Word: musicalized
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Crossover is usually a pejorative term in the world of music, but these women do it with class. A Ma Zone may abandon the pure a cappella of earlier albums, but Zap Mama still have voices to contend with. Founded by Marie Daulne, a native of Zaire raised in Europe, this Brussels quintet reflects the eclectic cosmopolitanism of both Daulne's upbringing and their home city, with lyrics in French, various African languages and English. Elements of African tribal chants and Pygmy song blend seamlessly with Daulne's incredible lead vocals, which flow easily from breathless pixie to soul sister...
That Bloom was right, at least regarding pop's uncanny ability to transcend nationality and culture, is revealed by recent international adoration for the likes of Michael Jackson and, God help us, the Spice Girls. But reading Bloom is poor preparation for how completely American music has infiltrated Europe...
Maybe pop music's prominence shouldn't have surprised me. At least, Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind should have dulled the shock. Bloom wrote that "rock music has one appeal only, a barbaric appeal, to sexual desire--not love, not eros, but sexual desire undeveloped and untutored." Because sexual desire is universal, pop music "knows neither class nor nation." Consequently, pop music is a sort of teenage Esperanto: Every pubescent youth, regardless of nationality, should be attracted to the "masturbatorial fantasy" it promises...
...Bavarian hostel overlooking mountains which would impress even the Ricola house band. Each morning, we would sit to a breakfast of cereal with milk from a cow we could see through the window, bread with cheese made in the neighboring town and conversation topped with the mindless thumping of music from home. Our hosts, Christoph and Jutta, were warm country folk, with an agreeable predisposition to sausage and beer, but, alas, an ugly fetish for American music...
American pop music is cruel retaliation for measles, small pox and other emigre diseases stowed in the ships of 17th century European explorers. Pop is more easily communicable, needs no ships and seems impossible to quarantine. After all, what self-respecting group of teenage boys could resist what Bloom calls a "nonstop, commercially prepackaged, masturbatorial fantasy?" The trouble is, it's not just German teenagers who are infected. My family's hosts were mature adults, the owner of the store in Fischen was an elderly Christian soldier who did not seem prone in the least to indulgence in nonstop masturbatorial...