I like the post Luka.
But isn't it also a bit of a two way street? Like the rhythm of life is affected by culture too? The rhythm of life wherever you go in the world is more similar now than it's every been before, because of certain processes of globalisation that manifest themselves locally, the decline of manufacturing/manual jobs, rise of precarious labour, gentrification, migration etc. Not to mention even more concrete stuff like the fact that whereever you go in the world the way people walk and talk has been altered by the fact that everyone has a smartphone up in their face all the fucking time.
I mean, obviously this homogenisation takes place at different rates among different social classes/races/etc. The hipster being the prime example of the post-geographical class - you meet the exact same people in Old Street or Williamsburg or Hongdae in Seoul or Aoyama in Tokyo. But then black facebook and instragram memes are the same in both the US and the UK, and black youth pretty much everywhere around the world listen to American hip hop.
There are still local scenes and local phenomena of course. One of the things I really loved about Jackin was how bounded it was by geography, like the 8 or so times I've been up to 02:31 in Birmingham to rave, they've guaranteed played You Want Me by Nick Hannam and Tom Zanetti and the crowd has guaranteed sung every word of it. I've never heard a DJ play it in London ever. But then, going back to Brum more recently, they've also played Tchami - Promises every time, again, the crowd going ham for it and someone telling me it was one of the 02:31 anthems now.. But that's also an anthem in the London deep tech scene, and I've met American EDM fans out in Tokyo who go on about loving 'deep house' like Tchami.
I think one of the reasons that it feels like a lot of music is inauthentic these days is because our social environments feel more inauthentic.
The line between local and authentic and internet/ inauthentic is obviously super messy. But maybe 'local' just needs to exist as a paradigm, something to aspire to, something the best music tends to have - the sense of being routed in people's lived experiences and environment. And maybe if like, something being ripped out of it's local/original environment by the internet feels like a process of de-authentication, is it also possible that global phenomena can gain an authentic meaning when incorporated into a local scene. Is Tchami's Promises any less of an authentic 02:31/ deep tech banger for the fact that it was made by a French EDM producer?