In Trotsky’s classic theory of uneven development, ‘combined development’ designates how some regions may graft characteristics of new production relations onto older formations: examples might include the information economies of Guangzhou and Lagos, integrated to early capitalist, or even older, social orders. ‘Combined development’ provides a handy metaphor for Postmodern Music / Postmodern Thought, suggesting the grafting of post-Marxist ‘postmodern theory’ onto a musicological field that never substantively encountered Marxism, instead embracing ideologies that had already repudiated it.