Eastern Music Supervisors Conference

In a recent issue of Popular Music devoted to the music of the Middle East, Martin Stokes and Ruth Davis note that ‘the movement of Middle Eastern sounds into Western cultural spaces … has largely been ignored’ (1996, p. 255) and that ‘Middle Eastern popular musics will probably continue to mark an unassimilable and unwelcome “otherness” for most Europeans and Americans’ (ibid, p. 257). In this paper, written partly in response to these remarks, I examine the movement of contemporary Middle Eastern sounds into Greek cultural space and Greek musical culture, a musical culture that has an affinity with ‘Eastern’ musics but also a strong sense of its own identity. Middle Eastern music can indeed take on the form of an ‘unwelcome “otherness”’ in Greece and I shall provide examples of this from my own fieldwork on the Greek island of Crete. Greece and the Greek islands are outposts, on the European periphery, on the frontier between ‘the East’ and ‘the West’, where a history of confrontations, invasions and forced exchanges in political, economic and demographic terms with the Middle East has ensued for millenia. Greece and Turkey still remain in dispute over territory from the Thracian borderlands to the smaller islands of the Eastern Aegean Sea.

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The Effects of Ethnically Congruent Music on Eye Movements and Food Choice—A Cross-Cultural Comparison between Danish and Chinese Consumers

Foods ◽

10.3390/foods9081109 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 9 (8) ◽

pp. 1109

Author(s):

Danni Peng-Li ◽

Raymond C. K. Chan ◽

Derek V. Byrne ◽

Qian Janice Wang

Keyword(s):

Visual Attention ◽

Food Choice ◽

Cultural Context ◽

Mixed Model ◽

Linear Mixed Model ◽

Semantic Networks ◽

Field Studies ◽

Western Music ◽

Chi Square ◽

Eastern Music

Musical fit refers to the congruence between music and attributes of a food or product in context, which can prime consumer behavior through semantic networks in memory. The vast majority of research on this topic dealing with musical fit in a cultural context has thus far been limited to monocultural groups in field studies, where uncontrolled confounds can potentially influence the study outcome. To overcome these limitations, and in order to explore the effects of ethnically congruent music on visual attention and food choice across cultures, the present study recruited 199 participants from China (n = 98) and Denmark (n = 101) for an in-laboratory food choice paradigm with eye-tracking data collection. For each culture group, the study used a between-subject design with half of the participants listening to only instrumental “Eastern” music and the other half only listening to instrumental “Western” music, while both groups engaged in a food choice task involving “Eastern” and “Western” food. Chi-square tests revealed a clear ethnic congruency effect between music and food choice across culture, whereby Eastern (vs. Western) food was chosen more during the Eastern music condition, and Western (vs. Eastern) food was chosen more in the Western music condition. Furthermore, results from a generalized linear mixed model suggested that Chinese participants fixated more on Western (vs. Eastern) food when Western music was played, whereas Danish participants fixated more on Eastern (vs. Western) food when Eastern music was played. Interestingly, no such priming effects were found when participants listened to music from their own culture, suggesting that music-evoked visual attention may be culturally dependent. Collectively, our findings demonstrate that ambient music can have a significant impact on consumers’ explicit and implicit behaviors, while at the same time highlighting the importance of culture-specific sensory marketing applications in the global food industry.

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Schwarz, Gerard, (born 19 Aug. 1947), conductor; Music Director: Seattle Symphony Orchestra, 1985–2011, now Conductor Laureate; Eastern Music Festival, since 2008; The All-Star Orchestra, since 2013

10.1093/ww/9780199540884.013.u34077 ◽

2007 ◽

Keyword(s):

Symphony Orchestra ◽

Music Festival ◽

Eastern Music

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