iPod is the least believable part.  Yet, despite how contrived or posed this image may be it represents a rather interesting series of events in human history and especially in African history.  Taking the man in the picture, his manner of dress is probably quite similar to that of his ancestors one hundred years before him.  He is by no means "Westernized."  The exact location of the picture is hard to determine but I feel safe in saying that it is not near the cost, yet he has a large collection of snail shells.  They are clearly a sign of status and probably came to him in trade from some distance away from where he lives.  The Kalashnikov rifle is an interesting vestige of a time when a recently decolonized Africa seemed up for grabs between the forces of "democracy" and "communism."  Both superpowers actively courted and supported various rebel groups in the hopes of making the continent safe for what ever interest either superpower saw fit for Africa.  Yet both sides sought to do so under a rather interesting guise, that of some how "empowering" the local populations to sort out matters from themselves in a post colonial world.  To use Manela's phasing of Woodrow Wilson's ideology, both the United States and Soviet Union were supporting the notion of "self determination" while at the same time imposing the will of a foreign power on disparate peoples.  I suppose the failings of Wilson and others to fully understand or accept the idea that the various peoples and ethnic groups of the world would want a say in their own lives led to a tragic legacy of constant civil war for various parts of the Third World.  It also shows that despite a claim to allowing former colonial peoples to live freely, the end of colonialism simply caused them to trade one master for another.  In Africa this took on epic proportions with the constant civil wars that were fueled in part by the support of former colonial powers and the rising tensions of the Cold War.  Yet turning back to the image at hand, one can see a very interesting picture forming.  Suspending the disbelief in the authenticity of the photograph, the iPod represents a sort of future for Africa.  As the device itself boldly proclaims, it is "Designed in California, Made in China."  While companies in the United States may want to sell more products in the African market, one basic premise behind this exchange is largely ignored.  The People's Republic of China is one of the largest trading partners with African nations for raw materials and energy sources.  Despite being on the United Nation's Security Council, the PRC has ostensible supported condemnations of the genocide in Darfur while it works out trade deals with the government in Khartoum to purchase oil and natural gas, thus funding and propping up the regime that has turned a blind eye to the suffering of thousands of people.  Furthermore, Africa's mineral wealth has proven a curse far beyond diamonds.  Tantalum is an important metal because of its unique electromagnetic properties.  As such it is used in a cellphones and iPods to make the devices so compact and efficient.  The problem is that tantalum is found in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and has been one of many "conflict minerals."  Its forced mining has oppressed people in the DRC and funded warlords who can more easily sell tantalum than they can diamonds because tantalum cannot be traced back to a source like a diamond can.  Thus, while the AK-47 represents the brutal legacy of the Cold War in Africa, so does the iPod represent many of the continents current woes.  I suppose little has been learned and not much progress made sense the late 1910s. 

Tame Impala as a case study in Glocalization

I am a really big fan of indie rock for a variety of reasons.  The concept of an independent label appeals to my sensibilities with regard to large monolithic corporations, I am really not a fan, and the artistic freedom that one is afforded by being an indie act is really quite amazing.  You can produce real music, not something canned and designed to sell a billion copies.  I found out about Tame Impala through Sirius XMU, the Sirius Satellite indie rock channel, and the magic of the Internet.  The Internet has become a great promoter of youth culture in a way that no other medium has ever been able to facilitate.  The first generation that may have had a global "youth culture" was the one that came of age in the late sixties to early seventies.  The British invasion as a rock movement was by no means focused upon the United States and probably resonated through out much of the "free world" and became the subject of much bootleg importation into the Soviet Union.  But all of this was accomplished through the promotion of major record labels who controlled what message and media made it into the main stream.  Today in contrast, the Internet can represent a kind of meritocracy of music.  That is not to say that the "best" music makes it big (Miley Cyrus is a case in point of how a traditional record label can still hold sway) but what the Internet allows one to do is to connect listeners to music that is far outside of their typical scene.  Very few of the bands that I listen to have ever come within 100 miles of Hampton Roads.  The National played in Richmond last year but with the success of their latest album they probably will start touring on a larger venue circuit which means not in Virginia Beach or Norfolk.  Where as in earlier generations a band became popular in a local scene, say Seattle and Nirvana circa 1989, and then went big nationally, today a band can become famous internationally without ever doing much locally.  Thus music has become far more globalized than many other media.  Assuming you do not live behind the Great Firewall of China, an connection to the Internet connects one to a growing global youth culture of music.  Yet even more striking is how subdivided this culture truly is.  To quote the Canadian band Arcade Fire from their latest album The Suburbs, "The music we listen to, divides us into tribes."  So while I and a fellow twenty something in Tierra del Fuego can have identical exposure to music and similar tastes, because of the shear volume of music available to us it is unlikely we would have ever come into contact with the exact same material.  That being said, despite local differences we probably could still appreciate the same music despite being at different ends of the globe.  Ultimately, while previous generations had a kind of universal soundtrack to their youths, my generation has as many sound tracks as their are subcultures of music.  In the end, rather than uniting the world in a single global music culture, the Internet may very well save us from homogeneity and create a very diverse and colorful music market where anyone with recording equipment and an internet connection can become a star.  I think Andy Warhol would be proud.    Tame Impala - It is not meant to be