Thanks Nerd, for so eloquently summing up my worldview on globalisation.

I find the attitudes in the first article to be very common amongst certain English folkies, but also find them much less prevalent amongst their Welsh, Scottish, and Irish counterparts.

Why?

Well, I don't know with any certainty of course, but I have a few ideas. One is, the attitudes expressed in the article might reflect resentment over the "Americanisation" of Anglo folk song, despite the transformation of same being part and parcel of the folk process, just as Nerd noted. Anglo American folk songs don't seem to have travelled back to England to the same extent Irish ones have to Ireland, for instance. There does seem to be genuine resistance among some English folkies to accept natural American folk influences upon English folk songs.

Then, there is what seems to be real resentment among some English people (including non-folkies) over US Anglo American culture becoming the more dominant force in the world in the post-WWII era, than than English culture had in the pre-WWII era, when Britain was still the dominant imperial/colonial force in the world.

I find it a bit ironic that some of the areas of the world mentioned in the article are much more likely to be imitating English musicians and musical influences than they are American, because their experience with colonial forces in their world were English, not American. We seem to think that everyone in the world with a TV is watching a complete diet of American junk TV. While they may get the occassional American programming, the reality is, articles like this always ignore the local programming everyone gets, which has a much stronger influence locally than the import stuff does.

I'm not arguing against the globalised "entertainment" industry at all. But the fact of the matter is, the British are exporting entertainment too. As are any economies with global clout (the Indian film industry comes to mind here, the Japanese animation industry, and of course, let us not forget the porn industries in many countries).

The true cause of American domination of the globalised entertainment industry isn't rooted in the American culture, but in the colonial language of English, which had spread throughout the world as the colonial language of power prior to the American ascendancy, which could only occur because we too spoke the colonial language.