“The Whole World is Talking About Gypsies ”: Post-Fordism, Creative Industry, and World Music

The category of world music is a new genre-title created by the latest manifestation of globalization, the glocal (global-local) market in the music industry. The increase in the power of the world music market in late 1980s popularizes the Gypsy/Romani musician as an identity both in Turkey and in the Balkans. This increase is closely related to the post-fordist economic conditions, which focus on deregulation, diversity, flexibilisation due to the neoliberal changes in the relations of production in mid-1980s. Hereafter the industry of culture is updated, is regarded as a creative industry, and cultural production searches for new impulses. In this respect, Gypsies and their own cultures are one of the most interesting and available mediums for the creative industry. In this paper, the new conditions are examined with respect to the commercial Gypsy/Romani music. That is to say, the Gypsy/Romani cultural identity becomes a productive tool for embodying the new capitalist ideology. Thus, while the cultural expansions of free capital market power will make the diversity of the market indispensable, it will also reemphasize the power of the means used for the internalization of the new capitalist ideolog