Paper short abstract:

How are the geographical stereotypes in library music tracks created and circulated internationally, shaping perceptions of the “sonic labels” of different countries, while remaining themselves rather rigidly fixed, despite of (or because of) their international dissemination in audiovisual products?

Paper long abstract:

The catalogues of library music offer us a microcosm in their variety of categories: from "Australian" to "French", the musical imaginary of different regions is represented under headings like "Exotic" or "Ethnic". With the appearance of an endless number of sites, the production of library music has become a markedly transnational phenomenon. In keeping with the increasingly unpredictable and uncontrollable movement of cultural objects on the internet (Palumbo-Liu 1997), the possibility that the composer, catalogue manager, user and listener of the same track all belong to different countries is now stronger than ever. Thus a German youtuber might find the perfect "oriental" music for his project, courtesy of an English composer, in a wide circulation of musical stereotypes that, somewhat contradictorily, remain fixed and "congealed" themselves.

Focusing on the specific case of library music tracks associated with Lisbon and Portugal (via their titles, descriptions or keywords), I explore the ways in which library music plays a vital and unacknowledged role in shaping our sonic perceptions of different locales, from advertisement to documentaries. By organizing their tracks in neatly labeled drawers, library music sites offer a peremptory vision of which sounds should be assigned to which places. In that context, it is interesting to question to what extent those tracks are a reflection and, at the same time, a reinforcement of musical imaginaries and stereotypes present in audiovisual products (DeNora 2004; Tagg 2006), rather than compositions concerned with an accurate representation of Lisbon or Portugal's musical reality.