Folk and Global Music Culture

Around the world, discussions about the local and the global, authenticity and modernism, and identity and cosmopolitanism form a significant part of debates in intellectuals’ writings about culture and knowledge and it has almost become sophistry. This paper addresses the relationship between folk music and global culture while avoiding controversial issues.

In an attempt to arrive at clear, uncontroversial results, the paper defines certain terms and then tackles the relationship between folk and global music culture in order to answer the following questions:
Is it a relationship marked by acculturation or domination?
Is global culture a dominant reality that is imposed upon peoples?
Is global culture a process of exchange that aims to bring people closer together with the goal of creating a harmonious global society where citizenship transcends national borders and all nations are connected by universal norms?
In conclusion, the paper discusses possible ways in which national music cultures help to create global culture. In this context, we must apply the UNESCO Convention on Intangible Heritage, which calls for the preparation of inventories, cultural mapping and documentation of each culture’s musical instruments.
The writer submitted a scientific paper to the Archives for the Future Conference, which was held in 2003 in Delhi, India. The paper included a call for a global network of music archives that would provide material for comparative studies and help to illustrate the similarities and differences between music cultures in order to enrich global culture in a thoughtful and effective scientific manner.


Ali Al Daw
 Sudan