Global music in 2012

What happens when an online magazine publishes a book? Norient, the Bern-based network for local and global sounds and media culture, has taken on this task and published a book with Out of the Absurdity of Life has presented an exciting musical snapshot of our world. Editors Theresa Beyer and Thomas Burkhalter move somewhere between science, journalism and blog culture. The book is neither a pure illustrated book nor a collection of essays or a monograph: reports, scientific analyses and interviews alternate with song lyrics, CD covers, concert posters and snippets of quotes, sometimes in German, sometimes in English. The rich collage is not only graphically realized with attention to detail, it also provides the reader with new, surprising approaches to the pop-cultural music phenomena of our time. At the same time, the layout does justice to the fact that "World Music 2.0" can no longer be reduced to sounds and tones.

From Cameroonian Bikutsi Pop to the Colombian couple dance Cumbia and the Syrian New Wave Dabke to the shrill party music of Voodoohop in São Paolo: Out of the Absurdity of Life portrays facets and absurdities of a global sound present, far removed from the Eurocentric orientation of the nineties. The book explores the question of whether there is a special Alpine sound, examines the absence of a soundtrack to the Occupy movement and traces the controversial history of ethnomusicology. It discusses provocative Latin American copulation dances and provides insights into everyday global musical life. Norient also takes a critical look at its own form of publication as an online magazine and addresses the post-colonial problems of blog culture. The book never remains entirely analog and thus becomes an actual YouTube guide. What is vital for the online magazine also proves to be a valuable addition to the printed edition.

Thomas Burkhalter describes "world music 2.0" as a multi-local pop avant-garde. The oscillation of musical styles between fun and protest culture often makes it impossible to make a final judgment about the seriousness and motivations of the protagonists. One would like to read more such precise and comprehensive analyses, and one misses short summaries of the academic essays. Otherwise Out of the Absurdity of Life but a successful and heterogeneous yearbook for all musicophiles in the world. Who knows, maybe Norient will take the worthwhile leap from the online world to the printing press again in 2013?

Theresa Beyer and Thomas Burkhalter (eds.), Out of the Absurdity of Life. Global Music, 328 p., CHF 36, Traversion, Deitingen 2012, ISBN 978-3-906012-03-2