"Every Home Is Wired":
1 -- The Net in Relation to Music Subcultures
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Virtual Localisation
However, local culture cannot hope to simply remain in its preglobalised state while reaping the benefits from its new positioning on the global map. "The world culture is created through the increasing interconnectedness of varied local cultures, as well as through the development of cultures without a clear anchorage in any one territory. ... Cultures which are in important ways better understood in the context of their cultural surroundings than in isolation" (Hannerz 237). What emerges, thus, is a redefinition of what we consider 'local' to us, both as an abstract and as a physical concept. Bit 14
Taking on a meaning more removed from its original concept of 'physical closeness', 'the local' is becoming a stance in opposition to the controlling force of the mainstream music industry.5 The physical concept of the local is being redefined in the light of new media technologies which allow their users closeness to areas and people that are geographically remote; as Negroponte writes, "we will socialise in digital neighbourhoods in which physical space will be irrelevant and time will play a different role" (7). In the case of popular music, "the world productive environment not only seems to provide inspiration for lively new combinations of musical elements but also appears to have encouraged development of internationalised users who are receptive to culturally different genres. Now African juju and highlife, Indipop, and South American salsa all are accepted as part of an increasingly fragmented international marketplace of popular musics" (Campbell Robinson et al. 272). Bit 15

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© 1998 Axel Bruns