Each cultural element has a unique spatial distribution, but in general, distribution is more extensive for popular culture than for folk culture. Two basic factors help explain the different spatial distribution of popular and folk cultures—the process of origin and the pattern of diffusion.

Origin

Culture originates at a hearth, which was defined in Chapter 1 as a center of innovation.

• Folk culture often has anonymous hearths, originating from anonymous sources, at unknown dates, through unidentified originators. It may also have multiple hearths, originating independently in isolated locations.

• Popular culture is typically traceable to a specific person or corporation in a particular place. It is most often a product of developed countries, especially in North America and Europe.

For example, hip hop is considered to have originated on August 11, 1973, at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue, in New York City’s Bronx Borough, during a block party with DJ Kool Herc (Figure 4-5). DJ Kool Herc, whose birth name was Clive Campbell, was born in Jamaica and moved to the Bronx with his family in 1967. Geographers understand that the hearth of hip hop was significant because the music reflected conditions prevailing in the neighborhood. These included street gangs, arson, and high crime rates as well as extensive demolition of housing and forced relocation of people to build the Cross Bronx Expressway.

Origin of Popular Culture

Hip hop is considered to have been founded in 1973 (a) by DJ Kool Herc (b) at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue, the Bronx, New York.

Popular music and other elements of popular culture, such as food and clothing, arise from a combination of advances in industrial technology and increased leisure time. Industrial technology permits the uniform reproduction of objects in large quantities (iPods, T-shirts, pizzas). Many of these objects help people enjoy leisure time, which has increased as a result of the widespread change in the labor force from predominantly agricultural work to predominantly service and manufacturing jobs.

Diffusion

Folk and popular cultures go through different processes of diffusion. Folk culture is transmitted from one location to another relatively slowly and on a small scale, primarily through relocation diffusion (migration). Popular culture typically spreads through a process of hierarchical diffusion, diffusing rapidly and extensively from hearths or nodes of innovation with the help of modern communications.

For example, the music group Sigur Rós performed first in their home country of Iceland. As their popularity increased, the group performed elsewhere in Europe, then in other regions of the world (Figure 4-6).

Diffusion of Popular Culture

Sigur Rós concert tours originated in Iceland and diffused to Europe, then to the rest of the world.

Hip hop music diffused from the Bronx to nearby Philadelphia during the 1970s and to other U.S. cities during the 1980s. The music was introduced into Western Europe and Japan and diffused back to Caribbean countries, a principal source of inspiration. In more recent decades, hip hop reached Latin America, Asia, and Africa, where local cultural styles influenced the music from the original Bronx hearth. Meanwhile, as sometimes occurs with popular culture, as the style diffuses around the world, it can become less important in its hearth. In fact, sales of hip hop music declined sharply in the United States starting in 2005. However, alternative hip hop, which also originated in the East Coast, has become more popular instead.

Distribution

Popular culture is distributed widely across many countries, with little regard for physical factors. The distribution is influenced by the ability of people to access the content. The principal obstacle to access is lack of income to purchase the material.

A combination of local physical and cultural factors influences the distinctive distributions of folk culture. For example, in a study of artistic customs in the Himalaya Mountains, geographers P. Karan and Cotton Mather revealed that distinctive views of the physical environment emerge among neighboring cultural groups that are isolated. The study area, a narrow corridor of 2,500 kilometers (1,500 miles) in the Himalaya Mountains of Bhutan, Nepal, northern India, and southern Tibet (China), contains four religious groups: Tibetan Buddhists in the north, Hindus in the south, Muslims in the west, and Southeast Asian folk religionists in the east (Figure 4-7). Despite their spatial proximity, because of limited interaction these groups produce distinctive folk customs.

Distribution of Folk Culture: Art

Distinct folk painting traditions are distributed within the Himalayas, a result of isolation of cultural groups.

Through their choices of subjects of paintings, each group reveals how its culture reflects the religions and individual views of the group’s environment:

• Buddhists. In the northern region, Buddhists paint idealized divine figures, such as monks and saints. Some of these figures are depicted as bizarre or terrifying, perhaps reflecting the inhospitable environment.

• Hindus. In the southern region, Hindus create scenes from everyday life and familiar local scenes. Their paintings sometimes portray a deity in a domestic scene and frequently represent the region’s violent and extreme climatic conditions.

• Muslims. To the west, folk art is inspired by the region’s beautiful plants and flowers. In contrast with the paintings from the Buddhist and Hindu regions, these paintings do not depict harsh climatic conditions.

• Folk religionists. People from Myanmar and elsewhere in Southeast Asia, who have migrated to the eastern region of the study area, paint symbols and designs that derive from their religion rather than from the local environment.

The distribution of artistic subjects in the Himalayas shows how folk customs are influenced by cultural institutions such as religion and by environmental processes such as climate, landforms, and vegetation. These groups display similar uniqueness in their dance, music, architecture, and crafts.

Pause & Reflect 4.1.2

What geographic factors account for the diversity of cultures in the Himalayas?