Volume 19, Issue 2

The introduction to this forum highlights infrastructures as crucial, yet often overlooked, enablers of musical globalization from 1850 to 2000, facilitating the creation, transmission, and transformation of music across diverse contexts. By framing infrastructures as both material and relational constructs, we argue that they underpin connections between musical practices, genres, and institutions while also reflecting power dynamics and exclusions. Our approach underscores the indispensable role of infrastructures in shaping global musical exchanges and their historical trajectories.

Contributing to the study of musical globalization from a Latin American perspective, this article responds to the current critique of “Eurasian centrism” in global history. The analysis of music conservatories founded in Cuba around 1900 shows how intertwined connectivity and disconnectivity were in musical globalization processes. Modeled on European examples, they served Cuban musicians to develop their careers in the Caribbean and the Atlantic world. At the same time, the consolidation of high-level professional training in Cuba made musical education and professionalism less dependent on travels to Europe. For the professional projects of non-European musicians, the Cuban conservatories highlight two functions of musical infrastructures: first, their adoption and imparting of European musical knowledge. Conservatories were crucial for Cuban musicians and equipped them with the necessary prestige to start a professional career. Second, conservatories as musical infrastructures opened education to a wider circle of students, among them a rising number of women and musicians of color. This article argues that the establishment of conservatories therefore initiated emancipatory social developments and provided professional empowerment within Cuba’s musical life.

This article examines the role of copyright societies in shaping the work of musicians in the Democratic Republic of the Congo during decolonization. The Belgian colonial authorities had transferred the Western system of intellectual property rights and collecting societies to Congo during the colonial period. Intellectual property dues granted specific revenues to Congolese artists until the late colonial period under a legal regime that was otherwise repressive for the colonized. At the same time, Kinshasa became one of the early music capitals on the African continent. First, this article outlines the firms and institutions that comprised the emerging record industry in Congo. Second, it quantifies the total dues for intellectual property rights paid to Congolese musicians during the late colonial and early postcolonial periods. Third, it examines ruptures and continuities with the emergence of new authors’ rights societies in Congo during the postcolonial era. Such systems also allowed for geographical extensions among the diasporas of Congolese musicians, especially in France and Belgium, supplementing the infrastructures in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Fourth, it highlights the continuities in Congolese copyright societies and the influence of a long and complex period of decolonization on music infrastructures.

The article analyzes the Soviet Ministry of Culture in the late Soviet period as an agent facilitating the transfer of music within the socialist bloc and to the West. Conceptualizing Soviet musical infrastructures as an imperfect ensemble of state-run institutions for the production and distribution of music, the article focuses on three case studies to explore how the Ministry, as the organizer of “progressive Soviet musical culture,” navigated the ideological challenges of the Cold War era, the various practical tasks of global music markets, and its diverse audiences. By examining contractual agreements with Western record companies, the mechanisms of music distribution within the socialist bloc, and Soviet concert tours in the Global South, the article carves out the possibilities and limits of Soviet attempts to capitalize on their musical cultures both symbolically and economically.

The career of conductor Herbert von Karajan (1908–89) is often considered exemplary for twentieth-century classical musicianship. At the same time, Karajan remains a controversial figure both with regard to his affiliation with National Socialism and his role in the commercialization of classical music. Going beyond biographical approaches, this article argues that Karajan’s appearances in Europe, North America, East Asia, and the Middle East, together with his turn toward musical mass production, served to shield him from postwar political protests. A consideration of Karajan’s global career also requires expanding the traditional focus on international musical relations as cultural diplomacy projects to include the role of the music industry in twentieth-century classical musical life. From the 1950s, the infrastructures of Karajan’s career emerged as a global system of musical production and distribution based on cooperation with selected partners, on recordings, festival performances, intercontinental tours, and media innovations. Collaborations with European, American, and Asian record companies and music agents helped Karajan to detach his career from political ideas of music-making such as those related to denazification, national representation, or democratization. Instead, infrastructures allowed Karajan to promote an apolitical understanding of global audience participation through individual music consumption.

This article explores the intersections of global energy infrastructures and musical genre formation, focusing on the careers of Grace Chang and Fela Kuti. The transition from coal to petroleum reshaped political and social landscapes globally. This transition influenced various industries, including music and film, by changing the material conditions that underpinned cultural production. This article argues that the concept of genre itself functions as an infrastructure, a symbolic object that encapsulates social, economic, and political conditions. Genres like jazz, mambo, and Afro-Beat, though rooted in the Black Atlantic’s history of resource extraction and slavery, evolved through local adaptations and responses to global changes. The cases of Chang and Kuti highlight the importance of examining these “minor infrastructures” to understand the broader processes of musical globalization. By focusing on the meso-level – between global macro-processes and local micro-histories – the article seeks to provide a nuanced understanding of how genres develop and transform. It critiques monolithic narratives of global music history, emphasizing the complex entanglements of material conditions and cultural practices. This article calls for an approach that considers the multifaceted and dynamic nature of genre formation, shaped by both global energy politics and local cultural contexts.

This epilogue underscores the insights to be gained from analyzing music as a “globalized infrastructure,” revealing its dual role in enabling cultural connections and reinforcing societal hierarchies. Relating music to socio-technological systems, it highlights how material and immaterial infrastructures facilitate the production, dissemination, and collective experience of music across global contexts. This perspective deepens our understanding of music’s role in shaping global interactions and its potential as a shared cultural resource in an interconnected world.