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There are plenty of independent bands singing in local languages. Few of them make it global. More imporant, humans are herd animals and often (not always) emul
by mafribe 11y ago
There are plenty of independent bands singing in local languages. Few
of them make it global. More imporant, humans are herd animals and
often (not always) emulate others, especially others that have had
success. If you've grown up in an environment saturated with
English-language pop-music, like a lot of the world has, then the idea
to sing in your native language might seem absurd or a fool's errand.
You need to think historically. The dominance of English language
pop music emerged at a time when music was distributed as vinyl
records. They were very expensive to produce and
distribute. Basically, to recoup the cost of producing and
distributing vinyl, you had to sell an extremely large number
(millions) of identical products, so you can industrialse the process. You target the most lucrative market (US), carter mercilessly to that market's demands, and homogenise (by way marketing in all forms) as much as possible the consumers, so you can sell as many copies of as few products as possible. You amplify this process by reusing production, distribution, marketing and reselling the product in less lucrative markets.
While the economics of producing and distributing has changed, the change was too recent to have
affected the dominance of English in this field, a dominance that was a reaction to the market forces described.
Social evolution typically trails technical evolution.