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Cultural Sociology
Copyright 2007 BSA Publications Ltd Volume 1(3): 317341 [DOI: 10.1177/1749975507082051] SAGE Publications Los Angeles, London, New Delhi and Singapore
Ethno-National Pop-Rock Music: Aesthetic Cosmopolitanism Made from Within
Motti Regev
The Open University of Israel
ABSTRACT
Pop-rock music is portrayed as a major embodiment of the transformation of national cultural uniqueness from purist essentialism into aesthetic cosmopolitanism. Examining the local production of ethno-national pop-rock, and its public reception and legitimation through half a century, the article demonstrates how forces within the national context greatly contribute to cultural globalization. The article looks at three aspects of the rise of ethno-national pop-rock music to national legitimacy: the agency of musicians, analyzed as structurally stemming from the intersection of the field of pop-rock and the field of national culture; a fourphase, half-century long process, called here the historical musical event of poprock; and the consequence of pop-rock legitimacy for performance of national uniqueness. The general arguments and theoretical points are illustrated by detailed reference to the cases of pop-rock music in Argentina and Israel.
KEY WORDS
aesthetic cosmopolitanism / Argentina / Israel / national culture / pop-rock music / popular music / sociology of music
Introduction
n the lyrics to the song La Argentinidad al Palo (Argentine-ness In Erection),1 Argentinean rock band Bersuit Vergarabat partly satirize and partly celebrate things that evoke national pride in their country. The double album of the same name, in which the song appears, received the Gardel prize for best album
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of 2005. In another part of the world, in the 1993 song Kama Yossi (How Many Yossi), Israeli rock auteur Berry Sakharoff reminisces about Israeli suburban culture of the 1960s. The song is considered by critics as one of the best Israeli rock songs ever recorded. Each of these songs represents a recent moment in the popular music of Argentina and Israel. The themes of the lyrics, the language used for singing, the dialogue with earlier moments in local music, as well as the positive reviews and market success, make them a very local matter in each country. For their respective local audiences, each song stands as an expression of current national cultural uniqueness: Argentine-ness and Israeliness. Yet, at the same time, each of these songs is a pop-rock song. The electric and electronic instrumentation, the sophisticated studio production techniques used for their creation and the presence of the stylistic influence of global poprock genres, make each of these songs an art work that shares much aesthetic common ground with many songs produced elsewhere in the world. As components of a global form of art, each of these songs contains stylistic traces and influences from places and traditions alien to Israel or Argentina. The incorporation of these influences thus naturalizes elements of otherness into the current sense of national uniqueness in these two countries. These songs exemplify the transformation that has taken place in the ways national uniqueness is expressed in, and performed through, music. This involves a shift from commitment to essentialist notions of folkism and traditionalism, to fluidity and conscious openness to exterior influences of pop-rock. Needless to say, these two countries are just two cases of a prevalent phenomenon, found in the musical reality of many countries. Pop-rock music stands here as a major embodiment of the transformation that took place in the cultural uniqueness of many nations and ethnicities (henceforth called here ethno-national cultural uniqueness): from an emphasis and quest for purism and essentialism, to a conception of ethno-national cultural uniqueness which I call aesthetic cosmopolitanism. The term aesthetic (sometimes cultural) cosmopolitanism, as suggested in the work of Urry (1995) and Szerszynski and Urry (2002, 2006), applies to the cultural realm the renewed general interest in the centuries-old concept of cosmopolitanism (Beck, 2000; Cheah and Robbins, 1998; Hannerz, 1990, 2004; Vertovec and Cohen, 2002). These works locate aesthetic cosmopolitanism, at the individual level, as individuals having a taste for art and culture of nations and other groups other than ones own, and for the wider shores of cultural experience (Tomlinson, 1999: 202). However, in late modernity, many of the art works and cultural products that signify contemporary ethno-national cultural uniqueness routinely and intentionally include elements drawn from outside the nation or ethnicity which they represent. The difference between what counts as exterior or interior to national culture has been blurred. Therefore, in the light of Becks succinct definition of cosmopolitanism as a condition in which the otherness of the other is included in ones own self-identity and selfdefinition (Beck, 2003: 17), and following Regev (2007), I want to expand the notion of aesthetic cosmopolitanism, and suggest that the concept should be located not necessarily at the individual level, but at the structural collective
Ethno-National Pop-Rock Music Regev
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level, as a cultural condition that is inextricable from current ethno-national uniqueness. Put differently, I want to suggest that aesthetic cosmopolitanism comes into being not only through consumption of art works and cultural products from the wider shores of cultural experience, but also, and more intensively, through the creation and consumption of much of the local art and culture that is believed to express ethno-national uniqueness. Aesthetic cosmopolitanism is produced from within national culture, as Beck and Sznaider put it (2006). Aesthetic cosmopolitanism is the condition in which the representation and performance of ethno-national cultural uniqueness becomes largely based on contemporary art forms like pop-rock music or film, and whose expressive forms include stylistic elements knowingly drawn from sources exterior to indigenous traditions. As such, aesthetic cosmopolitanism is not the exception in contemporary cultural practices, but rather the normal and the routine, and a prime manifestation of what Robertson (1995) has called glocalization: the (re-)construction of locality in response to and under the influence of globalization. Following Billig (1995), it could be referred to as banal aesthetic cosmopolitanism, as ordinary and mundane cosmopolitanism (Hebdige, 1990; Lamont and Aksartova, 2002), or as actually existing cosmopolitanism (Robbins, 1998). While not refuting the cultural imperialism thesis, the concept of aesthetic cosmopolitanism in my view better expresses the complexity of cultural flows between parts of the globe in the present day. Popular music, and especially pop-rock music, is a key cultural form in this regard. The flourishing of domestic pop-rock music styles in many different countries has transformed the cultural uniqueness of each one of them, as expressed in music, into a sonic-aesthetic space saturated with electric and electronic sounds, highly inspired by, and intensively connected to, stylistic trends and canonic works associated mostly with Anglo-American pop-rock, but also with pop-rock music from other ethno-national entities. Pop-rock demonstrates that, under conditions of aesthetic cosmopolitanism, the model of world culture suggested by Meyer et al. (1997) is not confined to the realm of instrumental rationalized culture. Construction of ethno-national uniqueness in expressive culture also takes the path of isomorphism, when forces inside the nation are self-mobilized to create their own pop-rock, believing this is the way to perform uniqueness in late modernity. This article offers an outline for assessing and understanding the role of pop-rock music in the emergence of aesthetic cosmopolitanism and the transformation of ethno-national cultural uniqueness. I do this by considering three dimensions. First, I examine aesthetic cosmopolitanism as an outcome of the social logic underlying the agency of musicians and critics, as constrained by the fields of cultural production in which they act. Second, I describe the long term process of pop-rock gaining legitimacy and dominance in the musical field, which I call (following DeNora, 2003), the historical musical event of pop-rock. Third and finally, I analyze briefly the consequences of this legitimacy for musical ethno-nationalism at the level of performance. To illustrate the general arguments, the article refers to the cases of pop-rock in Argentina and Israel.
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The Field of Pop-rock Music

I will begin with some clarifications as to the nature of the category of music called here pop-rock and its constitution as a field of cultural production. The term pop-rock is used here to refer to music consciously created and produced by using amplification, electric and electronic music instruments, sophisticated recording equipment and other sound manipulation devices. For pop-rock musicians, these technologies of sonic expression are not just aids for enhancing or capturing sound produced by traditional acoustic instruments and the human voice, but rather are regarded as creative tools for generating sonic textures that cannot be produced otherwise (S. Jones, 1992; Thberge, 1997). Poprock music is predominantly a creation of recording studios, destined primarily for phonograms. Put differently, pop-rock is mainly an art of recorded music, an art of making records. From a cultural sociology perspective, pop-rock is an art form mostly comparable to film. Both are defined by their technologies of creation and consumption. Obviously, the affinity between the plethora of styles that make up poprock music also rests on a strong socio-cultural base. A useful way to conceptualize sociologically the socio-cultural base of pop-rock is by using Bourdieus theory of the fields of cultural and artistic production (1992, 1993a). The history of pop-rock music since the mid-1950s amounts to the emergence and institutionalization of a certain field of cultural production, that is, the field of pop-rock music. The field of pop-rock has the typical hierarchical structure and logic of struggle of all artistic fields. Thus, it has dominant positions, consisting of consecrated canonic musicians and their works (mostly albums), and corresponding production of meaning positions (i.e. the activities and products of critics, journalists, historians etc.) that maintain the successfully imposed criteria of evaluation. The history of the field is that of struggles by new entrants to gain the ultimate prize of becoming part of the canon. Such struggles might take the form of heresy (including attempts to transgress and redefine the dominant criteria of evaluation) or may be evolutionary, occuring in the wake of already existing canonical positions. In either case, the ever developing field is constructed of a series of additions to the canon, each justified in its turn by powerholding producers of meaning as important stylistic innovations. The justifications used for erecting this canon are permutations of the traditional modernist ideology of autonomous art, meaning that the importance of albums and musicians is determined not necessarily by their impact in the market of phonograms, but by their perceived aesthetic and cultural value (Appen and Dohering, 2006; Regev, 1994). That is, the canonic albums are believed to be ultimate embodiments of the potential hidden in the expressive technologies of pop-rock for the latter to be genuine artistic and creative means. Each new addition is typically justified by interpreting it as an expansion of the creative possibilities hidden in existing or newly developed technologies. A major characteristic of the field consists of the very differentiation of pop-rock music from other types of popular music. This differentiation is
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accomplished by discursive practices of critics and journalists (Jones, 2002; Lindberg et al., 2005) as well as organizational practices within the music industry (Negus, 1992), and it is widely acknowledged (Frith, 1981; Grossberg, 1992; Longhurst, 1995; Negus, 1997; Shuker, 2001). The differentiation is organized around a stylistic genealogy and a historical narrative for which the emergence of rocknroll in the mid-1950s, associated with the music recorded by Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley, serves as a mythical moment of birth. Many accounts of this genealogy use the term rock to label this cultural category. The addition here of the term pop deals with a certain blurring that is sometimes admitted as to the difference between, or overlap of, pop and rock (Gammond, 1993; Shuker, 1998). This addition helps to convey the wide range of electric or electronic styles pertaining to the genealogy, that can metaphorically be described as both heavy, hard and difficult (i.e. rock) as well as light, soft and easy (i.e. pop). Thus, salient names included by the discourse of poprock in its stylistic genealogy, and moments valorized in its historical narrative, include British rock (the Beatles, the Rolling Stones), soul music (James Brown, the Temptations), Bob Dylan and psychedelic rock (Jimi Hendrix, Jefferson Airplane) in the 1960s; progressive rock (Pink Floyd), David Bowie, Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Wonder, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Led Zeppelin, disco (Chic), funk (Funkadelic), punk (Talking Heads, the Clash) and reggae (Bob Marley) in the 1970s; new wave (the Cure), rap (Public Enemy), Prince, U2, REM, Madonna in the 1980s; Nirvana, Radiohead, hip-hop, electronica (house, techno) in the 1990s and later. On the other hand, pop-rock discourse traditionally excludes and marginalizes popular music styles that do not share this cultural background (most notably musicals like The Sound of Music, easy listening of the type made by Ray Coniff, for example, and vocal pop associated with the likes of Tony Bennett, Frank Sinatra or Barbara Streisand).Yet, it should be noted that the success of the field of pop-rock in institutionalizing an artistic hierarchy for popular music, based on the imposition of the rock criteria of evaluation, has caused a growing pop-rockization of almost the entire art world of popular music (Regev, 2002). Aspiring to gain artistic respectability, musicians working in idioms conventionally loathed by the rock criteria of evaluation have over the years converted their aesthetic beliefs and adopted pop-rock creative practices. This is best expressed in the emergence of styles that go by names such as soft rock and adult contemporary pop, in which the difference between pop-rock and types of popular music previously excluded from pop-rock discourse has been blurred. Knowledge of this historical narrative, and acquaintance with the actual stylistic innovations or features associated with each moment or name, are the doxa of the field, both in terms of craft and belief. At any moment in its history, new entrants who aspire to gain rewards and prizes in the field acquire at least parts of this knowledge in order to position themselves in the stylistic map. The already established patterns of creativity and nuances of meaning become a set of necessary dispositions the pop-rock habitus which serves as a platform for attempts to surpass existing forms through continuity or heresy.
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This understanding of pop-rock becomes more apparent in the context of non-Anglo-American popular music cultures, where pop-rock is often understood, somewhat stereotypically, as all that new, late modern, electric and electronic music whose alleged intrusion into, and disruption of, indigenous folk and popular music traditions, in turn involved the stigmatization of it as an embodiment of cultural imperialism (in the eyes of the left) or cultural deterioration (in the eyes of the right) (see Pacini Hernandez et al., 2004). Conventional descriptions of the field of pop-rock, like the one briefly presented above, tend to concentrate almost exclusively on its dominant AngloAmerican components. But pop-rock was from an early stage a world phenomenon. Disseminated by the growing international music industry, Anglo-American pop-rock was present in the music cultures of many different countries around the world since its initial moment in the 1950s. As such, its various styles, moments and names have been for more than half a century a major component in the taste cultures of various social sectors in those countries. Such audiences developed a sense of cultural ownership for AngloAmerican pop-rock not unlike that of its native audiences in the US and UK. Pop-rock became their music for purposes of marking generational time and identity (Frith, 1987). Inseparable from this are the generations of musicians and critics who have been creating and mediating locally-made pop-rock since at least the early 1960s. In subsequent decades, in a combined process of keeping pace with stylistic innovations in Anglo-American pop-rock, and developing indigenous styles and sonic structures, musicians and fans in many different countries have developed pop-rock traditions of their own. These traditions, overwhelmingly sung in domestic languages, and becoming markers of local identity for their fans (if not for their entire respective nations and ethnic groups), are henceforth labeled here as ethno-national poprock. As practically unacknowledged positions (by the dominant discourse) in the field of pop-rock, their actual existence nevertheless means that pop-rock was from the outset a global field. The self-perception of non-Anglo-American pop-rock musicians and critics as participants in the global field constituted them as a sort of cultural transmission mechanism, that transfers aesthetic forms from outside the national context into it, in order to indigenize them (and sometimes also in the other direction, involving transmission from ethnonational context to the global field). It is in this convergence of the global and the Anglo-American with the ethnic and national, as embodied in the cultural work of pop-rock musicians and critics, that pop-rock music becomes a major site for the social production of aesthetic cosmopolitanism from within the nation. It should be stressed that ethno-national pop-rock is not to be conflated with world music styles and discourse. While they occasionally do overlap (especially when viewed from the US or the UK), world music aesthetic sensibilities and artistic ideology often counter the electric emphasis of ethnonational pop-rock and its close affinity to pop-rock in general (Erlmann, 1993; Feld, 1994; Frith, 2000; Robertson and Inglis, 2005).
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Agency and the Intersection of Two Fields

Understanding how aesthetic cosmopolitanism in music is socially produced from within given ethno-national cultures, entails looking at musicians and critics as agents whose cultural work is structured by the simultaneous position they occupy in two fields of cultural production: the global field of pop-rock on the one hand, and the specific field of ethno-national culture in which they are situated on the other. The latter refers to the social space in which different identity positions within a given ethno-national setting struggle over what constitutes and defines legitimate national culture (Regev, 2000). Aesthetic cosmopolitanism emerges as the socially produced consequence of the interplay between these two fields. The working of this interplay, its social mechanism and cultural logic, can be analyzed by considering two elaborations on Bourdieus analysis of cultural fields. The first comes from the work of Sewell (1992), who criticizes Bourdieus analysis of habitus because it cannot explain change as arising from within the operation of structures (1992: 16). He then goes on to argue that the transformation of structures from within is possible thanks to five key characteristics of fields (or social structures). Two of these are the multiplicity of structures and the transposability of schemas. These two imply that individuals, as social agents, are always situated in more than one field, and routinely transpose elements from one field-specific habitus to their actions and practices in a different field. Artists and other cultural producers are no exception: they occupy positions in more than one field, each field having its own specific forms of capital and habitus, with its own hierarchies, structures and schemas. The intersection of two (or more) fields of cultural production thus becomes a source for innovation and change. The work of agency, of producing cultural change, is performed through the transposition of specific types of habitus from one field to another. Aesthetic sensibilities, criteria of evaluation and creative patterns are some key elements transposed by cultural producers from one field to another, as part of the dynamics of innovation and surpassing of existing patterns that characterize all artistic fields. A second elaboration comes from the work of Toynbee (2000), who applies a key concept of Bourdieus field theory, the space of possibles (or possibilities), to the work of musicians in the field of popular music. Examining Bourdieus concept, which defines the creative trajectories available to an artist at a given moment, Toynbee goes on to develop a model he calls the radius of creativity. His main point is that within the given space of possibilities available to an artist in the field, there is always a likelihood that some possibilities will be preferred over others. This likelihood is a function of the musicians own dispositions, her position in the field, and the readily available creative means, as offered by the actual institutions within which she works. It is this likelihood that ultimately defines which creative possibility will be adopted, including stylistic innovation.
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In the light of these elaborations, it can be asserted that generations of musicians within ethno-national settings, since the 1960s and onwards, once they were faced with, and became fascinated by, the creative possibilities offered by the globally dominant forms of the art of pop-rock (not to mention the ideologies surrounding those creative possibilities) have been self-mobilized into membership and actor-hood in the global field of pop-rock. While the adoption of pop-rock might be interpreted, along the lines of the cultural imperialism thesis (Goodwin and Gore, 1990; Negus, 1997) as a move forced on musicians by the industry, it is rather the willful embracing of pop-rock by certain actors that has proved crucial. Indeed, if there is something we might call cultural imperialism in this regard, it consists of the acceptance of a belief in the cultural significance and artistic value of the creative means and canonic works of pop-rock, and the active joining of the field. Once they came to perceive themselves as participants in the global field, pop-rock musicians in many parts of the world adopted the imperative to keep up to date with things that happen at the forefront of Anglo-American pop-rock (and sometimes musical developments coming out of other locations as well). Stylistic innovations or musicians that are valorized as important by the dominant (Anglo-American) production of meaning positions in the field are bound to influence and inspire pop-rock musicians in different parts of the world. Such musicians willfully let themselves be inspired and influenced, because it serves their interest to feel like active, up to date and relevant actors in the global field, and to determine their own path of creativity and innovation. But these musicians are also actors in their respective fields of national culture, where they are propelled to create works whose form, content and meaning arguably represent (or they think they represent) ethno-national uniqueness, singularity and distinction. As members of a given ethno-national community, and as artists whose immediate public comes also from that same community, they are impelled to make music that can be used by their relevant publics to sustain a sense of local uniqueness, that is, of ethno-nationalism. Pop-rock musicians, in other words, find themselves at the intersection of two fields and an expanded radius of creativity. The space of creative possibilities opened to them consists of both the pop-rock tradition and the ethnonational heritage of which they are successors. Likelihood of access to the creative and institutional means that lead to success in the global field has historically been low for pop-rock musicians in non-Anglo-American countries. Thus they have been opting, overwhelmingly, for those creative possibilities whose likelihood of leading to success was much higher, namely those that allow the making of pop-rock music which is also at the same time ethno-national music. This means, in practice, transposing aesthetic schemas from the global field to the national field, and vice versa. Transposition consists of taking stylistic patterns of pop-rock and using them within ethno-national contexts, and application of ethno-national traditional patterns into the realm of pop-rock. Transposition results most notably in the making of ethno-national variants on whatever poprock style happens to be in vogue in the Anglo-American-dominated global field
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at a given moment. Thus many countries witnessed locally made rocknroll in the early 1960s, music inspired by British rock later in that decade, progressive rock, folk rock and punk in the 1970s, new wave in the 1980s, and hip-hop or electrodance in the 1990s. The salient ethno-national elements in these repertoires consisted of singing in the native language and referring in the lyrics to subjects and issues that emanated from local, ethno-national social reality. However, in order for musicians to justify this music and to gain legitimacy as expressions of ethnonational uniqueness, transposition of creative practices also takes place in the other direction. This is done by incorporating into pop-rock stylistic elements and creative techniques associated with local, ethno-national traditions of folk and popular music. This practice includes the use of native music instruments (sometimes modified to be electric), indigenous vocal techniques of enunciation through singing and rhythmic patterns, and, most obviously, recording electrified poprock cover versions of traditional music. The pattern is most typically exemplified by folk rock singer-songwriters whose inspiration comes from Bob Dylan, but whose notion of folk comes from their own heritage. The result is an electric ethno-rock, often received with much enthusiasm by critics and audiences for its perceived seamless hybridity of indigenous tradition and state of the art modernity. Thus in Argentina, the electric variant of folk rhythms produced by Leon Gieco made him a national figure, and in Israel Ehud Banais rock, tinged with Central Asian and Middle Eastern flavors, spawned a whole wave of ethnic pop-rock. The term hybridization is often used to describe the creative practices employed by Leon Gieco or Ehud Banai, and it certainly depicts the nature of their creativity. In the light of the above, however, it should be stressed that hybridization is not an arbitrary or whimsical creative practice, but rather an artistic practice structured by the social embeddedness of pop-rock music in the intersection of two fields of cultural production. It should be added that not only musicians find themselves in this intersection. Critics, commentators, radio DJs and music editors in short, producers of meaning occupy important positions in this regard as well. Their practices of transposition take place by establishing pop-rock magazines, editing and presenting radio programmes, writing reviews and columns in the press, and so on. Through these practices, they transpose into the local field the knowledge of pop-rock, its criteria of evaluation, its mythology of canonical works and the latters history. Their agency ultimately involves producing the ideological vocabulary and artistic justification through which pop-rock music in general becomes culturally respectable, and home-made pop-rock gains recognition as a legitimate expression of ethno-national uniqueness.
The Historical Musical Event of Pop-rock

Gaining recognition for pop-rock music as a legitimate expression of ethnonational uniqueness amounts to the transformation of such uniqueness, as
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expressed in music, into a condition of aesthetic cosmopolitanism. The transformation has taken decades to materialize, and although its exact points of beginning and ending are difficult to determine, it can be asserted that it lasted roughly from the late 1950s until the turn of the century. It is also undeniable that the transformation was preceded by a form of musical ethno-nationalism characterized by a quest for essentialist distinction through folk and traditional popular music, and that in its later stages musical ethno-nationalism came to be characterized by the legitimate, sometimes overwhelming and dominant presence of pop-rock music. For the purposes of characterizing this long-term production of aesthetic cosmopolitanism from within ethno-national contexts, I want to suggest the concept of historical musical event, and thus to present schematically the historical musical event of pop-rock. The concept of musical event is taken from the work of DeNora (2003). Evolving from ethnographic work carried out in different settings (De Nora; 2000), she developed a model that demonstrates how engagement with music affects individual life courses and micro situations of everyday life. At this interactionist level, a musical event is an act of engagement with music that in some way alters the life of the individuals involved. I propose to generalize the use of the concept, and examine it at a collective level, looking at how the engagement with music of a given collective entity such as a nation alters its sense of cultural uniqueness. Thus, the ascent of pop-rock to legitimacy, and even dominance, within ethno-national cultures can be portrayed as the historical musical event of pop-rock. Portraying the process as an event comes to emphasize that music is a force that does not just reflect, but actually carries and prompts, cultural change. Following the halfcentury duration of this event, the perception and performance of ethno-national cultural uniqueness has been transformed from involving emphasis on essentialism, purism and exclusivity, to being organized around fluidity, relativity and openness to otherness. The major aspects of the event are portrayed and described as a four-phase process (schematically presented in Table I), based on the cases of Argentina and Israel. It should be stressed, however, that evidence from other countries suggests that, with some variance and modification in periodization and other elements, the skeletal structure of the historical musical event of pop-rock is similar: see, for example, Chun et al. (2004) for East Asia, Dunn (2001) for Brazil, De Kloet (2001), Baranovitch (2003), A.F. Jones (1992) for China, Loosely (2003) for France, Mitchell (2001) for the global spread of hip-hop, Ollivier (2006) for Quebec, Stapleton and May (1987) for African countries, Cushman (1995) and Steinholt (2005) for Russia. However, unlike these single case studies, that rarely theorize the emergence of ethno-national pop-rock as a world phenomenon, I use Argentina and Israel as anchors for a generalized theory of world pop-rock. Also, while the emphasis of previous comparative studies was mostly institutional, focusing on policies, industry ownership and places of production (Burnett, 1996; Malm and Wallis, 1992), I propose here a cultural focus on meaning. Argentina and Israel are chosen for substantial and methodological reasons. Both countries are essentially modern immigrant societies, for whom constructing a unified sense

Table 1 The Historical Musical Event of Pop-rock: Transformation of Ethno-National Cultural Uniqueness in Music Before the event: Quest for essentialism and purism through emphasis on traditional and indigenous folk and popular music The Event: Actors: musicians, critics, fans, media professionals, music industry Phase 1. Pre-history (Elvis and beat-bands imitations) Phase 2. Consecrated/mythical beginning (Local Music inspired by the Beatles, Dylan, folk rock, psychedelia and progressive rock) Phase 3. Consolidation and dominance (aligning ranks with traditional national music, local newwave, rockization of pop) Phase 4. Diversification, internationalization (hip-hop, electronica, metal; international success and recognition) After the event: Pop-rock music as legitimate expression of the ethno-nationalism Emphasis on participation and membership as equals in world pop-rock Willful openness to constant stylistic influx from outside: aesthetic cosmopolitanism
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of cultural uniqueness has been a major endeavour. The role played by folk and popular music in this effort provided similar backgrounds to the paths of pop-rock music towards legitimacy in both countries. That is, pop-rock posed a potential threat to the perceived achievement of unified national uniqueness, and its discourse and practice in these countries had therefore to defend and justify ethnonational relevance vigorously. Methodologically, my personal fluency in Spanish and Hebrew allowed for unmediated, first-hand deciphering of texts and discourse. Overall, I trace the stylistic expansion and public reception of national pop-rock in these two countries and point to musicians, albums and styles that have been the carriers of this socio-cultural process. Taken together, the four phases depict the social career of pop-rock in each country from marginality to legitimacy. They also expose the themes of linearity and achievement that underlie the historical narratives of pop-rock, the pride of local actors about making it in terms of the artistic parameters of pop-rock, and maintenance of ethno-national uniqueness. The details of pop-rock presented here have been extracted from the production of meaning apparatuses in both countries. For the sake of brevity and fluidity, I keep direct quotes to a minimum.2
Pre-history
This early phase consists of the musicians and albums conventionally regarded as the first to introduce rock music into local-national cultures. However,
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except for factual acknowledgment, they are hardly appreciated at this time for artistic quality or authenticity. The musicians in this phase preceded the mythologized, consecrated moment of the birth of ethno-national pop-rock, the moment when its proper history began, hence my use of the term prehistory. Lack of appreciation is coupled to typical characterizations of the music at this phase as imitative and inauthentic (Kreimer, 1970). However, while in Argentina the performers associated with this early stage enjoyed commercial success and the status of media teen idols, in Israel, on the other hand, the pioneering of pop-rock had the character of a suburban subculture, hardly noticed by the media or record industry. Another noticeable difference lies in the fact that early pop-rock was mostly a middle-class youth phenomenon in Argentina, while in Israel it was primarily a working-class youth affair. Interestingly, a salient source of influence on this early pop-rock in both Israel and Argentina was the Italian pop-rock associated with the San Remo festival, and with performers such as Little Tony, Bobby Solo, Rita Pavone and others. Performers Sandro and Palito Ortega are the most salient names in Argentina in this phase. Sandro was a local impersonation of Elvis Presley. He recorded cover versions of early rocknroll hits, and adopted the corresponding appearance (hair style, body language on stage, and so on). Palito Ortega, on the other hand, was the main figure in the group of performers known as El Club Del Clan, named after the television show which regularly featured them. The models here were early 1960s North American musicians such as Paul Anka or Neil Sedaka. Known together as La Nueva Ola (new wave) or Musica Beat, Sandro and El Club Del Clan participants were an intrusion in the popular music of Argentina, dominated by folklore, tango and other typically Latin American forms of popular music. In the case of Israel, the early musicians are usually grouped together under the name lehakot ha-ketzev (the beat groups). The label refers to a number of bands that sang in (bad) English covers of Anglo-American hits (originally by Presley, Cliff Richard, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Animals, the Kinks, the Who etc.). With names such as Ha-shmenim ve-harazim (the Fat Guys and the Slim Guys), Ha-kokhavim ha-kehulim (the Blue Stars), the Goldfingers, Ha-arayiot (the Lions), Uzi ve-ha-signonot (Uzi and the Styles) and the Churchills, the bands regularly exchanged members between each other and performed in small clubs in the greater Tel Aviv area, most notably in the town of Ramle. The limited cultural industries of Israel in the mid-1960s did not pay any attention to the phenomenon. Lehakot ha-ketzev, if noticed at all by those occupying power-holding positions in the field of national culture, were dismissed as totally irrelevant, and at best treated as a threat to the sought purity of national culture.
Consecrated Beginning
Each country has its quasi-mythical moment of the birth of its own ethnonational rock, a founding and constitutive historical moment. This moment,
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lasting roughly from the late 1960s throughout much of the 1970s, consists of musicians that, according to conventional narratives, were the first to make local rock music worthy of its name. This was in two senses. First, music that matched artistic standards set by leading Anglo-American artists of the period. Second, music that could properly be called locally authentic, because of the language it used, the content of its lyrics, its typical sonic texture, and the social sources from which it emanated. Thus the consecrated beginning of pop-rock in the two countries is characterized by the appearance of enthusiastically received local versions of music inspired by the Beatles and Bob Dylan, folk rock, progressive rock and, to some extent, hard/heavy rock. Following this period, leading musicians of this phase enjoyed a lasting and influential career into the 21st century. The albums recorded in this phase by these musicians are the consecrated classics of local rock, its essential canon. It is with these albums that in the countries in question the music was given the proper names of respectively Israeli rock and rock nacional. An important feature of this formative moment, as with similar moments in other fields of art, is its collaborative nature. In each country, the birth of ethno-national pop-rock is credited to a small network of musicians that between them formed bands, duos or short-lived projects, participated in each others solo efforts, contributed production work and authorship of compositions or lyrics to each others albums, and joined forces on stage in special concerts and events. Regev and Seroussi (2004) refer to this network in Israel as the elite of Israeli rock. The term can be applied to the parallel network in Argentina as well. Musicians and critics there repeatedly declared the release and success of the single La Balsa (The Raft) by the group Los Gatos in 1967 as the beginning of rock nacional. Litto Nebia, front person of this band, is one member of the elite network, whose additional prominent names include Luis Alberto Spinetta, Charly Garca, Nito Mestre, David Lebn, Leon Gieco, as well as other members of the bands some of these musicians led (Almendra, Pescado Rabioso, Sui Generis, Seru Giran, Pappos Blues), and members of bands such as Manal, Vox Dei, and Arco Iris. The first album by Spinettas band, Almendra, is often credited as the constitutive work of rock nacional. The album was twice voted, in critics and musicians polls conducted by the daily newspapers Clarn in 1985 and Pgina /12 in 1992, as the best album in the history of Argentine rock. As Pujol (2002: 269) expresses it:
Everything seemed to be there in place: the sonic world of the [19]60s, with its diverse replicates, diverse styles, synthesized in thirty minutes. In this sense, it might be said that the influence of the Beatles on Almendra was less about direct musical affiliation than about the idea of the integral disc or album, like Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band.
In Israel, the network consisted of singer Arik Einstein and musicians like Shalom Hanoch, Shmulik Kraus and Shem-Tov Levy who collaborated with him intensively at this formative stage. The elite also included the band Kaveret as well as Ariel Zilber, Matti Caspi and others. Foremost among the
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albums made by members of this network are Sof Onat ha-Tapuzim (End of the Orange Season, 1976), the only album by the band Tamuz, formed by Hanoch and Zilber, and Shablool (1970), by Arik Einstein and Hanoch again. As Yaakov Gilaad, a critic writing retrospectively in the mid-1980s, put it:
In a period when Israeli music sounds like a merger of a poor mans San Remo festival and the Eurovision, Shablool lands like a thunder on a clear day. A real boom. The most important and best album recorded until this day in the new Israeli music Rocknroll in Hebrew. Here, at this point exactly, Israeli rock is born. (Hadashot, 5 December 1986)
It should be stressed that these valorizations are retrospective. At their actual time of appearance, the seminal albums of ethno-national rock enjoyed, at best, modest success in the market and received fairly small attention from some curious reviewers. In the 1970s, pop-rock had just started its struggle for legitimacy and recognition within national culture. As Diaz (2005) points out for Argentina, in what amounted to a typical mode of constituting a position or sub-field (in the field of national culture), pop-rocks producers of meaning portrayed it as an invigoration of national culture, as the local implementation of new and exciting developments in world art and culture. In addition, national pop-rock culture was coupled to actual oppositional politics. Thus in Argentina rock came to be associated implicitly and on some memorable occasions explicitly (see Vila, 1987) with opposition to dictatorship and the military regime of 197683, while in Israel a certain association emerged between rock and opposition to the Occupation of Palestine (Regev and Seroussi, 2004: 658). The accomplishment of ethno-national pop-rock during this phase was to establish itself as a legitimate, although still minority, position in the field of national culture, next to existing positions. The valorizations quoted above, written when pop-rock had already gained prominence and even dominance in national musical cultures, mythologize this phase as a moment of rupture, canonize the pioneering status and avant-garde aura of the albums, and express the sense of achievement shared by pop-rock musicians and critics in this later period.
Consolidation and Rise to Dominance

This is the phase during which pop-rock music rose to dominance in both national contexts. The 1980s witnessed the rockization of almost the entire field of popular music. The historical context for this phase in Argentina was the demise of the military regime and the return to democracy. In Israel this phase coincided with the transition to liberal economic policy ushered in by the right-wing Likud party. Alabarces (1993) refers in this regard to an explosion in the amount and public impact of rock produced in Argentina in the early 1980s, and Regev and Seroussi (2004) write about the coming of rock during
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this period in Israel. Put differently, in this phase ethno-national culture saw the indigenization of pop-rock music, its Argentinization and Israelization. Various phenomena came together to produce this effect. Most salient is the general adoption of electrification, amplification and sophisticated studio production the rock aesthetic as the standard creative practice in the field of popular music. While this adoption can be attributed to the growing embeddedness of local cultural industries in the network of multinational corporations (Getino, 1995; Regev, 1997; Wallis and Malm, 1984; Ydice, 1999), and to organizational isomorphism in the music industry (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983), the dynamics of the cultural field in this regard cannot be underestimated. Given that rock musicians have been those who moulded and codified the modes for using electric instruments, amplification and studio production techniques as expressive and creative tools, adoption of these practices, even by musicians who were not rock musicians in a strict sense, signaled an acceptance of rock as the realm of innovation for large parts of the field of popular music. It reflected an acknowledgment by actors that rock was the position where new sonic patterns and expressive options in electric instruments and studio technology are explored and formulated, involving a set of aesthetic possibilities that could later usefully be adopted by other positions in the field. Pop-rock musicians and instrumentalists who had already gained proficiency and reputation during the early phases of the adoption of pop-rock practices became by the 1980s the national hoard of experts from which musicians or studio producers were recruited for making state of the art popular music. More specific phenomena that took place within this general trend consisted of collaborations and mergers of pop-rock with traditional genres. In a move that broadened some tendencies that already existed in earlier works, pop-rock musicians started to record, in rock arrangements, songs from the local folk and traditional popular canon, in order to create original music in the same vein, and to team up with prominent musicians from those genres. The two-way stylistic exchange that emerged blurred at some points the differences between pop-rock and other genres. Notable examples in Argentina include Mercedes Sosa, a national icon of folklore, who shared the stage in 1982 with Charly Garca, Leon Gieco and other founders, and then moved on to record songs by these and other pop-rock authors such as Fito Pez and Alejandro Lerner. Gieco himself expanded earlier inclinations, and together with former Arco Iris leader Gustavo Santaolalla, toured the country with a mobile studio. The original and traditional music which they recorded with local musicians resulted in the highly valorized four-disc project De Ushuaia a La Quiaca (1985). Finally, Juan Carlos Baglietto, in his first solo album (1982), which became the first rock nacional album to receive gold certification from the local industry, performed pop-rock music using a vocal form of delivery, and arrangements that owed much to the traditional atmosphere of tango. In Israel, the first thing to mention is the success of leading rock artists in establishing themselves as inheritors of, rather than rebels against, the folk tradition of shirey eretz yisrael.3 This was achieved primarily through the series of
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albums Good Old Eretz Yisrael, in which Arik Einstein recorded classic songs from this folk repertoire in soft rock arrangements. The composers and arrangers who collaborated with him on the project, Shem-Tov Levy and Yoni Rechter, emerged in this as well as other projects as the rock-inspired heirs of canonic eretz yisrael composers such as Sasha Argov, Mordechai Zeira and David Zehavi. From a different angle, the growing presence and legitimacy of the genre known as musica mizrahit (oriental music),4 although ideologically antagonistic to rock, nevertheless introduced an ethnic form of pop-rock, best expressed in the work of singers Zohar Argov and Haim Moshe. In a similar vein, Yehuda Poliker left his hard rock band Benzin to become one of the countrys most successful and beloved musicians, with his formula of Greek and other Mediterranean inspired pop-rock music. Ehud Banai, mentioned earlier, also emerged with a successful career and a sonic idiom that fuses rock with Middle Eastern and Asian influences. A further important phenomenon in this context is the transformation of traditional vocal pop into so-called soft rock or adult-oriented rock. Here, the niche of sentimental ballads has been conquered by singer songwriters such as Alejandro Lerner in Argentina and Rami Kleinstein in Israel, whose inspiration comes from the likes of Elton John, for example. Most saliently, this niche came to be associated with female singers, sometimes characterized as glamorous pop divas, whose grandiose sonic idiom is set within pop-rock parameters of instrumentation and production (synthesizers, electric guitars, and so on). The obvious names to mention here are the Israeli singer Rita, and the Argentine Sandra Mihanovich. More than any other style, this phenomenon reflects the rockization of pop and indeed, the expansion of rock to become pop-rock. Finally, this phase in the on-going historical event witnessed a new generation of pop-rock musicians whose careers either took off following collaborations with the founders (Yehudith Ravitz in Israel, Fito Pez in Argentina), or who were influenced by new frontiers of stylistic innovation most notably post-punk and new wave (the bands Soda Stereo and Virus in Argentina, and Mashina in Israel). Given the already legitimized position of the founders, the entry of these newcomers into the framework of what counts as national music, was smoother and faster than was hitherto possible, and met with positive reviews that stressed how they allowed local culture to keep pace with broader artistic innovations. This type of acceptance was facilitated by a discourse, developed in music magazines, newspaper supplements, and radio and television shows that flourished at this point, which were written and edited by critics and journalists whose professionalism was totally based on the pop-rock habitus. This discourse mythologized the founders of national rock, and presented the expansion of pop-rock as a natural, conflict-free linear evolution. While this discourse, as Alabarces (1993: 88) notes, neutralizes the oppositional character rock initially had, and therefore de-ideologizes the ideological, and de-politicizes the political, it nevertheless depicts the position reached by poprock during the 1980s: that of dominance and centrality in these national fields of popular music.
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Diversification and Internationalization

The most recent phase of national pop-rock, during the 1990s and into the next century, consisted not only of stylistic diversification in accordance with trends in global pop-rock, but also of the development of indigenous patterns, decoupled from such trends. In addition, local musicians made forays into the global field with occasional success, thus bringing pride into the national field about the latters perceived artistic quality. This phase also witnessed the appearance of written or televised histories of national pop-rock, and the institution of prizes and awards by the industry, the media and the state to honour the work of pop-rock musicians. Diversification along the lines of global trends is best exemplified by the introduction of national hip-hop (Illya Kuryaki & Los Valderramas, and Sindicato Argentino del Hip Hop in Argentina, Shabak Samech and Hadag Nahash in Israel) and local electro-dance or electro-pop (house, techno, etc.). More significant, however, were the indigenous stylistic developments that indicated self-confidence on the part of national pop-rock musicians about their ability to create their own innovations, decoupled from Anglo-American trends a development that to some extent rendered US and UK pop-rock less relevant for national pop-rock cultures (Frith, 2004). In Argentina this point became most explicit with the appearance of the trend known as rock chabn, best exemplified by bands such as Los Piojos and La Renga (Semn and Vila, 2002; Semn et al., 2004). The critique by older rockers of this styles artistic quality and the form of nationalism it expressed (Marchi, 2005) exposed rock chabn as a rupture in the perceived smoothness and linearity of rock evolution. In Israel, the phenomenon to mention is the fusion between the up until then conflicting musical cultures of musica mizrahit and rock. The fusion of these forms is exemplified by Tea-Packs and other bands that surfaced from the southern town of Sderot, deploying an ethnic sound that owed as much to existing Israeli and dominant Anglo-American pop-rock as to musica mizrahit. The sound of Sderot thus defied existing categories, and was hailed by critics as a quintessential, indigenous Israeli idiom of pop-rock (Saada-Ophir, 2006). Another aspect of this phase consisted of the growing embeddedness of national fields in the global field, through the relatively successful forays of certain local artists into global markets. With these, national pop-rock critics and musicians celebrated a sense of achievement. Such successes served as apparent proof of the artistic quality reached by national pop-rock musicians, and their abilities to match or even surpass dominant Anglo-American pop-rock standards. In the case of Israel, there was the worldwide success of the Israeli-made electronic style of goa-trance music, with duos such as Astral Projection and Infected Mushroom becoming globally recognized names in this scene. The worldwide success of female singers Ofra Haza and Noa contributed to Israels presence in the world music context, while intensive touring of the band Rockfour in the USA, as well as the collaboration of Israeli star Aviv Geffen with Steven Wilson (leader of UK progressive rock band Porcupine Tree) under the name Blackfield, brought respect to Israeli music in some alternative rock scenes in the USA and Europe.
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In the case of Argentina, internationalization meant primarily that local musicians and bands became prominent and influential names in the Spanish speaking pop-rock scene of Latin America, Spain and the USA, also known as rock en espaol. During the 1990s, Argentinean bands such as Soda Stereo, Los Fabulosos Cadillacs and Los Enanitos Verdes as well as rock auteur Fito Pez, became leading names of this scene across the continent, enjoying both market and critical success. The successful cross-Atlantic career of Andrs Calamaro made him a prominent pop-rock artist in Spain as much as in his native Argentina. Additional contributions to the sense of international achievement came, for example, from the high profile of Gustavo Santaolalla as musical producer of leading names of Latin pop-rock and other genres, and from the warm critical reception in American and British rock publications offered to albums by singer-songwriter Juana Molina. Finally, the historical musical event of pop-rock culminated by the turn of the century in both countries with the publication and broadcasting of histories of national pop-rock in Argentina (Bitar, 1993) and in the television series Sof Onat ha-Tapuzin in Israel; and the launching of encyclopedic websites of national pop-rock (www.rock.com.ar for Argentina; www.mooma.com for Israel). In addition, local honours patterned after the US Grammy awards and the UK Mercury prize have been instituted in both countries, both operating as annual events of appraisal for current musicians, and also honouring veteran musicians with special lifetime achievement awards (the Gardel prize in Argentina, the ACUM and TAMUZ awards in Israel). These discursive products, media events and ceremonies have further institutionalized the mythologized narrative of pop-rock in both countries, and have become annual rituals for celebrating the sense of long history, wealth of repertoire, variety of styles and artistic achievement of national pop-rock.
Pop-Rock and the Transformation of Musical Nationalism

Following the historical musical event of its emergence, legitimation and institutionalization, pop-rock music came to be prominent in many countries, and certainly in Argentina and Israel, as a corpus of cultural products set within a discourse of appraisal. It remains to be seen what this presence means at the level of practice vis-a-vis the performance of musical nationalism (Turino, 2003). Traditionally, musical nationalism has attached cultural uniqueness in music to styles associated with rural life, or early modern urban genres, and has institutionalized specific genres as national folk and popular music. In the case of Israel, an iconic relation has been established between nationhood and the folk genre of shirey eretz yisrael; in Argentina such a relation was established between nationhood and certain types of Andean and other indigenous music styles from various parts of the country, as well as the urban genre of tango. The constitutive power of music for nationalism, however, goes deeper than the mechanical attachment of a given genre, style or repertoire of works to a
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specific national community. With music, membership in a national community becomes an experience of the body. This is because music, in ways unlike any other form of art, moves the body. It does so either internally, by vibrating inner organs and arousing emotions, or externally, by prompting actual movements of the head, hands, feet or the whole body, with dancing being the paradigmatic example (DeNora, 2003; Shepherd and Wicke, 1997). Frith refers in this regard to the way music makes people feel intensely present (1996: 144), and Bourdieu asserts that musical experiences are rooted in the most primitive bodily experience. There are no tastes except perhaps in food more deeply rooted in the body than musical tastes. (1993b: 104) Performance of music, understood as both listening and creation (Hennion, 2001), thus connects the cultural connotations of the music in question to a pattern of bodily experience. With musical nationalism, membership in the nation is calibrated to specific genres and styles, and through them to specific forms of corporeality, of feeling intensely present. Following the historical musical event of pop-rock, musical nationalism has been transformed. Nationhood has been re-calibrated to the electric, electronic and amplified aesthetic of pop-rock sonic idioms. National pop-rock has become a prevalent expression of cultural uniqueness, for some sectors of national societies, if not for the nation at large. This is evident, for example, from the following review of a concert where the Argentine band Bersuit Vergarabat hosted on stage the rock performer Andrs Calamaro:
In the same decade that Bersuit erected itself as ideologist of the National Being, Andrs Calamaro has been added, on the strength of a thousand and one songs, to the holy trinity of Argentine rock soloists (Luis Alberto Spinetta, Charly Garca and Fito Pez). For this, Bersuit and Calamaro are already synonyms of Argentina, or rather, of Argentine-ness. (La Nacion, 22 November 2004)
In Israel, pop-rock ballads came to dominate various national and state ceremonies. Thus the commemoration rally for Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, held exactly one week after his assassination, was a music-only event, with most of the participants being pop-rock singers who performed various Israeli poprock ballads (Vinitzky-Seroussi, 1998). Also notable is the current dominance of pop-rock ballads in radio play-lists on Memorial Day, a national day of mourning, and their presence in school ceremonies marking that day and other national events (Lomsky-Feder, 2003). The sonic textures of pop-rock, and therefore the forms of corporeality they evoke, are obviously dissimilar to those associated with earlier folk and popular music. Given the inter-mingling of stylistic influences, national poprock of one country also shares much aesthetic common ground with pop-rock elsewhere in the world. National pop-rock thus increases the proximity between musical nationalisms, and is a forceful embodiment of the complex connectivity (Tomlinson, 1999) between the forms of cultural uniqueness of different nations. The specificity of the corporeality, and the sense of intensive presence, associated with one ethno-national entity, come to include elements
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that are present in the specificity of other entities as well. We may think of crowds in concerts by Charly Garca (in Argentina) and Shalom Hanoch (in Israel) that move together to the sound of songs that evoke locally particular life trajectories, generational memories and a specific mode of being Argentinean or Israeli during the last decades of the 20th century. The body movements of these crowds, their mode of feeling intensely present as members of their respective national communities, have much aesthetic common ground to them. The proximity of their aesthetic experience is greater than the one between, for example, listeners to folk dances such as queca (in Argentina) or hora (in Israel). It is this proximity and this complex connectivity that ultimately characterizes aesthetic cosmopolitanism and sets it apart from earlier conditions of ethno-national cultural uniqueness.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I want to evoke the hypothetical example of a recently discovered island society proposed by Meyer et al. (1997) in their model of world society. In their account, following its discovery, the hypothetical island society will soon develop political institutions, school curricula, health care systems, public administration, financial management and other forms of scientifically grounded rationalized instrumental culture that will make this society similar in many aspects to other nation-states around the world, regardless of its particular heritage. The authors, however, hardly say anything about the expressive culture of this hypothetical island society, about how its cultural uniqueness will or will not persist. But if the example of this hypothetical island society is extended to expressive culture, then we may just as well predict that island musicians will soon develop their own ethnic pop-rock music. Traditional music will be hybridized with pop-rock styles, indigenous instruments will be plugged into amplifiers, and modes of vocal delivery will be adjusted to the use of microphones and amplification. In addition, electric guitars and synthesizers will be incorporated as standard instruments, and multi-channel recording studios will be built and used by musicians to explore and create newly found sonic textures. In doing so, the musicians will record albums of their indigenized poprock music while absorbing influences from Anglo-American pop-rock traditions. All of this will be done because musicians and audiences will feel that their own locally authentic variants of rock, hip-hop or electro-dance qualify their ethno-national music to equal actor-hood in expressive world culture. In short, ethno-national pop-rock music, as a major incarnation of aesthetic cosmopolitanism, stands as an exemplary case of isomorphic processes in world culture, in which ethno-national cultural uniqueness and diversity are re-orchestrated into greater proximity.
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Acknowledgement
Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the IASPM-LA conference, Buenos Aires, August 2005, and at the conference on The Local, The Regional and The Global in the Emergence fo Popular Music Cultures, Copenhagen, October 2005.
Notes
1 2 All translations from sources in Spanish or Hebrew are by the author. In general, I rely for Israel on music magazines (Lahiton, Musica), music supplements or sections in leading newspapers (Yedioth Aharonot, Maariv, Haaretz, Hadashot, Ha-Yir, Kol-Hayir), and websites (especially www.mooma.com). For Argentina, I rely on websites (especially rock.com.ar), and on the abundance of trade books that in fact summarize the discourse originally published in magazines and newspapers (Abalos, 1995, 2004; Aguirre et al., 2005; Bitar, 1993; Gonzales, 1997; Grinberg, 1993; Guerrero, 1994; Kreimer, 1970; Lunardelli, 2002; Marchi, 2005; Polimeni, 2001; Ramos and Lejbowicz, 1991). Existing scholarly work is also extensively consulted. For Israel, Eliram (2006); Regev (1992, 1996); Regev & Seroussi (2004). For Argentina: Alabarces (1993); Beltrn Fuentes (1989); Carnicer (2000); Carnicer and Diaz (2000); Diaz (2005); Madorey (2005); Pujol (2002); Semn and Vila (2002); Semn et al. (2004); Vila (1987); and Waisman and Restiffo (2005). Shirey eretz yisrael (literally the songs of the land of Israel) is the conventional label for the repertoire of songs, mostly pastoral ballads, with lyrics praising the countrys nature and history, which function in Israels public culture as representations of Jewish native-ness and patriotism. Musica mizrahit is a genre that mixes pop-rock instrumentation and influences with East Mediterranean, North African and Middle Eastern traditions (see chapters 9 and 10 in Regev and Seroussi, 2004).
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Motti Regev
Motti Regev is Associate Professor of Sociology at The Open University of Israel. His major interest is in popular music studies. He is the author of Popular Music and National Culture in Israel (2004, co-authored with Edwin Seroussi), Rock: Music and Culture (1994, in Hebrew) and d and Guitar: The Musical Culture of the Arabs in Israel (1993, in Hebrew), as well as articles on the sociology of popular music. He edited (with Jason Toynbee) a special issue of Popular Music (25/1, 2006) on canonization. Address: Department of Sociology, Political Science and Communication, The Open University of Israel, 108 Ravutski st., P.O. Box 808, Raanana 43107, Israel. E-mail: mottire@openu.ac.il

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