Exploration, trade, religion, migration and war influence composers and their music
Nowadays nearly every music retailer -- from the old fashioned bricks-and-mortar kind, through the online CD vendors, to the completely virtual iTunes Music Store -- has a major section called "World Music" or "International."
In recent decades, European classical music has become conspicuously global as well. Yo-Yo Ma, perhaps the most famous and charismatic classical musician of our era, is a Paris-born Chinese-American who often performs with musicians from the "Silk Road" of Central Asia. Most major orchestras have numerous Asian or Asian-American members, and any list of leading conductors would include Seiji Ozawa, born to Japanese parents in Manchuria, and Zubin Mehta, a Parsee from India.
Tan Dun epitomizes the cross-cultural musicians of the 21st century, but it took a new technology to make "The First Emperor" a truly global event; on January 13, 2007, a live performance from Lincoln Center was beamed in High Definition to listeners around the world, in 100 theaters from Norway to Japan.
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