MARCELLO SORCE KELLER

POPULAR MUSIC IN THE MEDITERRANEAN:
 A CASE FOR RECONSIDERING THE
CURRENT DEFINITION OF CULTURE [1]

CRITICUS MUSICUS
A Journal of Music Criticism,
I, 1993, nos. 2-3

L'un lito e l'altro vidi infin la Spagna,
fin nel Morrocco, e l'isola d'i Sardi,
e l'altre che quel mare intorno bagna.

Dante, Inferno, XXVI, 103-105

1. The Mediterranean: less than a 'melting pot',
more than 'ein geographischer Begriff'
For better or worse, because it lends itself to stereotyping, the idea that human cultures can be grasped as a whole underlies research by numerous scholars. Anthropologists more than anyone else - from Tylor to Malinowski, from Harris to Geertz - have helped develop this notion with increasing sophistication. All of them referred, most of the time, to societies relatively easy to circumscribe in time and space. But even among sociologists who deal almost exclusively with Western society, the attitude has never been much different. In the writings of Emile Durkheirn (and his 'conscience collective') as well as in the 'relational model' of Karl Mannheim and in the concept of 'pattern maintenance' of Talcott Parsons, one can easily detect the underlying assumption that even complex societies are capable of being viewed as holistically integrated units.
Art criticism, in the meantime, did not lag far behind the social sciences in applying similar views to cultural subsystems such as the fine arts: think of W. R. Worringer's study of Gothic style [2] and the 'Struktur-Schule' he represented.
What about historians? Fernand Braudel (an illustrious case who brings us to the geographic area we are concerned with), once stated that before the great Islamic push, «there was no North and South of the Mediterranean but, rather, just a North and South of Europe.» [3] Whatever we make of his statement, we will probably agree that Braudel regarded both historical situations as different integrated sets of intercommunicating milieus.
Referring specifically to music, more than one scholar has gone even further: quite recently, Peter Manuel wrote that, «Regional and ethnic distinctions notwithstanding, because of the affinities among the music of its cultures (Arab, Turkish, Greek, Armenian, and Oriental Jewish), the Mediterranean may be regarded as constituting a relatively unified musical area.» [4] This statement, in my opinion, goes much too far, and not only because it seems to ignore the 'northern shore' of the Mediterranean basin.
To be sure, today - as in earlier times - the Mediterranean can be characterized as a cluster of interlocking culture-areas among which, over time, complex forms of contact have taken place. Indeed, I suspect we would be hard put to find forms of acculturation, syncretism, or outright linkage (musical or otherwise) that have not yet taken place somewhere among the lands that surround this sea at the middle of the ancient world. For example: it has been verified repeatedly that many musical performance practices are common to the whole area, and that the musical style of some functional song-types (laments, lullabies, and threshing and ploughing songs, for instance) show a remarkable stylistic semblance from Italy to Portugal and the islands in between. At the same time these song types are distributed across an area where nasality of vocal timbre accompanies a tendency to seek expression through ornaments of the shake and mordent type as well as glides and rnicrotonal inflections, rather than through changes in dynamics. Often there is an intense but somehow withdrawn emotional tone, a suggestion that the singer is performing for himself or, at any rate, listening intently to his own voice. This last characteristic is expressed by the habit of covering an ear with one of the hands (as shown even in ancient Egyptian art-works), and it is widely practised by folk singers today.
Numerous pockets of polyvocal singing also seem to indicate that the whole northern part of the Mediterranean may once have boasted polyphonic styles which have long since disintegrated, permitting simpler forms of part-singing, especially singing in thirds, to become more predominant. For of all these reasons the Mediterranean cannot be considered a mere 'geographical expression' [5]. At the same time, however, neither can it be depicted as a cultural 'melting-pot' where fundamental unity has been achieved. What is especially intriguing about the Mediterranean (in terms of forms of contact and subsequent exchange of cultural or, more specifically, musical traits) is their widespread presence and their obstinate self-containement. I shall attempt to demonstrate in the rest of this article that this is also true of today's popular musical repertories.

2. Popular music in the Mediterranean: why consider it,
and how to gain a better look at it
Consider that cluster of contemporary musical repertories, disseminated by the mass-media (and produced for this purpose) that constitutes popular music in the Mediterranean region today.
To be precise, the term 'popular music' means to most laymen (especially to native speakers of English) Anglo-American hit-parade songs, especially those since the 1960s. The same term, though, has often been borrowed by other cultures and made to cover local musics as well as Anglo-American imports. Most languages have also developed native terms for commercial genres that may include the Anglo-American but, more often, refer to local products written in a variety of vernacular styles ('musica leggera' in Italy, 'chanson' in France, 'Schlager' in Germany, 'zabavna muzika' in what once was Yugoslavia, and so on). In agreement with an increasingly common use of the term throughout the musicological literature, [6] however, I will call 'popular' all of the musics mentioned above, whether or not they are related to Anglo-American pop-at least, so long as these musics lend themselves to commercial performances on radio, television, and sound recordings [7]. In this sense I take to be 'popular music' Ughniyah songs in Egypt, rebetika and bouzuki music in Greece, Oriental pop in Israel, lisbon and coimbra fado in Portugal, flamenco-style rumba, nueva cancion andaluza, canto novo, and rumba catalan in Spain, Neapolitan rock in Italy, and so on.
To be sure, when Hanslick, in Vienna, lamented that the music of Lanner and Strauss was making audiences increasingly unfit for 'loftier' and 'more intellectual' musical fare, he would never have imagined what was to come. Even less could he have foreseen that popular music was to become a field of scholarly endeavor. But it has, and for at least one good reason: this cluster of commercial genres manifests on a grand scale phenomena which, on a smaller scale, would be more difficult to apprehend.
It is my contention that an examination of popular musics throughout the Mediterranean region will reveal culture patterns that frustrate our tendency to think in terms of culture units conveniently located side by side on a map. Listening to commercial radio makes such an examination possible. Indeed, if you live in the Mediterranean region, a portable radio will give you access to a larger variety of popular musics than you might wish to encounter [8]. (This is especially true at night, when medium-wave broadcasting allows a listener to peruse dozens of stations trying to reach local audiences. Each of these stations allows us to gauge the variety of genres targeted to the same audience: a cluster of repertories revealing, if not the actual, at least the 'presumed latitude' of musical taste of a given milieu.) In short: the overall picture emerging from an extensive sampling of programs from southern Europe, north Africa, and the Middle East helps us understand
1) the influence (or lack of it) that some local repertories exert on each other;
2) which repertories are shared as common property by different regions, to be
recontextualized according to local needs;
3) which repertories co-exist in the same region; and
4) which local products travel (and how far) and which do not.

3. Mediteryanean popular music: is it all alike?
There is a lingering belief, hard to kill (and therefore still worth challenging), that the mass-media generate uniformity wherever they reach. It is often claimed, for instance, that popular music is today largely an international product in which Anglo-American elements prevail. Systematic radio-listening of the type I refer to above demonstrates, however, that this is true only in a very limited sense. In fact, even if a layer of imported Anglo-American popular music is found almost everywhere, the radio time taken up by it varies greatly from place to place. At any rate, the presence of this important music does not seem to interfere with the development of local repertories, On the contrary, it seems to help them preserve their essential nature and even favors their development - as if it were a roof or, better, a point of reference against which their 'otherness' can be gauged. In the Mediterranean, underneath a layer of Anglo-American music, there exists something quite different: most 'European-made' popular music circulates only within the borders of its country of origin, while the music of individual Arabic countries is not affected by national borders (at least, within the Arab-speaking world). Arab songs, a kind of musical koin6 reinforced by what is fundamentally a common non-musical language, circulate from the Maghreb to Saudi Arabia [9].
Many Mediterranean repertories also cater to specialized audiences that are often considerably smaller than the national in geographic or social terms. This is the case for musical styles as diverse as 'Rebetika' in Greece, Rock Mizrahi in Israel, and the many musics that employ Arabic dialects... or Italian dialects, for that matter! All these styles and genres, paradoxically, are both stylistically hybridized (the Anglo-American is usually one element of the mix) and local (in terms of their target audiences). They suggest that 'regionalism', so apparent today in the political realm, is no less evident in the musical [10].
Obviously then, even at the level of popular culture, where the mass-media are believed to be most effective in promoting uniformity, some cultural barriers remain as strong as ever. At times cultures still succeed in excluding each other; at other times, they localize and carefully circumscribe their points, of contact - even when they posses the means to encourage maximum integration and which, in some cases, are allowed to achieve precisely that [11]. This is one reason why the overall picture vis-à-vis Mediterranean music is so complex as almost to defy description.
Difficult as it is to describe properly, let me try to explain how stratified the Mediterranean soundscape appears to a radio listener. In order to do this, I need to expand on the fundamental dichotomy represented by the European shore (on the one hand) and North Africa and the Middle East (on the other).

4. Barriers and Layers
Throughout the north of Africa and the Middle East, radio stations broadcast daily an enormous amount of music that has little or nothing to do with the Western tradition (at least, once we make allowance for some modernization in the performing medium) [12]. I do not refer here to 'classical' Arabic or Turkish music, but rather to the more accessible everyday 'Gebrauchsmusik' that people need everywhere. A smaller but still sizable Arabic repertory shows signs of Westernization: e.g., a timid use of functional harmony and a rock-style rhythm section. In this latter case mainstream Anglo-American 'rock' is the reference model. We must not forget, however, that on Arabic radio we hear surprisingly few authentic imports. Also quite rare are French songs (how much the audiences for such different genres overlap needs to be ascertained), and no trace of contact with any other European repertory is apparent [13].
This more or less Westernized Arabic music deserves special attention because it is an intriguing mixture of Middle-Eastern traditions with the Euro-American, in which the two compromise on terms acceptable solely to the host tradition. Arabic listeners, that is, make allowance in their popular songs for a conspicuous Western accompaniment. This accompaniment, nevertheless, is often downgraded to heterophonic procedures that are not-by our standards-fully satisfactory. The drum-set functions today in Arabic rock pretty much as it does in all rock music, yet the overall sound here remains Arabic: characteristic forms of vocal production, melodic constructions, and (stable) volume levels take care of that effectively [14].
In short: essential traits of Middle-Eastern music are retained even in Arabic rock, while a rather unsophisticated use of Western traits makes this rock sound, to Western ears, like a 'trivialized version' of Western rock. At the same time, Arabic rock does not strike us as sophisticated in the sense that Arabic art-music is sophisticated, nor is it as charming to the outsider as those traditional musics that are part of village and family life. This is surely at least one reason why, language barrier aside, no serious attempt at commercializing Arabic rock has been made so far in Europe [15]. On the other hand if, as seems to be the case, the average Arab listener can take to Western rock only after it has been filtered through his own tradition, the resulting hybrid must be judged a success. This hybrid is a large repertory of popular music which, although influenced by the West, can only be defined as 'Arabic' so as to be acc eptable from the Maghreb to Saudi Arabia.
The popular repertories across a large segment of the European Mediterranean shore (Portugal, Spain, France, Italy) reveal very few local areas of contact with the music of the Middle East and - perhaps more surprising - limited signs of communication or 'inbreeding' among themselves. I am speaking here not only of style sycretism [16], but also of song dissemination. One might assume that a song that makes the charts in France could be accepted in nearby countries like Spain and Italy. After all, in terms of musical style, Europeans share the koiné of functional harmony. But the contrary is true: very few songs acquire some degree of popularity throughout southern Europe, even throughout Romance-language areas (Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, and even Romania). Few Italian songs, for instance, circulate in Spain or Portugal. Even fewer circulate in the opposite direction [17].
Italy is unique in this respect: it seems to have erected an impenetrable barrier which excludes the popular musics of all other countries (European or not), with the sole exception of certain Anglo-American imports [18]. Almost nothing is imported from France, Spain, or Portugal, and absolutely nothing from the Balkans; one may hear an occasional Italian song broadcast on Radio Zagreb (at least, one used to), but one never hears a Yugoslav or Greek song on Italian radio. In fact, renowned performers like Sheller in France and Nena Venetsanou or Manos Hadjidakis in Greece have never found an audience in Italy. And when one considers that the language of Spain, for instance, is 'almost an Italian dialect', one wonders if recordings by musicians such as Paco de Lucia, Tijeritas, Queco, Serrat, and Paco Ibafiez have been detained by border patrols, (The Italian police have not been half as effective in stopping illegal migration.) Nor is the situation that different in other southern European countries [19].
That the soundscape of each Mediterranean country is made up of musics ranging from traditional styles to locally produced rock and pop in the mainstream Western idiom and to outright Anglo-American imports, is well known to students of popular music [20]. What is not so well known is that throughout the Arab world no European songs are ever heard, while throughout Mediterranean Europe few if any 'foreign'. songs are heard, even those that originated in nearby countries and certainly none that originated in the Middle East. Occasional exceptions-as the saying goes-only confirm the rule.

5. Connections (large and small)
Now a short discussion of the localised vernacular repertories existing almost everywhere in the Mediterranean region is in order because, on a smaller scale, barriers are more permeable.
Following one of his journeys, Théophile Gautier once wrote up an intriguing description of the colorful mix of people that could be seen in the streets of Constantinople (quite an important harbor at the time) [21]. The travelling literature of the nineteenth century tells us, however, that in this respect all Mediterranean harbors were almost exactly alike: from Genoa to Venice, from Istanbul to Marseilles. The same variety of languages could be heard along their streets, the same mix of songs were performed in their taverns and inns. It is unfortunate that ethnomusicology did not exist then, and that we have no detailed account of how, in these commercial enclaves, Mediterranean musics came into the closest forms of contact.
Harbors today have lost much of their former importance, and airports are far from achieving a comparable degree of anthropological interest. All one can find in urban fleamarkets today is a wide variety of cassettes (pirated to be sure) than can be found in Milan, Paris, or Istanbul stores. What effect this intensive, but localized, commercialization of very different genres has on their development still awaits investigation. The fact remains that among those cassettes one also finds specimens of genres and repertories which, to a degree, mediate between continental Europe and the Middle East. These musics are intended for local audiences, audiences usually limited to small areas or socio-economic groups.
Indeed, in each country one comes across not only 'national' but also vernacular genres. I have already discussed these repertories [22], mentioning as an example the rebetika of Greece and the Oriental pop in Israel, and explaining how 'hybrid' they are (in the most creative sense of the term) yet how local in appeal. I shall not dwell on them here; instead, I want to mention how in such cases, as well as in numerous others the Great Divide (southern Europe vs. the north of Africa and the Middle East) is less sharply perceived. Even the most superficial tourist recognizes the oriental flavor of much music heard while travelling across Montenegro, Macedonia, or Albania. Once again, radio programming in these countries makes this flavor apparent in the most obvious way. A similar impression is derived in Greece. But let us make no mistake: the fact that Macedonian repertories feature (among others) some Turkish characteristics, does not mean that they function as a bridge for the direct appreciation and importation of Turkish music. One scarcely finds traces of this in Macedonian or Greek radio programs, while in Turkey musics from the Balkans-however related to local musics-do not seem to circulate either [23].
Just as a repertory resulting from apparent hybridization processes does not pave the way for the appreciation of the related repertories, neither does it have a better chance of enjoying wider appeal. Quite the opposite: the more composite it is, the more it is perceived as 'local' and 'distinct' and 'typically theirs' - by those who are primarily exposed to it, even though the outsider may easily see the linkages with other repertories.
There are of course genres whose degree of localization is, I would say, 'medium range'. We find, in the flamenco styles circulating in southern Spain as well as in Morocco (where Spanish is also spoken) and, to a lesser extent, in other areas of the Maghreb. The case of Lole Montoya is exceptional: she sings the flamenco in Arabic to a blues harmonic pattern! On the other hand, there, are genres whose degree of localization is much higher. One such case, 'mutatis mutandis', is the music by the 'Sud Sound System' of Lecce, a pop group that has found a style inbetween Jamaican 'ragamuffin' (of all things!) and the Tarantolati tradition of the Salento region (the musical ritual once employed as a therapy for those bitten by the tarantula spider). Sud Sound System's songs employ local vernacular texts; probably for that reason-despite the exotic Jamaican flavor-the group's music enjoys only local circulation. Another Italian repertory, this one again 'small range', is that that of the so-called 'liscio', a body of songs made especially for dancing, popular across the plains of northern Italy ('bassa padana' and Emilia Romagna). It is a genre that survives within rather confined geographical and social boundaries; indeed, in many ways it is the equivalent of American country music and, even more so, of the 'Volksmusik' and 'Volkstfimliche Lieder' so widespread in Switzerland, Bavaria, and Austria. For this reason, it is debatable whether it properly belongs to the spectrum of Mediterranean musics [24].
We have seen that the contemporary Mediterranean popular music scene is extraordinarily intricate. The fact that communication is simultaneously permitted and denied on a variety of levels (not the most obvious ones) may contribute especially to this situation. Indeed, all the supernational, national, or vernacular traditions mentioned so far reveal, in their diversity, the outcome of complex patterns of culture-contact taking place in some domains and, so to say, counterbalanced by almost total isolation in others. Such complex patterns make it difficult for us to define culture units in conventional terms. One is tempted to speak of 'layers', if the 'geological' connotation they carry did not make the term unsuitable for describing dynamic processes.

6. Of areas, layers... and 'grids'
Ever since Spengler and Toynbee suggested that civilizations, like 'organisms', could grow, ripen, and eventually decay, external influences to a given milieu have came to be seen as more or less dangerous or disruptive. The current emphasis on the study of change makes even the latest reformulations of that idea appear quite inadequate.
As far as popular repertories are concerned, however, nothing seems to be disruptive or disrupted; their rapid transformation makes the development of any concept of 'purity' hardly possible. Consequently, any notion concerning 'integration' of diverse cultural elements, as Ruth Benedict would have put it, loses much of its substance [25]. In popular repertories component elements always remain very visible, constantly reminding the listener how hybrid the overall product really is. That is why it is so questionable to ascribe them to any specific culture area. The concept of culture-area, as formulated by Kroeber and Wissler in reference to clearly self-contained ethnic and linguistic entities, does not seem to work 'sub specie musicae'. Especially so if we take into consideration the whole spectrum of oral, semi-oral, and literate repertories circulating within the same milieu. Then the question of which repertory is 'central' to the musical characterization of a given area is baffled by repertories confortably circulating across linguistic and ethnic borderlines, common property of diverse people and, still, highly valued by each one of them.
As many difficulties arise if we approach the question in terms of 'layers' and 'diffusion' concepts. Some very localized style characteristics hardly make up a layer (when they lack correspondences elsewhere), and wide dissemination has little to tell us about the history of exposure. Might it help, I wonder, to think in terms of 'culture grids' where, at the intersections, aspects of style and genres (of various origin) or even entire repertories, are utilized, more or less temporarily, as long as their presence in conjunction with other items provides them with a meaningful ambience? If so, we might conceive of various levels of grids - of grid patterns - and the resulting model could represent how certain things, at a given time and in a given locale, can be made to fit together. Perhaps nowhere more than in the Mediterranean can one sense the existence of a number of 'grids' of crucial significance in regulating forms of musico-stylistic interchange.
Consider once again the Sud Sound System as an example: by singing in the local vernacular this group achieves the maximum localization possible; the texts of the songs themselves are scarcely comprehensible to anyone from another region. One of the musical elements (that of the therapeutic rituals of the Salento region) is just as localized. Then, in terms of instrumentation and arrangement, there is a general reliance on the mainstream popular music of Italy. Finally, there is the insertion of clichés derived from Jamaican popular styles. Language and folk musical elements ensure tuning into local taste and to the desire of people to hear 'their own'" music. At the same time, identification with Italy as a whole remains possible and, last but not least, the presence of exotic elements gives a feeling of modernity and innovativation within a territory where the sense of insularity, of isolation from the main center of the nation, is quite strong. The repertory of the Sud Sound System is not a layer; it does not characterize the area at large; instead, it is addressed exclusively to the young people of that small region; this creates an intersection of musical elements that, in this particular coincidence of time and space, makes sense of component parts which could not co-exist anywhere else.
However, whether we think of 'grids' or entertain other kinds of mental images, it is the dynamics of cultural processes that remain central. As economist Friedrich von Hayek used to say, the social sciences must consider 'systems of flux' and 'sequences of events' rather than supposedly stable 'states of affairs'.

NOTES

[1] This article also appeared in Italian in: «La 'popular music' come riflesso dei contatti culturali nell'area mediterranea. Un'occasione per riconsiderare la definizione corrente di cultura» in Tullia Magrini (ed.), Antropologia della musica e culture mediterranee, Fondazione Ugo e Olga Levi, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1993, pp. 133- 146

[2] See Worringer's Form in Gothic (London 1927).

[3] Fernand Braudel, Le Mediterrange et le monde méditerranéen à l'époque de Philippe II (Paris: Armand Colin, 1990), passim.

[4] Peter Manuel, Popular Musics of the Non-Western World (Oxford University Press 1988), p. 170.

[5] This is the expression Clemens Metternich (1773-1859), the guiding spirit of the Vienna Congress, once used in referring to Italy.
[6] See, for instance, among recent writings by Manuel and Charles Hamm, the book by Manuel cited above as well as Hamm, Yesterdays: Popular Song in America (New York: W. W. Norton, 1983).

[7] Several of these repertories were not, however, initially conceived with this utilization in mind (not so the tango, the rebetika, the blues, and so on).

[8] To my knowledge, no one has so far taken advantage of the possibility for scholarly purposes.

[9] The role played by language, however, should not be overemphasized. Italian and Spanish do not differ more from each other than the various dialects of Arabic spoken throughout the Middle East; the difference lies in the fact that Italian and Spanish cannot refer to a common, shared, supranational literary form, as varieties of Arabic can.

[10] It almost seems as if the political regionalism (dormant until not too long ago) were trying to catch up with musical regionalism!
[11] Yet, even though listening to foreign radio stations is seldom forbidden (for political reasons), no one seems to be doing much of it. If one considers that teenagers the world over are quite willing to listen to Anglo-American songs sung in a language they scarcely understand, one may wonder why these same teenagers are unwilling to listen to music sung in other languages, even when it is stylistically similar to the music they like.

[12] For example, rather larger ensembles than the tradition once called for and/or electronic instruments and amplification.

[13] Despite its accessibility, Continental popular music is probably perceived in Arabic countries as indistinguishable from the Anglo-American brand. Still, the absence of traits originating-for example-in the 'classical French song' (from Piaf to Sheller) remains surprising in the Maghreb; this, however, can be explained to a degree by the interplay of political reasons (its association with colonialism) and by socio-economic factors (the appeal of French songs is largely limited to the cosmopolitan upper-middle-class, who are able to enjoy the real thing).

[14] In Arabic rock the melody does not make much use of triadic patterns and harmony is not used in a strictly functional way, creating an ambiance for melodic configurations that are essentially self-sufficient. The frequent presence of a Western rhythm section suggests that matters pertaining to traditional rhythmic organization are not as 'central' to the Arabic tradition as Europeans have usually believed. The Arab listener of today quite easily accepts music that is strictly metric.

[15] As already pointed out, the reason for the total absence of Arabic pop in Western broadcasting cannot be ascribed with certainty only to the use of Arabic words. The situation is likely to change, as soon as the number of Muslim immigrants to Europe increases. Frankfurt a.M., for instance, has already become an important center for the development and commercialization of Turkish music. How much of this music reaches German than Gastarbeiter listeners remains to be ascertained.
[16] The many ways in which musical space, color, language, time, and rhythm can be related to musical form and structure.

[17] An exception is the case of, say, a French song, translated and forcibly marketed abroad. At any rate, any Italian teenager would be hard put to identify the title of a Spanish or French song currently on the charts in its country of origin.

[18] Until a few years ago, for example, 'country music' was completely unknown in Italy.

[19] France, for instance (probably because of its colonial past), constitutes a partial exception, because it is open to some limited imports from the Middle East. But Arabic music in France seems to be targeted to Muslim immigrants, while popular music from sub-Saharan Africa seems to exert a much wider appeal. Spain also enjoys a broader musical culture, nurtured by the music it imports (a kind of feed-back, one might say from Latin America).

[20] See, for example, Manuel. pp. 19 ff.

[21] See Théophile Gautier, Constantinople (Paris 1853).

[22] See the present author's «Pop Music from the Mediterranean: Some Remarks Concerning Forms in Culture Contact», a paper presented at the XV Congress of the International Musicological Society (Madrid, 3-10 April 1992). This paper will be published in the Congress Proceedings.

[23] One cannot overlook the fact that political tensions between Greece and Turkey might play some role in their reciprocal musical separation. The importance of purely musical and cultural factors, however, should not be overlooked.

[24] After reading an early version of the present article, Linda Barwick informed me that the popularity of 'liscio' extends across the Apennines into the Garfagnana region of Tuscany - a region which, from the standpoint of oral musical traditions, already partakes of the Italian south.

[25] What do we make, for instance, of people - to speak only of pop genres-who listen to Michael Jackson, Ustmanò (a rock group that sings in the Emilian dialect), the Casadej Orchestra (for 'liscio' dancing), and Eugenio Bennato? Can the audience for such a conglomerate of styles and genres be referred to as a sub-culture or, considering how some of the pieces of the pie are circumscribed by geography, a 'culture area'? Surely not in the sense intended by Franz Boaz.