Cross-culture in Music, Social Media and the Creative Industries

Within my last blog post I explored how air pollution can be detrimental to an individuals lifestyle and may limit people from developing, overall effecting their learning capabilities. However, this is not always that case, as the development of digital technologies and economies are making it possible for improvements in Asian nations to become possible. This progression overtime has allowed for many career opportunities to become available for individuals within those countries.

This is present in the film ‘Asia Rising‘. This film explores artists including Rich Brian, Higher Brothers, and Keith Ape, and elaborates on the rapid success of Asian hip hop globally. This is a documentary that goes into further detail of their careers and essentially shows why and how they became successful, not only locally but also world wide.

The “emerging importance of creative industries is most evident in East Asian developing countries such as Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong and China.” (Cunningham, Ryan, Keane and Ordonez, 2004). The artists within these countries are expressing their culture and personal experiences through the music they produce. Thankfully, social media has made it possible for countries to come together and share their interest in the music, overall gaining knowledge into their cultural differences. Globalisation and the increasing importance of knowledge or information is the basis for “economic growth as it represents fundamental, structural changes in economy and trade that affect the entire world.” (Askerud, 2016).

It is amazing that these environmental changes make such a large difference in the world and that digital transactions allow us to share our cultural differences and experiences through social media. These platforms include YouTube, FaceBook, Spotify, Instagram etc. The first thing that came to my mind was that over the last couple of years cross-culture within music has definitely increased due to K-pop groups including BTS and Black Pink becoming global phenomenons. Anthique (2019) suggests that “the expanding flow of media content had a transformative effect upon popular culture across the region, not only from ‘Western’ material but also from Asian content producers such as South Korea”. 

Not to mention, other industries have also spread globally, this includes the film industry. The internet is such a powerful tool and I find it amazing how much we can learn and how immersed we can become in other cultures without physically being there. It allows us to depict the generalised idea of these cultures that are shown through books or films and it allows us to personally explore them through the experiences of these real life artists.

References:

Athique, Adrian (2019). ‘Digital Transactions in Asia. Digital Transactions in Asia: Social , Economic and Informational Processes’, (pp. 1-22) edited by Adrian Athique and Emma Baulch. New York, NY United States: Routledge.

Askerud, P., (2016), ‘The Creative Industries: Asia Pacific Perspectives’, Academia, pp. 1-13. https://www.academia.edu/26360093/The_creative_industries_Asia_Pacific_Perspectives

Cunningham, S., Ryan, M., Keane, M. and Ordonez, D., (2004), ‘Financing creative industries in developing country contexts’, UNCTAD, Switzerland, Geneva. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/2504/1/2504a.pdf

Jones, E., (2020), ‘How Asian film is making moves to take over from Hollywood’, BBC News, viewed 7 September 2021. https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-54847403

Newstead, A., (2018), ‘Rich Brian has the curious success story you wish you had’, ABC news, viewed 7 September 2021. https://www.abc.net.au/triplej/news/musicnews/rich-brian-profile-the-curious-success-story-you-wish-you-had/9547004

Red Bull Music (2019), ‘How the Next-Gen of Asian Hip Hop is Taking Over The Music World | Asia Rising | Full Movie’, YouTube, viewed 7 September 2021. https://youtu.be/_vC2hvHa9T0

Wikipedia, (2021), ‘Keith Ape’, en.eikipedia.org, viewed 7 September 2021 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_Ape

Wong, A., (2018), ‘The American Dream of the Higher Brothers’, GQ, viewed 7 September 2021. https://www.gq.com/story/the-american-dream-of-the-higher-brothers