2008-11-22

Freedom and Music Quality

In the last couple of days I've posted a couple of blog posts that have given the illusion that good music can be produced in countries with extremely oppressive regimes. This summer I posted about decent music in a communist dictatorship.

Well, the thing is, if indeed these claims are true they're very much exceptions. Actually, it's fairly amazing how clearly freedom correlates with good music worldwide, generally. Today I came accross (via) the web site of Reporters Without Borders, and this year's edition of their famous Press Freedom Index. And I think the map and table of the freest countries is pretty startling.


Some of the freest countries in every region read like a who's who of recognised music producers and blog favourites.

In the Caribbean: Jamaica and Trinidad & Tobago.

In Africa: South Africa, Tanzania, Ghana, Mali (Ivory Coast & Angola are okay).

In Asia, though the general level is lower: Turkey, India, Cambodia, Thailand, Japan, Lebanon.

The correlation is far from perfect either way, especially in Europe and the Americas, but it's still a bit too much to be a coincidence, I think.

2 comments:

Ibrahim said...

In Africa: Don't forget Senegal :-)

Birdseed said...

Yup, that's mid-level too. But Nigeria, you'll notice, is not nearly as free, nor indeed as hot a music country as it was twenty years ago. (Film is another matter.)