Musicians and the Industry

This chapter shows how musicians translate their musics and cultures for European and North American audiences. Acting as businesspeople and artists, musicians work with industry personnel’s and audiences’ expectations to build their images, personae, and musics in ways that are satisfying for themselves and appealing to foreign audiences. The chapter shows how these musicians are historically aware cosmopolitan artists who continually (re)position themselves as they mediate personal identities, career goals, audience (mis)understandings, and the legacies of colonialism and postcolonial nationalism to create valuable musical experiences and products for themselves and for their European and American audiences. They (re)create ideas about their cultures, Africa, and the African diaspora as they use and push against discourses of alterity and universality.