"The 2010s: The Globalization of Music" goes over a list of various artists and groups, along with their songs. For example, BTS and their album "Love Yourself", and the "girl group" Blackpink. The beginning of the podcast goes over the influence of language in their songs. Additionally, people in the United States requested that radio stations start playing some BTS songs, specifically people from a fan group called "BTS ARMY." The fan group is a global fandom, and they're a major factor of the extreme popularity of the boy band. The podcast then shifts from South Korean music to Latin American artists, like Rihanna and J Balvin. It goes over the contemporary "erasure of genre" of music, and the blending of various kinds of music in single songs, due to the different artists that collaborate. I think that the podcasters are sort of right, in the sense of the sort of fading away of "genres" of music. I don't think that the podcasters meant that the different kinds of music, like pop, hip-hop, and rock are fading. I think they meant more-so that the different cultures of music are blending together, while still being somewhat distinct in the variety. The song "Chicken Noodle Soup" immediately backs this, showing in the first 60 seconds of the song having a massive blend of the different styles of music creation. Further, the recent massive rise of social media, such as TikTok, amplifies the popularity of these different blends of music. Social media also created a gateway to access music, with Spotify and YouTube being highly popular. The easier access to music has greatly popularized all kinds of music, from every corner of the globe.
In my opinion, the points made by the NPR podcasters are correct, in regards to the way that previously "region-locked" music has been pretty much globalized. Anyone, anywhere can listen to any artist from any nation. From Korea, to Colombia, to Nigeria, music has become a massive part of the "global culture." Towards the end of the podcast, they start briefly discussing the topic of "appropriation vs appreciation" and how some artists perform certain actions that are generally seen as negative, as they hadn't collaborated with any of the artists of the culture that they were displaying in their music.
The article "Globalization is Over" discusses the ways in which the recent globalization of the world, whether positive or negative, has begun to die down, and a new "Global Culture War" has started. The author discusses the recent years of globalization and how it sort of brought the world closer together, with democracy becoming the most prominent of government. After the brief discussion on globalization, the article then shifts to a sort of oppositional topic; how nations are more devoted to their own cultural values and how they're striving to protect them from globalization. The differences of two separate regions, the west and the east, are disputing what way is "right." China, for example, believes that "westerners try to impose their values on everybody else." The article then discusses how these differences often lead to conflicts between the opposing sides, citing the Cold War as the most prominent example of such.
In all, it really is a mixed bag; both sides of the argument are technically right. Globalization is starting to die down and is sort of reverting to the ways of independent nations protecting their values. On the other side, though, globalization really is at an all-time high, I think. With the extremely connecting invention of the internet, the world has become closer than ever.
Finally, Chapter 59 of "The Globalization Reader." The beginning of the chapter follows Malini, an employee of "Bangalore." Malini's view on globalization may be quite confounding. Malini is a supporter of globalization, which is a regular thing to some. However, Malini emphasizes that she is content with the fading away or blending of her culture with others, along with the society connected. The later parts of the chapter follows more workers of IT in India, and how their work sort of shapes the way one thinks. Bharathi, a technical writer, explains that working in IT doesn't really give the same experience as a doctor, for example. By this, she means that IT workers don't really encounter and interact with many people from various backgrounds, quoting "...from an IT field, my interaction with people is very limited." Bharathi's ideas directly counteract the more popularized opinion that IT work makes people more open-minded, instead making views more narrowed. Later in the chapter, the author talks about Shubha, another software worker. Shubha thinks in the complete opposite way of Bharathi, believing that it indeed does open one's mind to more opportunities. Shubha temporarily moved to the United States, "assimilating the norms" to herself. The move to the U.S. would certainly have given her an interesting view of the "American" ways of life, opening her to those ideas.
With my very little knowledge about IT, paired with the information of this chapter, I think that working in software may bring one a more open view, rather than shaping to a more narrow one. I think that one would almost certainly encounter people from all kinds of backgrounds, contrasting what Bharathi had described.