You may be loving the Pop World Cup (we hope you are!). You may be thoroughly sick of it (in which case – sorry! But we’re more than halfway through now). But I hope you’d agree that the basic question it’s asking – how do you represent a country’s music? – is an interesting one. Certainly in the comments boxes this year we’ve seen a lot more people expressing outrage or delight at the choices the managers’ AREN’T making as much as those they are.
Which can get pretty confusing. Too little Latin pop! Too MUCH afropop! Too Eurovision! Trying to be American! Novelty nonsense! Only the North Koreans sit serenely above this fray because nobody had any idea what to expect of them anyway.
As I said in a comment box this morning, the PWC asks a player to balance three things: their own music tastes, the music of the country they represent, and the preferences of the crowd. The precise weighting of these is what makes it tricky. But the tactics the players use point to more general issues around ‘pop’ and ‘world’ music. So let’s look at some of the strategies we’ve been seeing!
Traditionalism: Selecting tracks that match up to people’s ideas about the ‘natural game’ or native music of the country – which probably means that aspect of the country’s pop which has already crossed over to achieve a level of Western fame. The enormous catch-all of genres that get referred to as “afropop”, for instance, comes under this heading. J-Pop from Japan, too, and Europop from European countries. A winning example of this in this PWC would be Algeria’s rai track in their first group game: everyone knew some rai would be forthcoming, it was, it didn’t disappoint.
Modernism: Tracks which represent local musics, but up-to-date ones which haven’t yet achieved that level of partial crossover. This is the kind of thing experts in a country’s music, and vocal fans, will tend to be clamouring for – whether it’s always wise to listen is another matter. When the strategy works, though, it can be very exciting – see for instance Cote D’Ivoire’s coupe-decale track in this PWC.
Atlanticism: Local acts performing in a US (or more rarely UK) style – locally produced rock, pop, hip-hop tracks with little or no specific local influence. Can often perform very well indeed but are also accused of a lack of imagination. In this PWC, Denmark’s Raveonettes and New Zealand’s Scribe got strong wins with this tactic.
Individualism: Shifting further from what the country does well to what the manager knows well, individualism is where the manager’s particular choice of formation dictates team selection: if you like and know indie, for instance, you might trust your judgement in spotting good indie from a country rather than going further afield. Purists carp at this but it can work very well in countries like Spain or Japan with wide ranging music scenes.
Pragmatism: Managers of countries with limited pop resources basically have to field whatever they can get – a backs-to-the-wall approach which can yield shock wins against sides who might be guilty of overthinking things: witness heart-warming victories for Honduras and Paraguay in this tournament.
Novelty: Or of course you can select something completely unexpected – Italy’s death robots in this PWC, for instance. This might or might not work but it usually makes for an entertaining commentary.
It’s really important to stress that there’s no RIGHT way to go about this – a lot of the comment box disputes have been from people expecting one of these approaches and being disappointed when they don’t get it, but the strategy the manager HAS chosen might be a winning one. Probably the best solution is to switch your tactics around from game to game, if you have the luxury of doing so.
Obviously, though, the choices in a frivolous thing like the Pop World Cup also mirror the expectations we have of ‘world music’ – how much expertise should people expect? How much qualifies you to judge? How to balance authenticity with the appeal of the familiar? I’d be really interested if people used the comments on this thread to talk about the things they like hearing and the expectations they have of these different musics (not least because it might save unfair managerial grief in the comments…)
One tactical thing missing from the list is the question to what extent you should play to your opponent’s weaknesses versus just fielding the best tracks you’ve got. I’ve tried the former with rather limited success: straightforward, vaguely ethnic-tinged music against the famously west-copyist, quirky South Korea. Something tasteful and restrained against Nigeria’s perceived commercial clout. And (blowing up in my face, by the looks of it) commercial pop against Argentina, the alt-everything Nation.
Good tactical idea in general or overthinking it in the extreme?
Garry @ 28, to answer your questions, I’m American (from Seattle) and the formation I played today with Belinda Chapple is very, very close to my own taste in music (more so that my first selection and much, much more so than my second).
I’ll write more about my song selection after I’m eliminated (hopefully later rather than sooner!) but this was my first PWC and I had no idea what to expect from voters and commenters.
Chris B @32 I’ll look forward to your write-up – I’m very interested in what impact Australian music has made overseas. I didn’t even know Sneaky Sound System were that well known.
SSS and Chapple aren’t to my tastes – I’m more into the rockier side of things, with an increasing interest in Australia’s ever improving hip hop scene.
In terms of the tactics Tom mentioned above, Australia is hard. There is not much “traditional” pop sound, even well regarded charting Indigenous artists use overseas influences to marry up to traditional ones. A lot of (let’s call it) Pop pop is heavily influenced by the US, UK and Europe. There is a lot more variety in the rockier end of town, but it too is influence by oveaseas rock. As soon as the Strokes hit, for instance, Australia had it’s apes.
If there is anything particularly Australian then it is the lyrics – think the Lucksmiths, Paul Kelly, the Go-Betweens, Regurgitator, TISM. There is a lot of focus on the little, everyday like things in the lyrics, plus a lot of humour or cheekiness.
There have been scenes over the years, like the Cave/Moodists/Scientists etc etc going on in the 80s. For a while there was a popular Ska scene for a couple of years. But these come in waves.
That said, my idea of an Australian sound is as an insider. I’d be interested to hear what non-Australians think an Australian sound sounds like?
“you don’t have to think of anything to say beyond “I like/do not like this”, it’s more to make your presence known than anything else.”
Maybe the pressure to come up with tenuous football analogies puts some off?