Cultural Sociology

Copyright © 2007
BSA Publications Ltd®
Volume 1(3): 317–341
[DOI: 10.1177/1749975507082051]
SAGE Publications
Los Angeles, London,
New Delhi and Singapore

Ethno-National Pop-Rock Music:

Aesthetic Cosmopolitanism Made from Within
■ Motti Regev
The Open University of Israel

ABSTRACT
Pop-rock music is portrayed as a major embodiment of the transformation of
national cultural uniqueness from purist essentialism into aesthetic cosmopoli-
tanism. Examining the local production of ethno-national pop-rock, and its public
reception and legitimation through half a century, the article demonstrates how
forces within the national context greatly contribute to cultural globalization. The
article looks at three aspects of the rise of ethno-national pop-rock music to
national legitimacy: the agency of musicians, analyzed as structurally stemming from
the intersection of the field of pop-rock and the field of national culture; a four-
phase, half-century long process, called here the ‘historical musical event’ of pop-
rock; and the consequence of pop-rock legitimacy for performance of national
uniqueness. The general arguments and theoretical points are illustrated by
detailed reference to the cases of pop-rock music in Argentina and Israel.

KEY WORDS
aesthetic cosmopolitanism / Argentina / Israel / national culture / pop-rock music
/ popular music / sociology of music

Introduction

n the lyrics to the song La Argentinidad al Palo (Argentine-ness In Erection),1

I Argentinean rock band Bersuit Vergarabat partly satirize and partly celebrate
things that evoke national pride in their country. The double album of the
same name, in which the song appears, received the Gardel prize for best album

317
318 Cultural Sociology Volume 1 ■ Number 3 ■ November 2007

of 2005. In another part of the world, in the 1993 song Kama Yossi (How
Many Yossi), Israeli rock auteur Berry Sakharoff reminisces about Israeli sub-
urban culture of the 1960s. The song is considered by critics as one of the best
Israeli rock songs ever recorded. Each of these songs represents a recent
moment in the popular music of Argentina and Israel. The themes of the lyrics,
the language used for singing, the dialogue with earlier moments in local music,
as well as the positive reviews and market success, make them a very local mat-
ter in each country. For their respective local audiences, each song stands as an
expression of current national cultural uniqueness: Argentine-ness and Israeli-
ness. Yet, at the same time, each of these songs is a pop-rock song. The electric
and electronic instrumentation, the sophisticated studio production techniques
used for their creation and the presence of the stylistic influence of global pop-
rock genres, make each of these songs an art work that shares much aesthetic
common ground with many songs produced elsewhere in the world. As com-
ponents of a global form of art, each of these songs contains stylistic traces and
influences from places and traditions alien to Israel or Argentina. The incorpo-
ration of these influences thus naturalizes elements of ‘otherness’ into the cur-
rent sense of national uniqueness in these two countries. These songs exemplify
the transformation that has taken place in the ways national uniqueness is
expressed in, and performed through, music. This involves a shift from com-
mitment to essentialist notions of folkism and traditionalism, to fluidity and
conscious openness to exterior influences of pop-rock. Needless to say, these
two countries are just two cases of a prevalent phenomenon, found in the musi-
cal reality of many countries. Pop-rock music stands here as a major embodi-
ment of the transformation that took place in the cultural uniqueness of many
nations and ethnicities (henceforth called here ethno-national cultural unique-
ness): from an emphasis and quest for purism and essentialism, to a conception
of ethno-national cultural uniqueness which I call aesthetic cosmopolitanism.
The term aesthetic (sometimes cultural) cosmopolitanism, as suggested in
the work of Urry (1995) and Szerszynski and Urry (2002, 2006), applies to the
cultural realm the renewed general interest in the centuries-old concept of cos-
mopolitanism (Beck, 2000; Cheah and Robbins, 1998; Hannerz, 1990, 2004;
Vertovec and Cohen, 2002). These works locate aesthetic cosmopolitanism, at
the individual level, as individuals having a taste for art and culture of nations
and other groups other than one’s own, and for ‘the wider shores of cultural
experience’ (Tomlinson, 1999: 202). However, in late modernity, many of the
art works and cultural products that signify contemporary ethno-national cul-
tural uniqueness routinely and intentionally include elements drawn from ‘out-
side’ the nation or ethnicity which they represent. The difference between what
counts as ‘exterior’ or ‘interior’ to national culture has been blurred. Therefore,
in the light of Beck’s succinct definition of cosmopolitanism as a condition in
which the ‘otherness of the other is included in one’s own self-identity and self-
definition’ (Beck, 2003: 17), and following Regev (2007), I want to expand the
notion of aesthetic cosmopolitanism, and suggest that the concept should be
located not necessarily at the individual level, but at the structural collective
 Ethno-National Pop-Rock Music Regev 319

level, as a cultural condition that is inextricable from current ethno-national

uniqueness. Put differently, I want to suggest that aesthetic cosmopolitanism
comes into being not only through consumption of art works and cultural prod-
ucts from the ‘wider shores of cultural experience’, but also, and more inten-
sively, through the creation and consumption of much of the local art and
culture that is believed to express ethno-national uniqueness. Aesthetic cos-
mopolitanism is produced ‘from within’ national culture, as Beck and Sznaider
put it (2006). Aesthetic cosmopolitanism is the condition in which the repre-
sentation and performance of ethno-national cultural uniqueness becomes
largely based on contemporary art forms like pop-rock music or film, and
whose expressive forms include stylistic elements knowingly drawn from
sources exterior to indigenous traditions. As such, aesthetic cosmopolitanism is
not the exception in contemporary cultural practices, but rather the normal and
the routine, and a prime manifestation of what Robertson (1995) has called
glocalization: the (re-)construction of locality in response to and under the
influence of globalization. Following Billig (1995), it could be referred to as
banal aesthetic cosmopolitanism, as ordinary and mundane cosmopolitanism
(Hebdige, 1990; Lamont and Aksartova, 2002), or as ‘actually existing cos-
mopolitanism’ (Robbins, 1998). While not refuting the cultural imperialism
thesis, the concept of aesthetic cosmopolitanism in my view better expresses the
complexity of cultural flows between parts of the globe in the present day.
Popular music, and especially pop-rock music, is a key cultural form in this
regard. The flourishing of domestic pop-rock music styles in many different
countries has transformed the cultural uniqueness of each one of them, as
expressed in music, into a sonic-aesthetic space saturated with electric and elec-
tronic sounds, highly inspired by, and intensively connected to, stylistic trends
and canonic works associated mostly with Anglo-American pop-rock, but also
with pop-rock music from other ethno-national entities. Pop-rock demonstrates
that, under conditions of aesthetic cosmopolitanism, the model of world culture
suggested by Meyer et al. (1997) is not confined to the realm of instrumental
rationalized culture. Construction of ethno-national uniqueness in expressive
culture also takes the path of isomorphism, when forces inside the nation are
self-mobilized to create ‘their own’ pop-rock, believing this is the way to per-
form uniqueness in late modernity.
This article offers an outline for assessing and understanding the role of
pop-rock music in the emergence of aesthetic cosmopolitanism and the trans-
formation of ethno-national cultural uniqueness. I do this by considering three
dimensions. First, I examine aesthetic cosmopolitanism as an outcome of the
social logic underlying the agency of musicians and critics, as constrained by the
fields of cultural production in which they act. Second, I describe the long term
process of pop-rock gaining legitimacy and dominance in the musical field,
which I call (following DeNora, 2003), the historical musical event of pop-rock.
Third and finally, I analyze briefly the consequences of this legitimacy for musi-
cal ethno-nationalism at the level of performance. To illustrate the general argu-
ments, the article refers to the cases of pop-rock in Argentina and Israel.
320 Cultural Sociology Volume 1 ■ Number 3 ■ November 2007

The Field of Pop-rock Music

I will begin with some clarifications as to the nature of the category of music
called here ‘pop-rock’ and its constitution as a field of cultural production. The
term pop-rock is used here to refer to music consciously created and produced
by using amplification, electric and electronic music instruments, sophisticated
recording equipment and other sound manipulation devices. For pop-rock
musicians, these technologies of sonic expression are not just aids for enhanc-
ing or capturing sound produced by traditional acoustic instruments and the
human voice, but rather are regarded as creative tools for generating sonic tex-
tures that cannot be produced otherwise (S. Jones, 1992; Théberge, 1997). Pop-
rock music is predominantly a creation of recording studios, destined primarily
for phonograms. Put differently, pop-rock is mainly an art of recorded music,
an art of making records. From a cultural sociology perspective, pop-rock is an
art form mostly comparable to film. Both are defined by their technologies of
creation and consumption.
Obviously, the affinity between the plethora of styles that make up pop-
rock music also rests on a strong socio-cultural base. A useful way to concep-
tualize sociologically the socio-cultural base of pop-rock is by using Bourdieu’s
theory of the fields of cultural and artistic production (1992, 1993a). The his-
tory of pop-rock music since the mid-1950s amounts to the emergence and
institutionalization of a certain field of cultural production, that is, the field of
pop-rock music. The field of pop-rock has the typical hierarchical structure and
logic of struggle of all artistic fields. Thus, it has dominant positions, consisting
of consecrated canonic musicians and their works (mostly albums), and corre-
sponding production of meaning positions (i.e. the activities and products of
critics, journalists, historians etc.) that maintain the successfully imposed crite-
ria of evaluation. The history of the field is that of struggles by new entrants to
gain the ultimate prize of becoming part of the canon. Such struggles might take
the form of heresy (including attempts to transgress and redefine the dominant
criteria of evaluation) or may be evolutionary, occuring in the wake of already
existing canonical positions. In either case, the ever developing field is con-
structed of a series of additions to the canon, each justified in its turn by power-
holding producers of meaning as important stylistic innovations. The
justifications used for erecting this canon are permutations of the traditional
modernist ideology of autonomous art, meaning that the importance of albums
and musicians is determined not necessarily by their impact in the market of
phonograms, but by their perceived aesthetic and cultural value (Appen and
Dohering, 2006; Regev, 1994). That is, the canonic albums are believed to be
ultimate embodiments of the potential hidden in the expressive technologies of
pop-rock for the latter to be genuine artistic and creative means. Each new
addition is typically justified by interpreting it as an expansion of the creative
possibilities hidden in existing or newly developed technologies.
A major characteristic of the field consists of the very differentiation of
pop-rock music from other types of popular music. This differentiation is
 Ethno-National Pop-Rock Music Regev 321

accomplished by discursive practices of critics and journalists (Jones, 2002;

Lindberg et al., 2005) as well as organizational practices within the music
industry (Negus, 1992), and it is widely acknowledged (Frith, 1981; Grossberg,
1992; Longhurst, 1995; Negus, 1997; Shuker, 2001). The differentiation is
organized around a stylistic genealogy and a historical narrative for which the
emergence of rock’n’roll in the mid-1950s, associated with the music recorded
by Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley, serves as a mythical moment of ‘birth’. Many
accounts of this genealogy use the term ‘rock’ to label this cultural category.
The addition here of the term ‘pop’ deals with a certain blurring that is some-
times admitted as to the difference between, or overlap of, ‘pop’ and ‘rock’
(Gammond, 1993; Shuker, 1998). This addition helps to convey the wide range
of electric or electronic styles pertaining to the genealogy, that can metaphori-
cally be described as both ‘heavy, hard and difficult’ (i.e. ‘rock’) as well as ‘light,
soft and easy’ (i.e. ‘pop’). Thus, salient names included by the discourse of pop-
rock in its stylistic genealogy, and moments valorized in its historical narrative,
include ‘British rock’ (the Beatles, the Rolling Stones), ‘soul music’ (James
Brown, the Temptations), Bob Dylan and ‘psychedelic rock’ (Jimi Hendrix,
Jefferson Airplane) in the 1960s; ‘progressive rock’ (Pink Floyd), David Bowie,
Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Wonder, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Led Zeppelin,
‘disco’ (Chic), ‘funk’ (Funkadelic), ‘punk’ (Talking Heads, the Clash) and ‘reg-
gae’ (Bob Marley) in the 1970s; ‘new wave’ (the Cure), ‘rap’ (Public Enemy),
Prince, U2, REM, Madonna in the 1980s; Nirvana, Radiohead, ‘hip-hop’, ‘elec-
tronica’ (house, techno) in the 1990s and later. On the other hand, pop-rock
discourse traditionally excludes and marginalizes popular music styles that do
not share this cultural background (most notably musicals like The Sound of
Music, easy listening of the type made by Ray Coniff, for example, and vocal
pop associated with the likes of Tony Bennett, Frank Sinatra or Barbara
Streisand).Yet, it should be noted that the success of the field of pop-rock in
institutionalizing an artistic hierarchy for popular music, based on the imposi-
tion of the ‘rock’ criteria of evaluation, has caused a growing ‘pop-rockization’
of almost the entire art world of popular music (Regev, 2002). Aspiring to gain
artistic respectability, musicians working in idioms conventionally loathed by
the rock criteria of evaluation have over the years converted their aesthetic
beliefs and adopted pop-rock creative practices. This is best expressed in the
emergence of styles that go by names such as ‘soft rock’ and ‘adult contempo-
rary pop’, in which the difference between pop-rock and types of popular music
previously excluded from pop-rock discourse has been blurred. Knowledge of
this historical narrative, and acquaintance with the actual stylistic innovations
or features associated with each moment or name, are the doxa of the field,
both in terms of craft and belief. At any moment in its history, new entrants
who aspire to gain rewards and prizes in the field acquire at least parts of this
knowledge in order to position themselves in the stylistic map. The already
established patterns of creativity and nuances of meaning become a set of nec-
essary dispositions – the pop-rock habitus – which serves as a platform for
attempts to surpass existing forms through continuity or heresy.
322 Cultural Sociology Volume 1 ■ Number 3 ■ November 2007

This understanding of pop-rock becomes more apparent in the context of

non-Anglo-American popular music cultures, where pop-rock is often under-
stood, somewhat stereotypically, as all that ‘new’, late modern, electric and
electronic music whose alleged intrusion into, and disruption of, indigenous
folk and popular music traditions, in turn involved the stigmatization of it as
an embodiment of cultural imperialism (in the eyes of the left) or cultural dete-
rioration (in the eyes of the right) (see Pacini Hernandez et al., 2004).
Conventional descriptions of the field of pop-rock, like the one briefly pre-
sented above, tend to concentrate almost exclusively on its dominant Anglo-
American components. But pop-rock was from an early stage a world
phenomenon. Disseminated by the growing international music industry,
Anglo-American pop-rock was present in the music cultures of many different
countries around the world since its initial moment in the 1950s. As such, its
various styles, moments and names have been for more than half a century a
major component in the taste cultures of various social sectors in those coun-
tries. Such audiences developed a sense of cultural ownership for Anglo-
American pop-rock not unlike that of its ‘native’ audiences in the US and UK.
Pop-rock became ‘their’ music for purposes of marking generational time and
identity (Frith, 1987). Inseparable from this are the generations of musicians
and critics who have been creating and mediating locally-made pop-rock since
at least the early 1960s. In subsequent decades, in a combined process of keep-
ing pace with stylistic innovations in Anglo-American pop-rock, and develop-
ing indigenous styles and sonic structures, musicians and fans in many different
countries have developed pop-rock traditions ‘of their own’.
These traditions, overwhelmingly sung in domestic languages, and becom-
ing markers of local identity for their fans (if not for their entire respective
nations and ethnic groups), are henceforth labeled here as ‘ethno-national pop-
rock.’ As practically unacknowledged positions (by the dominant discourse) in
the field of pop-rock, their actual existence nevertheless means that pop-rock
was from the outset a global field. The self-perception of non-Anglo-American
pop-rock musicians and critics as participants in the global field constituted
them as a sort of cultural transmission mechanism, that transfers aesthetic
forms from ‘outside’ the national context into it, in order to ‘indigenize’ them
(and sometimes also in the other direction, involving transmission from ethno-
national context to the global field). It is in this convergence of the ‘global’ and
the Anglo-American with the ethnic and national, as embodied in the cultural
work of pop-rock musicians and critics, that pop-rock music becomes a major
site for the social production of aesthetic cosmopolitanism from within the
nation. It should be stressed that ethno-national pop-rock is not to be conflated
with ‘world music’ styles and discourse. While they occasionally do overlap
(especially when viewed from the US or the UK), ‘world music’ aesthetic sensi-
bilities and artistic ideology often counter the electric emphasis of ethno-
national pop-rock and its close affinity to pop-rock in general (Erlmann, 1993;
Feld, 1994; Frith, 2000; Robertson and Inglis, 2005).
 Ethno-National Pop-Rock Music Regev 323

Agency and the Intersection of Two Fields

Understanding how aesthetic cosmopolitanism in music is socially produced

from within given ethno-national cultures, entails looking at musicians and crit-
ics as agents whose cultural work is structured by the simultaneous position
they occupy in two fields of cultural production: the global field of pop-rock on
the one hand, and the specific field of ethno-national culture in which they are
situated on the other. The latter refers to the social space in which different
identity positions within a given ethno-national setting struggle over what con-
stitutes and defines legitimate national culture (Regev, 2000). Aesthetic cos-
mopolitanism emerges as the socially produced consequence of the interplay
between these two fields. The working of this interplay, its social mechanism
and cultural logic, can be analyzed by considering two elaborations on
Bourdieu’s analysis of cultural fields.
The first comes from the work of Sewell (1992), who criticizes Bourdieu’s
analysis of habitus because it ‘cannot explain change as arising from within the
operation of structures’ (1992: 16). He then goes on to argue that the transfor-
mation of structures from within is possible thanks to five key characteristics of
fields (or social structures). Two of these are the ‘multiplicity of structures’ and
the ‘transposability of schemas’. These two imply that individuals, as social
agents, are always situated in more than one field, and routinely transpose ele-
ments from one field-specific habitus to their actions and practices in a differ-
ent field. Artists and other cultural producers are no exception: they occupy
positions in more than one field, each field having its own specific forms of cap-
ital and habitus, with its own hierarchies, structures and schemas. The inter-
section of two (or more) fields of cultural production thus becomes a source for
innovation and change. The work of agency, of producing cultural change, is
performed through the transposition of specific types of habitus from one field
to another. Aesthetic sensibilities, criteria of evaluation and creative patterns
are some key elements transposed by cultural producers from one field to
another, as part of the dynamics of innovation and surpassing of existing pat-
terns that characterize all artistic fields.
A second elaboration comes from the work of Toynbee (2000), who
applies a key concept of Bourdieu’s field theory, the ‘space of possibles’ (or pos-
sibilities), to the work of musicians in the field of popular music. Examining
Bourdieu’s concept, which defines the creative trajectories available to an artist
at a given moment, Toynbee goes on to develop a model he calls ‘the radius of
creativity’. His main point is that within the given space of possibilities avail-
able to an artist in the field, there is always a likelihood that some possibilities
will be preferred over others. This likelihood is a function of the musician’s own
dispositions, her position in the field, and the readily available creative means,
as offered by the actual institutions within which she works. It is this likelihood
that ultimately defines which creative possibility will be adopted, including
stylistic innovation.
324 Cultural Sociology Volume 1 ■ Number 3 ■ November 2007

In the light of these elaborations, it can be asserted that generations of

musicians within ethno-national settings, since the 1960s and onwards, once
they were faced with, and became fascinated by, the creative possibilities
offered by the globally dominant forms of the art of pop-rock (not to mention
the ideologies surrounding those creative possibilities) have been self-mobilized
into membership and actor-hood in the global field of pop-rock. While the
adoption of pop-rock might be interpreted, along the lines of the cultural impe-
rialism thesis (Goodwin and Gore, 1990; Negus, 1997) as a move forced on
musicians by the industry, it is rather the willful embracing of pop-rock by cer-
tain actors that has proved crucial. Indeed, if there is something we might call
‘cultural imperialism’ in this regard, it consists of the acceptance of a belief in
the cultural significance and artistic value of the creative means and canonic
works of pop-rock, and the active joining of the field.
Once they came to perceive themselves as participants in the global field,
pop-rock musicians in many parts of the world adopted the imperative to keep
up to date with things that happen at the forefront of Anglo-American pop-rock
(and sometimes musical developments coming out of other locations as well).
Stylistic innovations or musicians that are valorized as ‘important’ by the dom-
inant (Anglo-American) production of meaning positions in the field are bound
to influence and inspire pop-rock musicians in different parts of the world. Such
musicians willfully let themselves be inspired and influenced, because it serves
their interest to feel like active, up to date and relevant actors in the global field,
and to determine their own path of creativity and innovation. But these musi-
cians are also actors in their respective fields of national culture, where they are
propelled to create works whose form, content and meaning arguably represent
(or they think they represent) ethno-national uniqueness, singularity and dis-
tinction. As members of a given ethno-national community, and as artists
whose immediate public comes also from that same community, they are
impelled to make music that can be used by their relevant publics to sustain a
sense of local uniqueness, that is, of ethno-nationalism.
Pop-rock musicians, in other words, find themselves at the intersection of
two fields and an expanded radius of creativity. The space of creative possibili-
ties opened to them consists of both the pop-rock tradition and the ethno-
national heritage of which they are successors. Likelihood of access to the creative
and institutional means that lead to success in the global field has historically
been low for pop-rock musicians in non-Anglo-American countries. Thus they
have been opting, overwhelmingly, for those creative possibilities whose likeli-
hood of leading to success was much higher, namely those that allow the making
of pop-rock music which is also at the same time ethno-national music. This
means, in practice, transposing aesthetic schemas from the global field to the
national field, and vice versa. Transposition consists of taking stylistic patterns of
pop-rock and using them within ethno-national contexts, and application of
ethno-national traditional patterns into the realm of pop-rock. Transposition
results most notably in the making of ethno-national variants on whatever pop-
rock style happens to be in vogue in the Anglo-American-dominated global field
 Ethno-National Pop-Rock Music Regev 325

at a given moment. Thus many countries witnessed locally made rock’n’roll in the
early 1960s, music inspired by British rock later in that decade, progressive rock,
folk rock and punk in the 1970s, new wave in the 1980s, and hip-hop or electro-
dance in the 1990s. The salient ‘ethno-national’ elements in these repertoires con-
sisted of singing in the native language and referring in the lyrics to subjects and
issues that emanated from local, ethno-national social reality. However, in order
for musicians to justify this music and to gain legitimacy as expressions of ethno-
national uniqueness, transposition of creative practices also takes place in the
other direction. This is done by incorporating into pop-rock stylistic elements and
creative techniques associated with local, ethno-national traditions of folk and
popular music. This practice includes the use of native music instruments (some-
times modified to be electric), indigenous vocal techniques of enunciation through
singing and rhythmic patterns, and, most obviously, recording electrified pop-
rock cover versions of traditional music.
The pattern is most typically exemplified by folk rock singer-songwriters
whose inspiration comes from Bob Dylan, but whose notion of ‘folk’ comes
from their own heritage. The result is an electric ‘ethno-rock’, often received
with much enthusiasm by critics and audiences for its perceived seamless hybrid-
ity of indigenous tradition and state of the art modernity. Thus in Argentina, the
electric variant of folk rhythms produced by Leon Gieco made him a national
figure, and in Israel Ehud Banai’s rock, tinged with Central Asian and Middle
Eastern flavors, spawned a whole wave of ethnic pop-rock. The term ‘hybridiza-
tion’ is often used to describe the creative practices employed by Leon Gieco or
Ehud Banai, and it certainly depicts the nature of their creativity. In the light of
the above, however, it should be stressed that hybridization is not an arbitrary
or whimsical creative practice, but rather an artistic practice structured by
the social embeddedness of pop-rock music in the intersection of two fields of
cultural production.
It should be added that not only musicians find themselves in this intersec-
tion. Critics, commentators, radio DJs and music editors – in short, producers
of meaning – occupy important positions in this regard as well. Their practices
of transposition take place by establishing pop-rock magazines, editing and pre-
senting radio programmes, writing reviews and columns in the press, and so on.
Through these practices, they transpose into the local field the knowledge of
pop-rock, its criteria of evaluation, its mythology of canonical works and the
latter’s history. Their agency ultimately involves producing the ideological
vocabulary and artistic justification through which pop-rock music in general
becomes culturally respectable, and home-made pop-rock gains recognition as
a legitimate expression of ethno-national uniqueness.

The Historical Musical Event of Pop-rock

Gaining recognition for pop-rock music as a legitimate expression of ethno-

national uniqueness amounts to the transformation of such uniqueness, as
326 Cultural Sociology Volume 1 ■ Number 3 ■ November 2007

expressed in music, into a condition of aesthetic cosmopolitanism. The transfor-

mation has taken decades to materialize, and although its exact points of begin-
ning and ending are difficult to determine, it can be asserted that it lasted roughly
from the late 1950s until the turn of the century. It is also undeniable that the
transformation was preceded by a form of musical ethno-nationalism charac-
terized by a quest for essentialist distinction through folk and traditional
popular music, and that in its later stages musical ethno-nationalism came to be
characterized by the legitimate, sometimes overwhelming and dominant pres-
ence of pop-rock music. For the purposes of characterizing this long-term
production of aesthetic cosmopolitanism from within ethno-national contexts,
I want to suggest the concept of ‘historical musical event’, and thus to present
schematically the historical musical event of pop-rock.
The concept of ‘musical event’ is taken from the work of DeNora (2003).
Evolving from ethnographic work carried out in different settings (De Nora; 2000),
she developed a model that demonstrates how engagement with music affects indi-
vidual life courses and micro situations of everyday life. At this interactionist level,
a musical event is an act of engagement with music that in some way alters the life
of the individuals involved. I propose to generalize the use of the concept, and
examine it at a collective level, looking at how the engagement with music of a
given collective entity such as a nation alters its sense of cultural uniqueness. Thus,
the ascent of pop-rock to legitimacy, and even dominance, within ethno-national
cultures can be portrayed as the historical musical event of pop-rock. Portraying the
process as an ‘event’ comes to emphasize that music is a force that does not just
reflect, but actually carries and prompts, cultural change. Following the half-
century duration of this event, the perception and performance of ethno-national
cultural uniqueness has been transformed from involving emphasis on essentialism,
purism and exclusivity, to being organized around fluidity, relativity and openness
to ‘otherness’.
The major aspects of the event are portrayed and described as a four-phase
process (schematically presented in Table I), based on the cases of Argentina and
Israel. It should be stressed, however, that evidence from other countries suggests
that, with some variance and modification in periodization and other elements, the
skeletal structure of the historical musical event of pop-rock is similar: see, for
example, Chun et al. (2004) for East Asia, Dunn (2001) for Brazil, De Kloet
(2001), Baranovitch (2003), A.F. Jones (1992) for China, Loosely (2003) for
France, Mitchell (2001) for the global spread of hip-hop, Ollivier (2006) for
Quebec, Stapleton and May (1987) for African countries, Cushman (1995) and
Steinholt (2005) for Russia. However, unlike these single case studies, that rarely
theorize the emergence of ethno-national pop-rock as a world phenomenon, I use
Argentina and Israel as anchors for a generalized theory of world pop-rock. Also,
while the emphasis of previous comparative studies was mostly institutional,
focusing on policies, industry ownership and places of production (Burnett, 1996;
Malm and Wallis, 1992), I propose here a cultural focus on meaning. Argentina
and Israel are chosen for substantial and methodological reasons. Both countries
are essentially modern immigrant societies, for whom constructing a unified sense
 Ethno-National Pop-Rock Music Regev 327

Table 1 The Historical Musical Event of Pop-rock: Transformation of Ethno-National Cultural

Uniqueness in Music

Before the event:

• Quest for essentialism and purism through emphasis on traditional and indigenous folk and
popular music

The Event:
Actors: musicians, critics, fans, media professionals, music industry

Phase 1. Pre-history (Elvis and beat-bands imitations)

Phase 2. Consecrated/mythical beginning (Local Music inspired by the Beatles, Dylan, folk rock,
psychedelia and progressive rock)

Phase 3. Consolidation and dominance (aligning ranks with traditional national music, local new-
wave, rockization of pop)

Phase 4. Diversification, internationalization (hip-hop, electronica, metal; international success and

recognition)

After the event:

• Pop-rock music as legitimate expression of the ethno-nationalism
• Emphasis on participation and membership as equals in world pop-rock
• Willful openness to constant stylistic influx from ‘outside’: aesthetic cosmopolitanism

of cultural uniqueness has been a major endeavour. The role played by folk and
popular music in this effort provided similar backgrounds to the paths of pop-rock
music towards legitimacy in both countries. That is, pop-rock posed a potential
threat to the perceived achievement of unified national uniqueness, and its dis-
course and practice in these countries had therefore to defend and justify ethno-
national relevance vigorously. Methodologically, my personal fluency in Spanish
and Hebrew allowed for unmediated, first-hand deciphering of texts and dis-
course. Overall, I trace the stylistic expansion and public reception of national
pop-rock in these two countries and point to musicians, albums and styles that
have been the carriers of this socio-cultural process. Taken together, the four
phases depict the social career of pop-rock in each country from marginality to
legitimacy. They also expose the themes of linearity and achievement that under-
lie the historical narratives of pop-rock, the pride of local actors about ‘making it’
in terms of the artistic parameters of pop-rock, and maintenance of ethno-national
uniqueness. The details of pop-rock presented here have been extracted from the
production of meaning apparatuses in both countries. For the sake of brevity and
fluidity, I keep direct quotes to a minimum.2

Pre-history
This early phase consists of the musicians and albums conventionally regarded
as the first to introduce rock music into local-national cultures. However,
328 Cultural Sociology Volume 1 ■ Number 3 ■ November 2007

except for factual acknowledgment, they are hardly appreciated at this time for
artistic quality or authenticity. The musicians in this phase preceded the
mythologized, consecrated moment of the ‘birth’ of ethno-national pop-rock,
the moment when its proper ‘history’ began, hence my use of the term ‘pre-
history’. Lack of appreciation is coupled to typical characterizations of the
music at this phase as imitative and inauthentic (Kreimer, 1970). However,
while in Argentina the performers associated with this early stage enjoyed
commercial success and the status of media teen idols, in Israel, on the other
hand, the pioneering of pop-rock had the character of a suburban subculture,
hardly noticed by the media or record industry. Another noticeable difference
lies in the fact that early pop-rock was mostly a middle-class youth phenomenon
in Argentina, while in Israel it was primarily a working-class youth affair.
Interestingly, a salient source of influence on this early pop-rock in both Israel
and Argentina was the Italian pop-rock associated with the San Remo festival,
and with performers such as Little Tony, Bobby Solo, Rita Pavone and others.
Performers Sandro and Palito Ortega are the most salient names in
Argentina in this phase. Sandro was a local impersonation of Elvis Presley. He
recorded cover versions of early rock’n’roll hits, and adopted the correspond-
ing appearance (hair style, body language on stage, and so on). Palito Ortega,
on the other hand, was the main figure in the group of performers known as El
Club Del Clan, named after the television show which regularly featured them.
The models here were early 1960s North American musicians such as Paul
Anka or Neil Sedaka. Known together as La Nueva Ola (new wave) or Musica
Beat, Sandro and El Club Del Clan participants were an intrusion in the popu-
lar music of Argentina, dominated by folklore, tango and other typically ‘Latin
American’ forms of popular music.
In the case of Israel, the early musicians are usually grouped together
under the name lehakot ha-ketzev (the beat groups). The label refers to a num-
ber of bands that sang in (bad) English covers of Anglo-American hits (origi-
nally by Presley, Cliff Richard, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Animals, the
Kinks, the Who etc.). With names such as Ha-shmenim ve-harazim (the Fat
Guys and the Slim Guys), Ha-kokhavim ha-kehulim (the Blue Stars), the
Goldfingers, Ha-arayiot (the Lions), Uzi ve-ha-signonot (Uzi and the Styles)
and the Churchills, the bands regularly exchanged members between each
other and performed in small clubs in the greater Tel Aviv area, most notably
in the town of Ramle. The limited cultural industries of Israel in the mid-1960s
did not pay any attention to the phenomenon. Lehakot ha-ketzev, if noticed
at all by those occupying power-holding positions in the field of national
culture, were dismissed as totally irrelevant, and at best treated as a threat to
the sought purity of national culture.

Consecrated ‘Beginning’
Each country has its quasi-mythical moment of the ‘birth’ of its own ethno-
national rock, a founding and constitutive historical moment. This moment,
 Ethno-National Pop-Rock Music Regev 329

lasting roughly from the late 1960s throughout much of the 1970s, consists of
musicians that, according to conventional narratives, were the first to make
local rock music ‘worthy of its name’. This was in two senses. First, music that
matched artistic standards set by leading Anglo-American artists of the period.
Second, music that could properly be called locally ‘authentic’, because of the
language it used, the content of its lyrics, its typical sonic texture, and the social
sources from which it emanated. Thus the consecrated beginning of pop-rock
in the two countries is characterized by the appearance of enthusiastically
received local versions of music inspired by the Beatles and Bob Dylan, folk
rock, progressive rock and, to some extent, hard/heavy rock. Following this
period, leading musicians of this phase enjoyed a lasting and influential career
into the 21st century. The albums recorded in this phase by these musicians are
the consecrated classics of local rock, its essential canon. It is with these albums
that in the countries in question the music was given the proper names of
respectively Israeli rock and rock nacional.
An important feature of this formative moment, as with similar moments
in other fields of art, is its collaborative nature. In each country, the ‘birth’ of
ethno-national pop-rock is credited to a small network of musicians that
between them formed bands, duos or short-lived projects, participated in each
others’ solo efforts, contributed production work and authorship of composi-
tions or lyrics to each others’ albums, and joined forces on stage in special con-
certs and events. Regev and Seroussi (2004) refer to this network in Israel as the
‘elite’ of Israeli rock. The term can be applied to the parallel network in
Argentina as well. Musicians and critics there repeatedly declared the release
and success of the single La Balsa (The Raft) by the group Los Gatos in 1967
as the beginning of rock nacional. Litto Nebia, front person of this band, is one
member of the ‘elite’ network, whose additional prominent names include Luis
Alberto Spinetta, Charly García, Nito Mestre, David Lebón, Leon Gieco, as
well as other members of the bands some of these musicians led (Almendra,
Pescado Rabioso, Sui Generis, Seru Giran, Pappo’s Blues), and members of
bands such as Manal, Vox Dei, and Arco Iris. The first album by Spinetta’s
band, Almendra, is often credited as the constitutive work of rock nacional.
The album was twice voted, in critics’ and musicians’ polls conducted by the
daily newspapers Clarín in 1985 and Página /12 in 1992, as the best album in
the history of Argentine rock. As Pujol (2002: 269) expresses it:
Everything seemed to be there in place: the sonic world of the [19]60s, with its
diverse replicates, diverse styles, synthesized in thirty minutes. In this sense, it might
be said that the influence of the Beatles on Almendra was less about direct musical
affiliation than about the idea of the integral disc or album, like Sgt. Pepper’s
Lonely Hearts Club Band.

In Israel, the network consisted of singer Arik Einstein and musicians like
Shalom Hanoch, Shmulik Kraus and Shem-Tov Levy who collaborated with
him intensively at this formative stage. The ‘elite’ also included the band
Kaveret as well as Ariel Zilber, Matti Caspi and others. Foremost among the
330 Cultural Sociology Volume 1 ■ Number 3 ■ November 2007

albums made by members of this network are Sof Onat ha-Tapuzim (End of the
Orange Season, 1976), the only album by the band Tamuz, formed by Hanoch
and Zilber, and Shablool (1970), by Arik Einstein and Hanoch again. As
Yaakov Gilaad, a critic writing retrospectively in the mid-1980s, put it:
In a period when Israeli music sounds like a merger of a poor man’s San Remo fes-
tival and the Eurovision, Shablool lands like a thunder on a clear day. A real boom.
The most important and best album recorded until this day in the new Israeli music
… Rock’n’roll in Hebrew. Here, at this point exactly, Israeli rock is born.
(Hadashot, 5 December 1986)

It should be stressed that these valorizations are retrospective. At their

actual time of appearance, the seminal albums of ethno-national rock enjoyed,
at best, modest success in the market and received fairly small attention from
some curious reviewers. In the 1970s, pop-rock had just started its struggle for
legitimacy and recognition within national culture. As Diaz (2005) points out
for Argentina, in what amounted to a typical mode of constituting a position or
sub-field (in the field of national culture), pop-rock’s producers of meaning por-
trayed it as an invigoration of national culture, as the local implementation of
new and exciting developments in world art and culture. In addition, national
pop-rock culture was coupled to actual oppositional politics. Thus in Argentina
rock came to be associated implicitly – and on some memorable occasions
explicitly (see Vila, 1987) – with opposition to dictatorship and the military
regime of 1976–83, while in Israel a certain association emerged between rock
and opposition to the Occupation of Palestine (Regev and Seroussi, 2004:
65–8).
The accomplishment of ethno-national pop-rock during this phase was to
establish itself as a legitimate, although still minority, position in the field of
national culture, next to existing positions. The valorizations quoted above,
written when pop-rock had already gained prominence and even dominance
in national musical cultures, mythologize this phase as a moment of rupture,
canonize the pioneering status and avant-garde aura of the albums, and
express the sense of achievement shared by pop-rock musicians and critics in
this later period.

Consolidation and Rise to Dominance

This is the phase during which pop-rock music rose to dominance in both
national contexts. The 1980s witnessed the ‘rockization’ of almost the entire
field of popular music. The historical context for this phase in Argentina was
the demise of the military regime and the return to democracy. In Israel this
phase coincided with the transition to liberal economic policy ushered in by the
right-wing Likud party. Alabarces (1993) refers in this regard to an ‘explosion’
in the amount and public impact of rock produced in Argentina in the early
1980s, and Regev and Seroussi (2004) write about ‘the coming of rock’ during
 Ethno-National Pop-Rock Music Regev 331

this period in Israel. Put differently, in this phase ethno-national culture saw the
indigenization of pop-rock music, its ‘Argentinization’ and ‘Israelization’.
Various phenomena came together to produce this effect. Most salient is
the general adoption of electrification, amplification and sophisticated studio
production – the rock aesthetic – as the standard creative practice in the field of
popular music. While this adoption can be attributed to the growing embed-
dedness of local cultural industries in the network of multinational corpora-
tions (Getino, 1995; Regev, 1997; Wallis and Malm, 1984; Yúdice, 1999), and
to organizational isomorphism in the music industry (DiMaggio and Powell,
1983), the dynamics of the cultural field in this regard cannot be underesti-
mated. Given that rock musicians have been those who moulded and codified
the modes for using electric instruments, amplification and studio production
techniques as expressive and creative tools, adoption of these practices, even by
musicians who were not ‘rock’ musicians in a strict sense, signaled an accep-
tance of ‘rock’ as the realm of innovation for large parts of the field of popular
music. It reflected an acknowledgment by actors that ‘rock’ was the position
where new sonic patterns and expressive options in electric instruments and stu-
dio technology are explored and formulated, involving a set of aesthetic possi-
bilities that could later usefully be adopted by other positions in the field.
Pop-rock musicians and instrumentalists who had already gained proficiency
and reputation during the early phases of the adoption of pop-rock practices
became by the 1980s the national hoard of experts from which musicians or
studio producers were recruited for making ‘state of the art’ popular music.
More specific phenomena that took place within this general trend consisted
of collaborations and mergers of pop-rock with traditional genres. In a move that
broadened some tendencies that already existed in earlier works, pop-rock musi-
cians started to record, in rock arrangements, songs from the local folk and tra-
ditional popular canon, in order to create original music in the same vein, and to
team up with prominent musicians from those genres. The two-way stylistic
exchange that emerged blurred at some points the differences between pop-rock
and other genres. Notable examples in Argentina include Mercedes Sosa, a
national icon of folklore, who shared the stage in 1982 with Charly García, Leon
Gieco and other ‘founders’, and then moved on to record songs by these and
other pop-rock authors such as Fito Páez and Alejandro Lerner. Gieco himself
expanded earlier inclinations, and together with former Arco Iris leader Gustavo
Santaolalla, toured the country with a mobile studio. The original and traditional
music which they recorded with local musicians resulted in the highly valorized
four-disc project De Ushuaia a La Quiaca (1985). Finally, Juan Carlos Baglietto,
in his first solo album (1982), which became the first rock nacional album to
receive ‘gold’ certification from the local industry, performed pop-rock music
using a vocal form of delivery, and arrangements that owed much to the tradi-
tional atmosphere of tango.
In Israel, the first thing to mention is the success of leading rock artists in
establishing themselves as inheritors of, rather than rebels against, the folk tra-
dition of shirey eretz yisrael.3 This was achieved primarily through the series of
332 Cultural Sociology Volume 1 ■ Number 3 ■ November 2007

albums Good Old Eretz Yisrael, in which Arik Einstein recorded classic songs
from this folk repertoire in soft rock arrangements. The composers and
arrangers who collaborated with him on the project, Shem-Tov Levy and Yoni
Rechter, emerged in this as well as other projects as the rock-inspired heirs of
canonic eretz yisrael composers such as Sasha Argov, Mordechai Zeira and
David Zehavi. From a different angle, the growing presence and legitimacy of
the genre known as musica mizrahit (oriental music),4 although ideologically
antagonistic to ‘rock’, nevertheless introduced an ‘ethnic’ form of pop-rock,
best expressed in the work of singers Zohar Argov and Haim Moshe. In a sim-
ilar vein, Yehuda Poliker left his hard rock band Benzin to become one of the
country’s most successful and beloved musicians, with his formula of Greek and
other Mediterranean inspired pop-rock music. Ehud Banai, mentioned earlier,
also emerged with a successful career and a sonic idiom that fuses rock with
Middle Eastern and Asian influences.
A further important phenomenon in this context is the transformation of
traditional vocal pop into so-called ‘soft rock’ or ‘adult-oriented rock.’ Here, the
niche of sentimental ballads has been conquered by singer songwriters such as
Alejandro Lerner in Argentina and Rami Kleinstein in Israel, whose inspiration
comes from the likes of Elton John, for example. Most saliently, this niche came
to be associated with female singers, sometimes characterized as glamorous pop
divas, whose grandiose sonic idiom is set within pop-rock parameters of instru-
mentation and production (synthesizers, electric guitars, and so on). The obvi-
ous names to mention here are the Israeli singer Rita, and the Argentine Sandra
Mihanovich. More than any other style, this phenomenon reflects the ‘rockiza-
tion’ of pop and indeed, the expansion of ‘rock’ to become ‘pop-rock.’
Finally, this phase in the on-going historical event witnessed a new gener-
ation of pop-rock musicians whose careers either took off following collabora-
tions with the founders (Yehudith Ravitz in Israel, Fito Páez in Argentina), or
who were influenced by new frontiers of stylistic innovation – most notably
post-punk and new wave (the bands Soda Stereo and Virus in Argentina, and
Mashina in Israel). Given the already legitimized position of the founders, the
entry of these newcomers into the framework of what counts as ‘national’
music, was smoother and faster than was hitherto possible, and met with posi-
tive reviews that stressed how they allowed local culture to keep pace with
broader artistic innovations. This type of acceptance was facilitated by a dis-
course, developed in music magazines, newspaper supplements, and radio and
television shows that flourished at this point, which were written and edited by
critics and journalists whose professionalism was totally based on the pop-rock
habitus. This discourse mythologized the founders of national rock, and pre-
sented the expansion of pop-rock as a natural, conflict-free linear evolution.
While this discourse, as Alabarces (1993: 88) notes, neutralizes the oppositional
character rock initially had, and therefore ‘de-ideologizes the ideological, and
de-politicizes the political’, it nevertheless depicts the position reached by pop-
rock during the 1980s: that of dominance and centrality in these national fields
of popular music.
 Ethno-National Pop-Rock Music Regev 333

Diversification and Internationalization

The most recent phase of national pop-rock, during the 1990s and into the next
century, consisted not only of stylistic diversification in accordance with trends in
global pop-rock, but also of the development of indigenous patterns, decoupled
from such trends. In addition, local musicians made forays into the global field with
occasional success, thus bringing pride into the national field about the latter’s per-
ceived artistic quality. This phase also witnessed the appearance of written or tele-
vised histories of national pop-rock, and the institution of prizes and awards by the
industry, the media and the state to honour the work of pop-rock musicians.
Diversification along the lines of global trends is best exemplified by the intro-
duction of national hip-hop (Illya Kuryaki & Los Valderramas, and Sindicato
Argentino del Hip Hop in Argentina, Shabak Samech and Hadag Nahash in Israel)
and local electro-dance or electro-pop (house, techno, etc.). More significant, how-
ever, were the indigenous stylistic developments that indicated self-confidence on
the part of national pop-rock musicians about their ability to create their ‘own’
innovations, decoupled from Anglo-American trends – a development that to some
extent rendered US and UK pop-rock less relevant for national pop-rock cultures
(Frith, 2004). In Argentina this point became most explicit with the appearance of
the trend known as rock chabón, best exemplified by bands such as Los Piojos and
La Renga (Semán and Vila, 2002; Semán et al., 2004). The critique by older rock-
ers of this style’s artistic quality and the form of nationalism it expressed (Marchi,
2005) exposed rock chabón as a rupture in the perceived smoothness and linearity
of rock ‘evolution’. In Israel, the phenomenon to mention is the fusion between the
up until then conflicting musical cultures of musica mizrahit and rock. The fusion
of these forms is exemplified by Tea-Packs and other bands that surfaced from the
southern town of Sderot, deploying an ethnic sound that owed as much to existing
Israeli and dominant Anglo-American pop-rock as to musica mizrahit. The ‘sound
of Sderot’ thus defied existing categories, and was hailed by critics as a quintessen-
tial, indigenous Israeli idiom of pop-rock (Saada-Ophir, 2006).
Another aspect of this phase consisted of the growing embeddedness of
national fields in the global field, through the relatively successful forays of cer-
tain local artists into global markets. With these, national pop-rock critics and
musicians celebrated a sense of achievement. Such successes served as apparent
proof of the artistic quality reached by national pop-rock musicians, and their
abilities to match or even surpass dominant Anglo-American pop-rock stan-
dards. In the case of Israel, there was the worldwide success of the Israeli-made
electronic style of goa-trance music, with duos such as Astral Projection and
Infected Mushroom becoming globally recognized names in this scene. The
worldwide success of female singers Ofra Haza and Noa contributed to Israel’s
presence in the ‘world music’ context, while intensive touring of the band
Rockfour in the USA, as well as the collaboration of Israeli star Aviv Geffen
with Steven Wilson (leader of UK progressive rock band Porcupine Tree) under
the name Blackfield, brought respect to Israeli music in some alternative rock
scenes in the USA and Europe.
334 Cultural Sociology Volume 1 ■ Number 3 ■ November 2007

In the case of Argentina, ‘internationalization’ meant primarily that local

musicians and bands became prominent and influential names in the Spanish
speaking pop-rock scene of Latin America, Spain and the USA, also known as
rock en español. During the 1990s, Argentinean bands such as Soda Stereo, Los
Fabulosos Cadillacs and Los Enanitos Verdes as well as rock auteur Fito Páez,
became leading names of this scene across the continent, enjoying both market
and critical success. The successful cross-Atlantic career of Andrés Calamaro
made him a prominent pop-rock artist in Spain as much as in his native
Argentina. Additional contributions to the sense of international achievement
came, for example, from the high profile of Gustavo Santaolalla as musical pro-
ducer of leading names of Latin pop-rock and other genres, and from the warm
critical reception in American and British rock publications offered to albums
by singer-songwriter Juana Molina.
Finally, the historical musical event of pop-rock culminated by the turn of
the century in both countries with the publication and broadcasting of ‘histo-
ries’ of national pop-rock in Argentina (Bitar, 1993) and in the television series
Sof Onat ha-Tapuzin in Israel; and the launching of ‘encyclopedic’ websites of
national pop-rock (www.rock.com.ar for Argentina; www.mooma.com for
Israel). In addition, local honours patterned after the US Grammy awards and
the UK Mercury prize have been instituted in both countries, both operating as
annual events of appraisal for current musicians, and also honouring veteran
musicians with special ‘lifetime achievement’ awards (the Gardel prize in
Argentina, the ACUM and TAMUZ awards in Israel). These discursive prod-
ucts, media events and ceremonies have further institutionalized the mytholo-
gized narrative of pop-rock in both countries, and have become annual rituals
for celebrating the sense of long history, wealth of repertoire, variety of styles
and artistic achievement of national pop-rock.

Pop-Rock and the Transformation of Musical Nationalism

Following the historical musical event of its emergence, legitimation and insti-
tutionalization, pop-rock music came to be prominent in many countries, and
certainly in Argentina and Israel, as a corpus of cultural products set within a
discourse of appraisal. It remains to be seen what this presence means at the
level of practice vis-a-vis the performance of musical nationalism (Turino,
2003). Traditionally, musical nationalism has attached cultural uniqueness in
music to styles associated with rural life, or early modern urban genres, and has
institutionalized specific genres as national folk and popular music. In the case
of Israel, an iconic relation has been established between nationhood and the
folk genre of shirey eretz yisrael; in Argentina such a relation was established
between nationhood and certain types of Andean and other indigenous music
styles from various parts of the country, as well as the urban genre of tango.
The constitutive power of music for nationalism, however, goes deeper than
the mechanical attachment of a given genre, style or repertoire of works to a
 Ethno-National Pop-Rock Music Regev 335

specific national community. With music, membership in a national community

becomes an experience of the body. This is because music, in ways unlike any
other form of art, moves the body. It does so either ‘internally’, by vibrating
inner organs and arousing emotions, or ‘externally’, by prompting actual move-
ments of the head, hands, feet or the whole body, with dancing being the
paradigmatic example (DeNora, 2003; Shepherd and Wicke, 1997). Frith refers
in this regard to the way music makes people feel ‘intensely present’ (1996: 144),
and Bourdieu asserts that ‘musical experiences are rooted in the most primitive
bodily experience. There are no tastes – except perhaps in food – more deeply
rooted in the body than musical tastes.’ (1993b: 104) Performance of music,
understood as both listening and creation (Hennion, 2001), thus connects the
cultural connotations of the music in question to a pattern of bodily experience.
With musical nationalism, membership in the nation is calibrated to specific gen-
res and styles, and through them to specific forms of corporeality, of feeling
‘intensely present’.
Following the historical musical event of pop-rock, musical nationalism
has been transformed. Nationhood has been re-calibrated to the electric, elec-
tronic and amplified aesthetic of pop-rock sonic idioms. National pop-rock has
become a prevalent expression of cultural uniqueness, for some sectors of
national societies, if not for the nation at large. This is evident, for example,
from the following review of a concert where the Argentine band Bersuit
Vergarabat hosted on stage the rock performer Andrés Calamaro:
In the same decade that Bersuit erected itself as ideologist of the National Being,
Andrés Calamaro has been added, on the strength of a thousand and one songs, to
the ‘holy trinity of Argentine rock soloists’ (Luis Alberto Spinetta, Charly García
and Fito Páez). For this, Bersuit and Calamaro are already synonyms of Argentina,
or rather, of Argentine-ness. (La Nacion, 22 November 2004)

In Israel, pop-rock ballads came to dominate various national and state cer-
emonies. Thus the commemoration rally for Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin,
held exactly one week after his assassination, was a music-only event, with most
of the participants being pop-rock singers who performed various Israeli pop-
rock ballads (Vinitzky-Seroussi, 1998). Also notable is the current dominance
of pop-rock ballads in radio play-lists on Memorial Day, a national day of
mourning, and their presence in school ceremonies marking that day and other
national events (Lomsky-Feder, 2003).
The sonic textures of pop-rock, and therefore the forms of corporeality
they evoke, are obviously dissimilar to those associated with earlier folk and
popular music. Given the inter-mingling of stylistic influences, national pop-
rock of one country also shares much aesthetic common ground with pop-rock
elsewhere in the world. National pop-rock thus increases the proximity
between musical nationalisms, and is a forceful embodiment of the ‘complex
connectivity’ (Tomlinson, 1999) between the forms of cultural uniqueness of
different nations. The specificity of the corporeality, and the sense of ‘intensive
presence’, associated with one ethno-national entity, come to include elements
336 Cultural Sociology Volume 1 ■ Number 3 ■ November 2007

that are present in the specificity of other entities as well. We may think of
crowds in concerts by Charly García (in Argentina) and Shalom Hanoch (in
Israel) that move together to the sound of songs that evoke locally particular
life trajectories, generational memories and a specific mode of being
‘Argentinean’ or ‘Israeli’ during the last decades of the 20th century. The body
movements of these crowds, their mode of feeling ‘intensely present’ as mem-
bers of their respective national communities, have much aesthetic common
ground to them. The proximity of their aesthetic experience is greater than the
one between, for example, listeners to folk dances such as queca (in Argentina)
or hora (in Israel). It is this proximity and this complex connectivity that ulti-
mately characterizes aesthetic cosmopolitanism and sets it apart from earlier
conditions of ethno-national cultural uniqueness.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I want to evoke the hypothetical example of a recently ‘discov-

ered’ island society proposed by Meyer et al. (1997) in their model of world
society. In their account, following its ‘discovery’, the hypothetical island soci-
ety will soon develop political institutions, school curricula, health care sys-
tems, public administration, financial management and other forms of
scientifically grounded rationalized instrumental culture that will make this
society similar in many aspects to other nation-states around the world, regard-
less of its particular heritage.
The authors, however, hardly say anything about the expressive culture of
this hypothetical island society, about how its cultural uniqueness will or will
not persist. But if the example of this hypothetical island society is extended to
expressive culture, then we may just as well predict that island musicians will
soon develop their own ethnic pop-rock music. Traditional music will be
hybridized with pop-rock styles, indigenous instruments will be plugged into
amplifiers, and modes of vocal delivery will be adjusted to the use of micro-
phones and amplification. In addition, electric guitars and synthesizers will be
incorporated as standard instruments, and multi-channel recording studios will
be built and used by musicians to explore and create newly found sonic tex-
tures. In doing so, the musicians will record albums of their indigenized pop-
rock music while absorbing influences from Anglo-American pop-rock
traditions.
All of this will be done because musicians and audiences will feel that their
own locally authentic variants of rock, hip-hop or electro-dance qualify their
ethno-national music to equal actor-hood in expressive world culture. In short,
ethno-national pop-rock music, as a major incarnation of aesthetic cosmopoli-
tanism, stands as an exemplary case of isomorphic processes in world culture,
in which ethno-national cultural uniqueness and diversity are re-orchestrated
into greater proximity.
 Ethno-National Pop-Rock Music Regev 337

Acknowledgement

Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the IASPM-LA conference, Buenos
Aires, August 2005, and at the conference on The Local, The Regional and The
Global in the Emergence fo Popular Music Cultures, Copenhagen, October 2005.

Notes

1 All translations from sources in Spanish or Hebrew are by the author.

2 In general, I rely for Israel on music magazines (Lahiton, Musica), music supple-
ments or sections in leading newspapers (Yedioth Aharonot, Maariv, Haaretz,
Hadashot, Ha-Yir, Kol-Hayir), and websites (especially www.mooma.com). For
Argentina, I rely on websites (especially rock.com.ar), and on the abundance of
trade books that in fact summarize the discourse originally published in maga-
zines and newspapers (Abalos, 1995, 2004; Aguirre et al., 2005; Bitar, 1993;
Gonzales, 1997; Grinberg, 1993; Guerrero, 1994; Kreimer, 1970; Lunardelli,
2002; Marchi, 2005; Polimeni, 2001; Ramos and Lejbowicz, 1991). Existing
scholarly work is also extensively consulted. For Israel, Eliram (2006); Regev
(1992, 1996); Regev & Seroussi (2004). For Argentina: Alabarces (1993);
Beltrán Fuentes (1989); Carnicer (2000); Carnicer and Diaz (2000); Diaz (2005);
Madorey (2005); Pujol (2002); Semán and Vila (2002); Semán et al. (2004); Vila
(1987); and Waisman and Restiffo (2005).
3 Shirey eretz yisrael (literally ‘the songs of the land of Israel’) is the conventional
label for the repertoire of songs, mostly pastoral ballads, with lyrics praising the
country’s nature and history, which function in Israel’s public culture as repre-
sentations of Jewish native-ness and patriotism.
4 Musica mizrahit is a genre that mixes pop-rock instrumentation and influences
with East Mediterranean, North African and Middle Eastern traditions (see
chapters 9 and 10 in Regev and Seroussi, 2004).

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Motti Regev

Motti Regev is Associate Professor of Sociology at The Open University of Israel. His
major interest is in popular music studies. He is the author of Popular Music and National
Culture in Israel (2004, co-authored with Edwin Seroussi), Rock: Music and Culture (1994,
in Hebrew) and Ûd and Guitar: The Musical Culture of the Arabs in Israel (1993, in
Hebrew), as well as articles on the sociology of popular music. He edited (with Jason
Toynbee) a special issue of Popular Music (25/1, 2006) on canonization.
Address: Department of Sociology, Political Science and Communication, The Open
University of Israel, 108 Ravutski st., P.O. Box 808, Raanana 43107, Israel.
E-mail: mottire@openu.ac.il