"Western" culture.

[sweavo]

People keep distinguishing salsa music from "western" music, and "latin" people from "western" people. This is a puzzle to me. Germany, France, Spain and so-on are in the Eastern Hemisphere, though they are in Western Europe. Cuba is further west than New York City. All of South America is west of Europe.

Are there better terms? I know within Latin music in the US you have a distinction between Latin in general and Latin Tropical. I think "tropical" music is a great name for salsa music, as it encompasses lots of styles having the afro element, the 'indigenous' element and the crossover element with European music.

When I write about the cultural comparisons I use 'anglo' for the white, euro-centric point of view, also Northern rather than Western, since there seem to be common threads in music from California through to western Russia that can be usefully distinguished from the "tropical" musics of the lower latitudes.

Anyone got any thoughts on these terms? Is "Anglo" a loaded term?

Interested,

Steve

[AndrewS]

People keep distinguishing salsa music from "western" music, and "latin" people from "western" people. This is a puzzle to me. Germany, France, Spain and so-on are in the Eastern Hemisphere, though they are in Western Europe. Cuba is further west than New York City. All of South America is west of Europe.

Are there better terms? I know within Latin music in the US you have a distinction between Latin in general and Latin Tropical. I think "tropical" music is a great name for salsa music, as it encompasses lots of styles having the afro element, the 'indigenous' element and the crossover element with European music.

When I write about the cultural comparisons I use 'anglo' for the white, euro-centric point of view, also Northern rather than Western, since there seem to be common threads in music from California through to western Russia that can be usefully distinguished from the "tropical" musics of the lower latitudes.

Anyone got any thoughts on these terms? Is "Anglo" a loaded term?

Interested,

Steve

As the EU gets ever larger why not use "Euro" instead of "Anglo"?

[Jolinia]

I don't see "anglo" as a loaded term, but for me it's different from "Western".
When I hear "anglo", I think this person is talking about Great Britain, US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand.
When I hear "Latin" I think this person is talking about Latin America.
When I hear "Western" I think this person is talking about Western Europe, Scandinavia, US, Canada.
I'm not sure about this one, but I think the term "Western" has survived from the cold war times, "Western" being roughly everything west of the former iron curtain, that's why Germany, France, Spain etc. are considered "Western" even though they're on the Eastern Hemisphere.

[Jones, Nikka]

The terrm "western" is a linguistic relic from when the Roman Empire was divided in Eastern empire, with capital in Constantinople (modern day Istambul, Turkey) and Western Empire, with Rome as its capital. The border between this Empires havin fluctuated from Austria to Greece.
Thus, Greece, Cyprus, Croatia, Dalmatia and Turkey were considered the Near East; The lands between Palestine and India the Middle East and all territories beyond were considered the Far East, a term we today reserve only for Japan, Korea, China and such.
Since there was no known lands west of the Western Roman Empire, there were no near-west or mid-west designations.
Then the western Europeans (Italians, Spanish and Portuguese) found what today is known as America and the perception of the world changed but not all of its names.

Today, Anglo has come to denote the populations of lands that were formerly part of the British empire and where the majority of the population remained white, protestant and of AngloSaxon stock: The British Isles, USA, Upper Canada, Australia, New Zealand.

Western usually denotes the western European Industrial Capitalist Democracies as well as Canada and the US. Secondarily it also applies to all nations whose economic, cultural and political interests are hoewever losely aligned with these nations.

Latin are the inhabitants of countries formerly colonized by european powers whose population spoke Latin based -Romance- languages: France, Spain and Portugal. They include the ten spanish and portuguese republics of south America, most of central America, Mexico and the Islands of Cuba, Hispaniola and Puerto Rico, as well as the French speaking province of Quebec, Canada.

Al this terms are doomed to the linguistic graveyard in view of the massive immigration of refugees, guest workers and xenophiles moving across ever diminishing borders throughout the world.

I think the term "Western" has survived from the cold war times, "Western" being roughly everything west of the former iron curtain, that's why Germany, France, Spain etc. are considered "Western" even though they're on the Eastern Hemisphere.
Not so. France and Britain (a good chunk of it) as well as Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Iceland are technically on the western hemisphere, as defined by the Greenwich Meridian (Longitude zero). Check any map.

[Ron Obvious]

The things is that western in itself doesn't mean anything absolute. West of what?

Sure, you can define the Greenwich meridian as a border and call everything west of that Western and everything east of it Eastern, but still there is no most western point on the globe in the same sense that the North pole is the most Northern point. That's why west and east (or their Latin forms occidental/oriental) have different meanings on how they have been used previously.

[MacMoto]

BUMP

The "latin culture" thread's reminded me of this thread...