The Cultural Boycott

"When I was an early teenager, the world was a lot larger and further away. To people of my age in the monochrome post-war horizons of the small seaside town where I grew up, America seemed alluring and romantic. We were dazzled by it. Blues, jazz, American folk, the still-fresh roots of rock'n'roll, the writings of Kerouac, the language of Lord Buckley, Bob Dylan! - all these things were hip, sophisticated, attractively different, had a depth of secret culture that we wanted to find a way into."

"It's all different now, of course. America has dumbed beyond belief, and the secret cultures are our own and those of all the other local communities around the world who have undergone cultural ethnic cleansing. Your children can hardly turn on any channel of TV without having American soaps, news, adverts, cartoons and films pounding at them. You can't turn on the radio without hearing American music or local copies of it. Put on Top Of The Pops and every single song will be sung in an American accent, regardless of where the artist comes from. Go to most parts of the globe and turn on the radio and you'll hear the same thing. Walk down the streets in most places on the planet and the same American corporate advertising will lure identically dressed zombies in backwards-facing American baseball caps into American chains to eat American junk food."

"Things have to change. So this is what we're doing for the cause in little fRoots. Obviously first and foremost we will continue to promote local musics from out there, from at home and around the world, be a resistance movement to US cultural colonialism. Where American music is concerned, it's partial cultural boycott time. We will continue to cover - but not disproportionately to other parts of the world - local or regional musics: blues, Cajun, conjunto, Appalachian, musics of immigrant communities, musics made by current writers if they are rooted in those traditions or address the problem. We will no longer give space to music that has no sense of roots, place or community."

That piece drew the biggest postbag on anything we've ever published, overwhelmingly in favour, and remarkably with huge and unexpected support from American readers. It resulted in a number of soul-searching pieces in response in US publications.

After September 2001, we and our American friends in the world roots music business widely expressed the hope that the sharing of musical and cultural experiences would be a route to reconciliation and understanding in the USA. It hasn't happened. The Bush regime have continued with political, environmental and commercial policies that are terrifying the world and have squandered much of the international sympathy that resulted from the World Trade Centre incident. They have encouraged jingoism and xenophobia at home, and have pushed the door nearly shut on world musicians entering the country.

We think it's time to ferment some cultural resistance, however tiny. OF COURSE we still support small American local and regional roots musics which are just as endangered against their own evil corporate steamroller, but let's get worldwide influences in proportion!

And yes, it's possible to be anti-American without being anti-Americans.