Yankees are classist pig-dogs:
You are sitting in a Filipino Karaoke/Strip-Bar in one of the more sketchy sections of downtown Manila. You sip a San Miguel and watch a 4'10" pinoy baritone belt out "One Sweet Day" with the accompaniment of a half-naked stripper he is paying 250 pesos an hour to sing with him - roughly five US dollars. He is really getting into it and is noticeably drunk. The stripper, meanwhile, sings the Mariah Carey part with forced and false emotion. She is merely doing her job.
Next, a 4'8" pina, dressed in non-provocative clothing comes on to do "Baby, One More Time" of Britney Spears' fame. She is neither drunk nor very interested in the half-naked women - she is here to perform. Through her thick Filipina accent you detect she is nervous at first, but by the time she gets to the line "my loneliness is killing me" she has begun to really belt it. She begins to prove herself a powerful alto in her own right, strongly punctuating the low tones at the bottom of the range and using a tasteful sprinkle of vibrato at the top.
By the time she gets to the line "hit me baby one more time!" she is swaying her hips in a hypnotizing fashion that would put Shakira to shame. Every creature in the bar with a Y-chromosome falls under her wicked spell as you and the other males excitedly watch this short Filipina become Britney Spears.
Have you just witnessed a textbook moment of cultural imperialism or transcendence through art? You aren't sure. You're more than a little drunk. After a short set, the Filipina returns to her mortal form and leaves.
Fascinated, you follow. You follow her down the streets and into the back alleys. She navigates gracefully around piles of human waste and garbage as you more or less stumble through it in a decidedly less eloquent fashion. She eventually comes to a 4-meter square shop in the middle of the outdoor market that has been transformed into a home for a family of six. She shares one faucet of running water with the 200 other people who live illegally in this outdoor market.
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Have you just witnessed a textbook moment of cultural imperialism or transcendence through art? In a single moment, this anonymous woman has transcended her socioeconomic context. She has swung from abject poverty to the fantastic wealth and back again. Through a simple Japanese tool and an expertly crafted pop song she has, corny as it might sound, become a pop idol, if even for a moment to a small group of drunken tourists.
This is without question cultural imperialism, placation of the downtrodden masses by the bourgeois, and most importantly - transcendence through art.
The intellectual and economic elite of this country relentlessly criticize pop music for its so-called "empty decadence" and "uninspired packaging." Many claim that the economics driven music industry behaves too much like other industries - mass-producing similar products in accordance to the laws of supply and demand as opposed to pure aesthetic inspiration. Those from comfortable socioeconomic backgrounds get to enjoy the luxury of finding and procuring non-mainstream forms of media to enrich their day-to-day life as opposed to the heavily marketed, musical products of capitalism that appear as the only viable option to much of the world's poor.
As if this isn't bad enough they allow their elitist egos to step in. As opposed to merely enjoying their rarer forms of art, they pontificate as to its superiority. Most of this is based on the silly notion that an artists' relative obscurity to the mainstream validates their aesthetic value.
This opinion is almost completely nonsensical in design. Any work of art that achieves any aesthetic goal is successful, regardless of its background. Despite the motive to sell singles, a good song will reliably communicate the emotion felt by both the songwriter and the performer to the listener.
The economic elite also claim that the current setup of the modern music industry is contrived and empty. They claim that those who cannot write their own music perhaps shouldn't perform music at all. They accuse the songwriters not of art, but of empty fulfillments of job quotas. They fail to mention that the great composers of the past often thrived on commissioned works by such gloriously draconian institutions as the Catholic Church. Did this context invalidate Mozart or Bach?
They also neglect the fact that modern performers perform the same function that the classical music performer has done throughout all of western history - they perform other people's music. So if modern pop music is a contrived pile of uninspired drivel - so is the bulk of western musical history.
However, back to the Filipina - is the rapture felt by the poor southeast-Asian woman in the throes of a performance of a Britney Spears pop song invalidated by the economic catalyst to write and record the song? No.
To claim that either the emotion or that song is invalid from this standpoint is an entirely classist opinion. Her experience of "Baby, One More Time" is as valid as the performance of a Ferrnyhough Concerto, or a Radiohead album.
With less daily recreational hours or money as the well-to-do American, this woman has not had the opportunity to research the more obscure annals of European Art Music. While the blame for this tragedy rests squarely on the capitalist structure of our world's economy, it seems to add unnecessary insult to injury when one criticizes her available art experience.
Criticizing the music industry from the context of a capitalist world economy is entirely futile. It is analogous to treating the symptom and not the cause. The only way to truly criticize the industry is by speaking the one language it understands - commerce. As the music industry is intimately tied in with every other form of media worldwide - which basically functions as advertisements for almost every product - the only logical path is a complete remission from modern society. Good luck.
