What is world music and why do we have such a category?

World music is quite simply a genre,a genre in which defines music that is 'indegenious' and does not fit into the Anglo American genre. Shuker proposes that distribution of popular music, fashions and style  from dominant countries has lead to inferior countries forming a culture imperialism.  This therefore leads onto Anglo American music becoming the standard global template. It was then for the 'indegenious' artist that were adamant to hold onto their culture identity that the birth of world music happened. Case studies show that this theory is outdated as we live in an increasingly globalized world where music from mixed cultures are being mixed to create fussed sounds. My view of this is that world music is a hard genre to define within the music industry it doesn't have a place in any other category, for records to sell on things such as iTunes it has to be defined for buyers to be able to search for it. Categories are simply a selling mechanism in the music industry.

Is popular music a mass produced commodity or a genuine art form?

Art is a product of human creativity, so when considering what music is a genuine art form, popular music doesn't get taken into consideration, every artist and single song is each to its own. As a whole popular music is a commodity due to it's industrial intake of marketing and aim to make a profit. This is much like what Adorno would argue, that music that is produced for the popular music industry is manufactured much like machines. Some artists that within the popular music industry such as lady gaga have had huge success and gained a huge profit, yet she is original and unique with her style and music. She is popular for her originality, therefor it could be argued genuine art form comes from within the performer not the market.  Popular music can therefore be expressed as a mixture of both, popular music should be judged singly not as a whole, music that has musical value and originality deserves the tag of art, music that is created simply for value is therefore a commodity.   

How useful is a production of culture perspective in understanding the birth of Rock and Roll?

Is it reasonable to consider that rock music is gendered male

On an overlook of rock music many people would straight away gender it male, this has to come from a more in depth social structure.  Charlotte Greig mentions that for a woman to become successful she must become ‘masculine. This concept is interesting looking up female rock artists on Google provides a strong back up of this, these women are very masculine with their dress code, hair and bodily feature. But also the male rock stars play on there masculinity pursuing an almost dominant character over there audiences with the whole sex drugs rock and roll theme. It would not been seen as appropriate or sexually appealing to see or hear of a female into sex and drugs.  Pushing this aside the whole social structure starts from when you are kids and what is the norm, for example musical instruments. Many kids especially in earlier era's were brought up to play instruments, it was standard for girls to play the piano and boys to play the guitar. In that sense it was almost unheard of for females to be rock artists as there background did not compliment the genre. Now our culture is different and a lot of females play guitar and drums, but most females that play guitar use it for acoustic purposes. It is therefore comprehensible to say from the way we are brought up right to the way that  our gender is to be seen has an effect as to the way music is gendered especially rock music.