GOING GLOBAL Jazz in the 1980s and 1990s has become highly individualistic, autobiographical, with many jazz musicians producing quite distinctive, idiosyncratic sounds.1 This kind of specifically personal stylistic development has also taken place in the creative arts: composing, play writing and choreography; and the performing arts: dancing, concertizing and acting.2 In some ways this is not surprising because the artist's social context is now global. The immense variety of styles, although at times perplexing and bizarre, is part of the delight of diversity. It is part, too, of a slowly emerging world culture of the arts. I find it useful to see my poetry in this individualistic and this planetary context. -Ron Price with thanks to 1ABC TV, 10:30-11:30 pm, "Jazz: Final Episode," 7 February 2002; and 2 Tudwig Tuman, "Toward Critical Foundations For A World Culture of the Arts," World Order, Summer 1975, p.8. I feel I got in at the beginning just as this vast, global, culture was taking its first steps.1 You can go way back, say, to the 1840s when global's feet were in embryo. Perhaps it really all began with the Primal Point, the years of that great Precursor. And you will find in this poetic, carefully considered philosophic premises which underlie what I write and the way it mediates between man and man. As I draw ideas from the immense diversity of phenomenal existence, synthesis goes hand in hand with the ongoing process that is at this poetry's heart. And I define with increasing specificity, my cosmology, my mythology.2 1 This global culture, like the Baha'i Faith, really began to take off: 1950-2000. 2 "Creative mythology springs...from the insights, sentiments, thought, and vision of an adequate individual, loyal to his own experience of value." Joseph Campbell, Creative Mythology: The Masks of God, Viking Press, 1968, pp.6-7. Ron Price 8 February 2002
Globalization of the arts? like the talented Shakira singing english songs? I'm sure the corporate record companies have been doing this, just listen to world pop music -- you get a lot of the same forms and produced sounds/slams/hits/beats, etc... I hear a lot of 80s sounding instrumentation and cliches in popular indian music... also think of the effects it's had on peter gabriel, he's got interesting stuff with his world instrumentation etc.. i've never pondered the 'globalization of the arts' and it is a very interesting concept to reflect on! i define globalization as capitalism often, but we'll see musicians define this as colloboration, and most artists given a chance to work with or take/borrow from others. if they're just ripping off the other culture without creating, then that's probably the globalization effect, the borrowing and creating is just a continuation of the artistic effect..