derive from Western influence. Fejes ( 1981) also notes that the media impe-
rialism approach tends to obscure the complex relationships and dynamics
that exist among the external and internal factors and forces that shape the
cultural production of peripheral countries.

This collection of papers aims to amplify exactly these "complex rela-
tionships and dynamics" which shape the interaction between indigenous
musics and "internationalized" Anglo-American popular music. The ap-
proach shared by all the authors in this book centers on providing a histori-
cal review of the development of indigenous music in each country, in order
to highlight the endogenous as well as the exogenous influences in the for-
mulation of the mainstream and peripheral musical genres at national and
local levels.

The conceptual framework we propose for interpreting popular music
production at national and local levels is based on two main issues. The first
issue concerns the extent to which international (Anglo-American) music is
accessible to national or local populations through the mass media. The
second issue refers to the social, economic and political circumstances which
have encouraged the introduction of foreign music in a country, providing
the context for exogenous influences of varying degrees on local musical
production.

The reports included in this book take a look at popular music produc-
tion in each country "from the inside" rather than attempting to prove a
model or provide a global synthesis "from the outside." This approach pro-
vides the opportunity to elaborate the concept of interaction between in-
digenous and foreign music or between spontaneous and imposed music on
the basis of the sociopolitical context of such interaction; it also provides
the ground to rethink the various forms "cultural exchange" may take.

The main point brought forward by this book is that popular music ab-
sorbs exogenous influences and accommodates them stylistically in new
forms that reflect the socioeconomic and political environment of the his-
torical period it belongs to. Thus, to understand phenomena of enforcement
and domination of foreign musics on indigenous ones, we need to study the
societal factors which mediated and allowed such a pattern to develop at the
receiving end. As it is clearly shown by the chapters, popular music in each
country expresses and reflects the social and political forces which are at
play in a particular period of time and determine the dynamics of the devel-
opment of each country internally, as well as its position and role in the in-
ternational scene.

Some countries are endowed with a rich tradition of indigenous national
music which inspires their contemporary production of popular music; oth-
ers are lacking a tradition of their own but strive to produce a contemporary
musical identity by building on elements of the international pop and rock
or regional mainstream musics (e.g., Latin America). Most countries are in
between these two models and utilize both traditions and the regional and
international contemporary musical influences as sources of inspiration for
modern popular music production. Thus, the analysis of contemporary mu-
sical production is based in most chapters on a dual problematic: it concerns
the interaction between indigenous and "external" (regional, international)
music and/or the relationship between local (peripheral) production of
popular music and the "core" production of the transnational industries.

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