# data[].attributes.body
Roots & Beyond: Discover Routes, Meet Roots
Global Local Fest!
Global Local
Meet New Routes
Global Grooves
Global Grooves & Sounds
Exploring Grooves Fest
Roaming Routes

# data[].attributes.body
We would like to give a new name to the WM festival.
Ideally it is catchy and describes what WM is all about.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Timothy Brennan, World Music Does Not Exist, Discourse, Vol. 23, No. 1, IMPERIAL DISCLOSURES: Part II (Winter 2001), pp. 44-62

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Humans have an innate desire to create whatever they can imagine. Therefore, interaction with sound is inevitable, and people have always found music inseparable from their lives.

Well, in this article, we'll go over the complex history of world music, discuss some of the most prominent types, and outline all the notable differences between them.

Let's get started!

What Is World Music?

As the name implies, world music refers to music across all the countries of the world. It was first coined in the 1960s by an ethnomusicologist named Robert Brown at Wesleyan University in Connecticut.

It's argued among purists that there's no musical term referred to as world music. However, it seems imperative that there's a clear distinction between the different styles of music across all cultures.

History of World Music

It's believed that the term "World Music" first started as a marketing scheme. It was used in the early twentieth century to enable western companies to sell more foreign music.

Despite the commercial history, by the early 1960s, the term had contributed to a shift in the consciousness of musicians and producers. People were more aware of different kinds of music out there, and world music had become a true music genre.

In the 1980s, the term was popularized again as a marketing strategy for non-western music. It was later developed to include subgenres like and ethnic fusion.

The western world has had a massive musical heritage that evolved over the years across different countries. However, some African, near-Eastern, and Asian musical traditions had also prospered for thousands of years. Whereas China, Japan, Indonesia, and India had long-standing music traditions, only well-trained musical artists were allowed to perform.

Art music isn't recognized in the majority of the non-Western world. Instead, people depend on music as a functional part of their daily lives, in which the whole society participates.

In 1982-1983, British record companies, American promoters, distributors, and some journalists began to show interest in foreign music, especially African music, which was back then synonymous with world music.

The broad categories of world music include isolated forms of ethnic music from different geographical regions. This diverse ethnic music is generally classified according to its local roots.

In the 1990s, the introduction of world chart music, an American trade magazine called Billboard, caused the industries to recognize world music. The National Award of Recording Arts included a world music award to its nominees a year later.

Over the past centuries, when sound recording was invented, access to music among musicians and the general public gave rise to a term called "." Musicians from different cultures and locations can easily access recorded music from anywhere in the world and even visit other countries to play their own music.

The term 'World Music' was also used as the opposite of local music, referring to anything that would differ from what the local ear is used to. There are other interpretations that vary from country to country. However, the most important thing was that popular music artists from different Western countries could now aspire to a worldwide audience.

Superstars such as , Michael Jackson were taken as role models by some people around the world.

World Music in the United States and Britain

From 1983 to 1986, over 50% of the world music labels came to life in Britain. However, they had vastly lower sales, so only a few survived.

Among these labels were Peter Gabriel's records. He extensively supported the initiation of the annual festivals, in addition to the World of Arts and Music.

This festival began in 1982 and later brought about the introduction of many artists who are world music figures. Examples include Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, a Pakistani singer, and Youssou N'Dour.

Many American labels like Rykodisc, Rounder, and Shanachie, started and expanded their world music records during this time when three American rock artists, David Byrne, , , played a significant role in expanding the world music market.

Simon's award-winning Album in 1986 featured black South African musicians who assisted him in the recording and explored with him, despite the trade boycott in South Africa then. The album was quite popular back then, and it enhanced the growth of world music.

David Bryne, known as the Talking Heads, employed Latin American musicians to play on his album, and he launched the label with a series of compilations of music from Cuba, Cape Verde, Brazil, and Peru.

Ry Cooder was one of the prominent guitarists of his generation. He began his music career in the nineties in collaboration with V.M Bhatt, a famous Indian artist and a band of veteran musicians known as the Buena Vista Social Club.

Musical References on Non-Western World Music

In non-western music, harmony is not as important as the other aspects. Instead, it's either heterophonic (two or more versions of the same melody performed at the same time) or homophonic (a single melody).

In music, Dynamics are the element that determines how low or soft the sound should be played.

Dynamics are seldom used as an independent concept in non-western music. Increasing and decreasing the number of performers is done to change the loudness or quietness of the music.

Tone color, or what's rather known as timbre, refers to the quality of sound, where we use tone color to separate one instrument's sound from another.

Some cultures have developed some independent instruments despite the vocal nature of non-western music. Wind instruments, colorful percussion sounds, and unique strings are mostly used.

Non-western music, most especially African music, employs the use of creative rhythm more than western music.

Non-western music is not well structured like Western music. Non-western music relies heavily on improvisation, so the music cannot be performed the same way twice.

In essence, the composition only exists during the performance. There are no written notes of it, which is totally different from classical western music that relies strictly on written musical notes.

Examples of World Music

There are different types of world music according to the diverse cultures around the world. A few of them are explained below.

Indonesian Music

The Republic of Indonesia consists of around 13,000 islands in the Pacific Ocean, 1,000 are inhabited, and only 4,000 are named. It comprises over 300 ethnic groups with more than 250 different languages. As a result of this diversity, the society is filled with diverse Indonesian music, some of which are the Gamelan and Bali.

The Gamelan instruments pitch out sounds that are "out-of-tune" to western ears. As a result of this, this music can not be used with western notation.

African Music

Music is a significant part of the life of Africans. Virtually, almost all occasions or events are celebrated with the use of music. Most African languages are tonal (this means that the meaning of the word spoken depends on the pitch level of the word). Thus, African music follows the pitch level of the was.

African musicians mostly use polyrhythms that are the combination of several rhythmic patterns and improvisation. They have developed this to a higher level than the western musical modes.

Mexican Music

Music was an essential part of Aztec and Mayan social life on the Mexican peninsula. That was, of course, before the Spanish conquest in 1519. As soon as the Spaniards started to settle in the peninsula, European musical instruments quickly began to merge with the local musical traditions.

The most significant result of this influential contribution is the Mexican Mariachi. It's a singing and dancing tradition in which singers employ the use of treble and bass guitars, violins, trumpets, and, sometimes, a harp. Although they originated in Europe, the sounds produced by these instruments are entirely Hispanic.

Middle-Eastern/ Near-Eastern Music

Most Near East and the Middle East countries border the Mediterranean, North Africa, and West Asia. They're dominated by Arabic, Persian, and Turkish Islamic populations.

They share popular artistic and musical traditions that date back to the 7th century. One of the most common themes of Middle Eastern music is the use of "Oud." It's basically a fretless lute with a short neck and a pear-shaped body with 10 to 13 strings.

Unlike the western Pupa, the Oud is played as a monophonic instrument, usually accompanied by a colorful, rhythmic Darabukka (also known as "Darbuka" or "Doumbek") that is a small drum played by exerting small finger pressure on the drum head.

Indian Music

The Indian musical tradition dates back to about 3000 years. Indian classical music is improvised using complex systems of rhythm and melody called ragas (melody patterns) and takes (rhythm patterns) to control the players' choice of complex tones, decoration, and rhythm.

Indian artists inject a lot of spirituality in their music; each raga is associated with a specific emotion, such as tranquillity, heroism, or love.

Indian music circulates orally from the guru to the students, and the students learn by strictly imitating the teacher rather than learning from the written tradition. Only the important elements of the music are noted; most notations aren't included and must be memorized through years of in-depth research.

The most important musical instrument in India is the sitar. It's a lute with moveable frets, a wide fingerboard, and a long neck.

In the sixties, famous bands such as The Beatles searched for enlightenment through Indian masters, and the sitar was quickly popularized in the West. The most famous Indian master/Sitar is Ravi Shankar.

He became a popular foreign figure in the West when he performed in Woodstock in 1969. The sitar can be accompanied by an instrument called Tabla.

Chinese Music

Traditional Chinese music originated from discovering the bone flute in the Neolithic Age, which can be traced back to 7,000 - 8,000 years ago.

In the Xia, Shang, and Zhou periods, only the dignitaries and royal members of the dynasty could enjoy music, which was made using the sounds of bells. In the Tang Dynasty, singing and dancing entered the mainstream and passed from the court to the common people.

With the introduction of foreign religions such as Buddhism and Islam, Chinese music has absorbed exotic flavors and religious melodies. Chinese people have enjoyed it all at the fairs held in religious temples.

During the Ming (1300 - the 1600s) and Qing (1600 - the 1900s), two generations of Chinese opera developed, and the famous Peking opera became one of the three major aspects of Chinese culture (tied with traditional Chinese medicine and traditional Chinese painting).

There are two prominent Chinese instruments. The first is the Zheng (a fairly large instrument with 21 to 26 strings on the bridge) and Erhu (a bowed instrument with two strings on the bridge).

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
What Is World Music? Origin, Types, Artists & Examples

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Humans have an innate desire to create whatever they can imagine. Therefore, interaction with sound is inevitable, and people have always found music inseparable from their lives. Well, in this article, we'll go over the complex history of world music, discuss some of the most prominent types, and outline all the notable differences between them.

# data[].attributes.body
- international
- showcase
- future
- talent
- space
- stage
- ethno space
- traditional
- contemporary

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
ife's a mashup these days, isn't it? Not just online but in the real world too. From arts to science, from finance to food, from work to play, we live in a time of fantastic fusion, with ideas taken from anywhere and influences found everywhere. Nowhere is this more prevalent than among the magpies of the music world, with artists on a ceaseless search for new frontiers to explore and sounds to steal. Which is as it should be, given their role on the cutting edge of culture. The most intoxicating musicians are those who are the most open, with the confidence to test their own ideas to create something new.

Few symbolise this better than Spoek Mathambo. If you haven't come across his astonishing gothic take on Joy Division's Control, head straight to YouTube now. Then listen to his new album, Father Creeper. It is one of the most original I've heard in years, throwing everything from gritty electro to glam rock to highlife guitars into the blender. Sometimes retro, sometimes reaching into the future, sometimes even a bit baffling, but always exhilarating and of the moment.

Such a rich stew is unsurprising. Spoek grew up in South Africa. His wife is Swedish. His mum sang in a church choir, his dad listened to jazz and his sisters liked Bob Marley and Shabba Ranks while he preferred American rap. In recent years, Spoek has toured the world, working with some of the coolest dance producers. His music is released on Sub Pop, home to grunge. Little wonder it reflects so many people and places, all given his unique and often-dark township techno twist.

So is this world music? Of course not. Nor is the fine new album by Nneka, whose righteous soul music is so much more genuine and uplifting than all those old-school wannabes whose CDs sell by the million. Nneka lives in Berlin and sings in English - but she hails from Warri, Nigeria, so gets categorised as a world music performer and thus finds it that much harder to get on playlists, get gigs and get attention. Just like the rapper Baloji, whose highly original album was my pick of last year but gets pigeonholed for coming from Kinshasa via Belgium.

It is 25 years since the concept of world music was created by enthusiasts in a north London pub. Perhaps it made sense then, as a marketing device to promote the sounds of the world that were lost in record shops and on the radio. But not now. Not in this mixed-up, messy and shrunken world. It feels like an outdated and increasingly offensive term.

For a start, it implies cultural superiority. Artists from America and Europe tend not to get stuck in the world section, just those that don't speak English or come from "exotic" parts of the world. They can be consigned safely to the world music ghetto, ignored by the mainstream and drooled over by those who approach music as an offshoot of anthropology.

Of course, even Fela Kuti made music that owed as much to America as to his native Nigeria. But how does this label make any sense now, when you have western bands such as Tuneyards relying on African grooves while artists such as D'Banj and Buraka Som Sistema destroy the concept with each track they release? Or when you hear samples from all over the world in clubs?

Or indeed, when a very British singer and a bassist from one of America's biggest rock bands join forces with Fela's drummer and singers from Mali and Ghana, as on Damon Albarn's latest project Rocketjuice and the Moon? This band emerged from Africa Express, an organisation I helped to found seven years ago to break down the ghetto walls. Among those joining Albarn, Flea and Tony Allen on the album is M.anifest, a Ghanaian rapper who lives in Minnesota and often performs with M3nsa, a fellow countryman who lives in north London, with a British teacher as their DJ.

Should this be filed under world music?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The term 'world music' is outdated and offensive

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
ife's a mashup these days, isn't it? Not just online but in the real world too. From arts to science, from finance to food, from work to play, we live in a time of fantastic fusion, with ideas taken from anywhere and influences found everywhere.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Producer/musician Endeguena Mulu shares this brilliant artist statement on why the term 'world music' (and its ugly cousin 'ethnic music') should be banned from our vocabulary. There are a few things that I hold dear and believe in when it comes to my music. First, I don't like to give a strict definition about Ethiopiyawi electronic, because it is in its very beginnings and I don't want to put it in a box. Keep in mind my definition might not be the definition of my fellow Ethiopiyawi electronic musicians. And yes, it is Ethiopiyawi electronic and not just Ethiopiyawi by itself. Ethiopiyawi means Ethiopian in Amharic.
It is a genre that uses modern technology to make music that is deeply rooted in the music from all over Ethiopia. It does not see traditional musicians as some exotic brand. It's not 'world music'. And it tries to break the cycle of tribal fetishism and ethnocentrism. It is not just people from the western world who do this. People from my country do this. People from my continent do this. It is patronising and condescending to try to label artists in such a manner.

Traditional music is not a thing of the past; it is very much alive. Contemporary artists are still performing. Some are performing it as it used to be performed, keeping the things that have been passed down to them intact. Others are trying to innovate. Both are pushing culture and tradition forward. At the end of the day all music is traditional: new traditions, old traditions, non-changing, ever changing.

I am sure we can all find better ways to label and categorise musicians from all over the world, other than putting them in 'catch-all' labels like 'world music'.

The term 'world music' has no place - and never had a place - in the world in which we live.

When a washint player from the highlands of Ethiopia is playing his instrument, he is like any other musician from any other background. He is making sounds that are arranged and played to express what he feels or what he sees around him. And sometimes you might not even see this washint player playing for an audience. He might be playing for himself and the trees and animals around him.

The term 'world music' has no place - and never had a place - in the world in which we live. It might have been created with the best of intentions but it is not a representative and universal term. It segregates music.

Terms such as 'ethnic music' are even worse. Just think about the etymology of that combination of words: ethnic music. It tells you all you need to know about what's wrong with the term 'world music' and all its friends and the - probably subconscious - mentality behind it.

It's born from the untrue, unsaid, unexpressed thought that everything that comes from the west is the pinnacle of everything; that it is the one thing that is happening in the world that is worth taking the time to enjoy; the only way forward; the only way to the future.

Not only are these labels confusing, they are offensive and unnecessary.

Again if it were only in the West and by Westerners this view were held, it wouldn't bother me much. But thanks to education and entertainment all over the world being heavily westernised, it is people - who are owners of the cultures that are being diminished - who also hold these views, looking down on their own 'third world' culture and praising above all the 'first and second worlds'.

Not only are these labels confusing, they are offensive and unnecessary, and they do more harm than good. They perpetuate the idea that music that influences everything else around it should be treated with respect and all seriousness. On the other hand the music that comes from the other places, from the 'colonised places' can all be put in one category, one basket, because it is something you play at a dinner party to impress your very important guests. It then becomes music from the 'land of the slaves', the 'help', the 'dangerous ethnic tribal mysterious lands out there somewhere', 'lands that we don't know about and that we fear and wonder about', 'the only adventurers dare to go to'... that's the ill feeling that these terms give me.

If one wants to label a piece of music, how about labelling it as it should be (if it even needs to be labelled at all) and not put all that music in one basket in order to sell it and make it more understandable or exotic or exciting for 'this and that' audience. Each piece of music is unique and has its own characteristic; by using these 'catch-all' labels they are robbing themselves from actually discovering and enjoying the music organically and in a true beautiful and pure way.

When you can do that, more or less free from all the things that have been installed in your head - all the forged stereotypes, all the untrue definitions and perceptions clouding the space between us and that energy, between humans trying to connect to each other ourselves and to all that's around - that's when you will be able to share and to experience what has been shared with you. At least that's what I have always believed and what I have always tried to achieve in all that I do. It's not about where you are from, or what you have been listening to all your life, or what you have been told to listen to by someone else, it's about what is being said to you, about that message, that feeling, that purpose, that lesson that has been tailor made for you in this life. Open your ears, your eyes, your hearts.

One culture can't influence everyone else's. Cultures have to feed off each other. That's how they grow.

The beauty of this century is that you can do so much with so little equipment. Of course the lack of finances and infrastructure does not make things easier but they are easier than they were 10 years ago. That's the power of music technology; you can do a lot with very little.

What's on the ground is lacking. Understanding needs to grow in order for things to grow. People everywhere have to be able to have their music reach everywhere it can possibly reach. Just like most music from elsewhere reaches Algiers, Luanda, Cape Town, and Addis Ababa. Young people and old people have to be able to play in this big field we call the globalised world. If the world is going to be better, it can't just be a one-way road. One culture can't influence everyone else's. Cultures have to feed off each other. That's how they grow, by learning and understanding each other, not by one or a chosen few telling all the rest it's the best one and everything else is wrong or just there to spice things up. Love and understanding: that's the only way things are going to change for the better.
Keep your ears peeled for TRUE Africa's upcoming series of mixes by Ethiopian Records and friends.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Why the term 'world music' should be banned | TRUE Africa

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Producer/musician Endeguena Mulu shares this brilliant artist statement on why the term 'world music' (and its ugly cousin 'ethnic music') should be banned from our vocabulary. There are a few things that I hold dear and believe in when it comes to my music.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
sk most musicians what genre they play and you'll likely get a prickly response. As one well-known, and slightly tipsy, jazz musician once told me: "If you all stopped obsessing about me playing 'jazz', maybe I would be playing festival stages rather than tiny clubs by now." But while there have been meandering debates about jazz during its long history, another genre has become far more contentious in recent years: world music.

Dreamed up in a London pub in 1987 by DJs, record producers and music writers, it was conceived as a marketing term for the greater visibility of newly popularised African bands, following the success of Paul Simon's Johannesburg-recorded Graceland the year before. "It was all geared to record shops. That was the only thing we were thinking about," DJ Charlie Gillett, one of the pub-goers, told the Guardian in 2004. The group raised £3,500 from 11 independent labels to begin marketing "world music"to record stores. "It was the most cost-effective thing you could imagine," said record producer Joe Boyd. "£3,500 and you get a whole genre - and a whole section of record stores today."

Founders of the term provided vague justifications for lumping together anything that wasn't deemed to be from a European or American tradition - "looking at what artists do rather than what they sound like", as editor of fRoots magazine Ian Anderson said. The World of Music, Arts and Dance Festival, AKA Womad, which was founded seven years before the term gained prominence, similarly used it as a catch-all for its roster of international artists. "There were no other festivals like ours at the time," artistic programmer Paula Henderson says. "We weren't pop or rock, so we were happy to advertise it as world when we began."

But the term soon faced opposition. Talking Heads frontman David Byrne founded the label Luaka Bop, which has released artists who might be placed in the "world" category, including William Onyeabor and Susana Baca. In 1999, he wrote a scathing op-ed in the New York Times called I Hate World Music in which he argued that listening to music from other cultures, "letting it in", allows for it to change our world view and to reduce what was once exotic into part of ourselves. World music meant the opposite: a distancing between "us" and "them": "It's a none too subtle way of reasserting the hegemony of western pop culture," Byrne wrote. "It ghettoises most of the world's music. A bold and audacious move, White Man!"

The current president of Luaka Bop, Yale Evelev says: "We always considered it a pop music label. When people said we were a 'world music' label, we wanted to crawl into a hole. Instead of signifying a certain emotional honesty, it is a marketing rubric." A rubric that is seemingly none too successful, either. The world category falls at the bottom of year-end streaming and sales figures lists, accounting for 0.8% of album sales in the US and 1.6% of total streams in 2018.

So why has the term persisted? Strut Records manager Quinton Scott, who releases a range of artists, including soul singer Patrice Rushen, spiritual-jazz icon Sun Ra and Seun Kuti, son of Afrobeat pioneer Fela, says: "As labels we need to guide buyers to the right place to find the music as quickly as possible, especially in the chaotic digital marketplace. For that reason, a general term or genre still does work as an in-point for music buyers."

Yet as a general term, he admits, "it does feel dated". "Musicians have successfully cross-pollinated styles much more in recent years, to complicate matters further, so it could be changed to something that sounds more contemporary. But I don't think there can ever be a catch-all phrase that avoids overgeneralisation." As Womad's Henderson puts it: "If the consumer wants to class it as world music, as long as they buy the ticket or the music, that's fine by me."

Other industry heads are less equivocal. "It's the antithesis of art," says Pete Buckenham, founder of the independent label On the Corner. "At its best, it's bad culture, dialled-down and made safe for a generic, mostly western consumer as imagined by a marketing department. At worst, the term is out-and-out racist." For Buckenham, "world" must be abolished and the industry should lead the way. "When the term is so flawed and ideologically problematic there is no alternative."

The musicians who have found themselves in the world record bins largely agree. Indian jazz drummer and producer Sarathy Korwar finds the term lazy. "It only helps reinforce the narrative that other people's music is less evolved and important than your own and doesn't deserve a more nuanced approach," he says. Multimillion selling Senegalese musician Youssou N'Dour believes the label has "served its purpose" and can only now be applied to collaborations that span across the globe, geographically taking in the world through their mixture of cultural traditions.

For Réunion Island musician Jérémy Labelle, the initial labelling of his amorphous electronic music as world was enticing, allowing him to broaden his appeal to a network of world music festivals and events. "But I quickly understood that this label was very dangerous, especially for music like mine that seeks to create bridges between aesthetics," he says. Congolese funk band Bantou Mentale, encountered similar issues. Their solution? Abolish all generic descriptors, since "categorisation equals discrimination".

It is a question of ethnicity as much as one of perceived authenticity and category. London-based trio Vula Viel centre their work around the west African xylophone, the gyil, which bandleader Bex Burch learned when she spent three years with the Dagaaba people in Ghana. Burch hails from Yorkshire and the other members of Vula Viel are white. "I've had world music industry people say my band does not fit the world genre because I'm not African," she says, raising the issue of cultural appropriation. "The sad fact is that musicians from African countries are still refused visas and have much less access to the music industry. So, the white 'saviour' tries to bring the black or brown musicians from a village to a studio or festival stage and profits from them. The fact I'm told I need a black member of my band to qualify is another example of tokenism and the blatant exoticising of black skin."

In 2018, Womad experienced visa denials for its acts, with at least three having to cancel appearances, yet Henderson disagrees with the 'white saviour' term. "Visas are so expensive and the Home Office can be so prohibitive when it comes to bringing artists from other countries here," she says. "Often, it's only with the help of western festival organisers that we can mitigate the denials - otherwise an act will pay £6,000 for a visa, be denied, and never see that money or a potential new audience again. We always make sure our artists are paid fairly and aren't exploited."

My first experience of "world music" went unnoticed. It was the Bollywood songs that played through our kitchen radio and that my grandma listened to religiously. It was the devotional music I heard at temple, and perhaps even the reggae records my mum put on. To me, this was simply music - to be included with the other formative records and artists of my childhood: Motown, hip-hop, jazz.

When the Guardian began its world music coverage, it was a reflection of a music industry coming to terms with a new, globalised landscape - one not only confined to the recesses of the record store. Now, with the internet at our fingertips and streaming services providing endless hours of musical discovery, the world has reached far beyond the meaning of "world music". The Guardian has therefore ceased using this tag on its articles: only a relevant genre tag such as pop and rock, dance music and metal will be used. Rest assured that we are more committed than ever to telling the stories of music around the world, be it disco divas from India, techno from Uganda, reinventions of classical Korean instrumentation, or political Turkish psych-rock.

Our world album of the month column has, meanwhile, been renamed global album of the month, which does not answer the valid complaints of the artists and record label founders who have been plagued by catch-all terms. Yet, in the glorious tyranny of endless internet-fuelled musical choice, marginalised music still needs championing and signposting in the west. The term "world music" has become toxic, so a new word for this monthly planet-spanning roundup, however reductive, is needed. As Vula Viel's Birch says: "Is 'world' helpful? Musically, no, but as a genre to champion and curate this fantastic world of music, sure."

For its latest edition, Womad is also moving on from the term, simply calling itself " the world's festival ". "We understand 'world music' is ghettoising for a lot of the artists," festival director Chris Smith says. "We're respectful of the term because it's our heritage, but we need to evolve it because the music has evolved. All that matters is championing new music for people to hear and enjoy. We don't want these artists to be held back by genre, we want to see them at Glastonbury and beyond. We're international, world, whatever you want to call it - it's just music."

Womad festival is at Charlton Park, Wiltshire, 25-28 July.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
'So flawed and problematic': why the term 'world music' is dead

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
sk most musicians what genre they play and you'll likely get a prickly response. As one well-known, and slightly tipsy, jazz musician once told me: "If you all stopped obsessing about me playing 'jazz', maybe I would be playing festival stages rather than tiny clubs by now."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Once a term that would have been used positively, is it time we rethought how we used the term world music in these modern times?
What is world music? Wikipedia defines world music as a musical category that encompasses different styles of music from around the world.

Through traditional music, quasi-traditional music, and music where more than one cultural tradition is combined, world music is a label or genre of music that reflects the masses. If you were to ask musicians what genre of music they created or played, you will most likely get an abstract response and certainly not 'world music' as their defining genre.

As the sounds of jazz continue to revolutionise the music world, a debate continues to surface surrounding jazz and music's overall long history.

The Origin of World Music

The term world music was said to have derived from the London DJ music scene in 1987. It is said that record producers and music writers developed the label as a marketing term for greater visibility of African bands.

The African music sounds and style were incorporated with the popular mainstream success of Paul Simon's music project .

After this polarising success, the genre world music created a home in many record stores internationally.

However, founders along with the music term, developed negative backlash as the genre provided vague justifications for lumping together anything other than European or American traditional sounds.

In 1999, Talking Heads frontman David Byrne (founder of Luaka Bop) announced public hatred for the genre title in a written op-ed in the New York Times . The written piece, I Hate World Music, argued that world music continues to create a distance between 'us' and 'them' and that it only separates music communities rather than bringing them together in a proper way.

He further indicates the grouping of many different culture's musical sounds can be seen as ignorant. Additionally, the marketing rubric solidified through world music has not shown to be a successful genre or tactic.

In 2018, the world music category accounted for 0.8% of album sales in the U.S.A and 1.6% of total international streams. So, how and why has the genre of music continued to be used to describe musicians and their music?

The debate of the genre has continued to be argued today. Strut Records manager, Quinton Scott believes that although the term is outdated however may be a strong use for it. Scott further explains that musicians have cross-pollinated musical styles over the years and that artists can't escape or avoid the over-generalisation of music.

Founder of the independent music label On the Corner, Pete Buckenham, would heavily disagree.

Buckenham believes that the category is the antithesis of art. He further indicates that the term is flawed and ideologically problematic.

The various musicians who have found themselves within the world music genre, show powerful agreement. Indian Jazz drummer Sarathy Korwar finds the term lazy and that it "reinforces the narrative that other people's music is less evolved and important".

Other artists such as Reunion Island musician Jeremy Labelle, embraced the label at first to appeal to a larger network of music festivals, artists, and events.

Yet, over time the musician understood the label as dangerous, especially for music and musicians that seek to create bridges between aesthetics and cultures.

As many musicians from around the globe agree with the problematic label, what is the optimal solution? Categorisation equals discrimination, many musicians seek to abolish all generic descriptors.

An Artist's Perspective

For a while, I have used the term world music to describe various musicians with many different backgrounds. I have even used the term in previous articles to define music that was not European or American.

In addition to my use of the term, some universities around the world provide world music courses as a curriculum of study, seeking to globalise music listeners to many different musical styles.

However, after personal research, reflection, and analysis of the term through music streaming sites and social media, I humbly agree with the fight against the term.

World music has been made as a category to define the music that is deemed different or exotic-sounding, but what about the education of music genres instead of generalising music's universal notion?

This category within the music industry is indeed outdated as today's music listener is capable and able to listen to the music of different regions, cultural backgrounds, etc. with a click of a button. Music listeners should be using the proper terminology of genres from different walks of life to highlight and uplift cultural genres in a positive manner.

If this category is so easy to promote, as its overall notion is to encompass different styles of music, then where is the fight and urgency for global social change? Can we as music listeners support or label a genre that simply does not reflect the current actions of various countries, climates, and places?

According to Guardian.com, musicians believe that it is a question of ethnicity as much as perceived authenticity and category. The music industry has been able to expand to new lengths through centuries of creativity and artistry.

However, the music industry needs to evolve to a new globalised landscape, not just confined to music streaming sites and record sales. As the advancement of technology and social media continue to rapidly develop, the music world has managed to adapt, meaning it's a crucial effort to adapt more updated terminology and approaches.

Want more music? How about this on the cultural delights of Serbian music?

The Sounds of Serbian Music

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Should We Stop Using The Term World Music? - Youth Time Magazine

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Once a term that would have been used positively, is it time we rethought how we used the term world music in these modern times? What is world music? Wikipedia defines world music as a musical category that encompasses different styles of music from around the world.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
B alinese gamelan sounds like magic: part rain on the roof, hammering down in relentless cascades as it does on this small, tropical Indonesian island; part sunlit shimmer, as the quavering melodies float from the synchronized mallets of as many as 50 or 100 musicians in the gamelan orchestra. Balinese gamelan sounds impossible--fragile and invigorating--and for those of us who hear it for the first time as adults, it is wildly intoxicating. In its currently most common form, the boisterous kebyar, it is produced largely on metallophones--metal gongs and xylophone-like instruments--often led by a breathy wooden flute. It is the music of one island's cultural and religious ceremonies, distinct even from its Javanese counterpart, being nearly always louder and faster than the stately court compositions of the neighboring isle. Balinese gamelan is an art firmly tied to its place of origin, but in the West these days it will most often be found listed under "world music," a category that's billed as cutting across geographic boundaries and demonstrating a new cross-fertilization among the world's cultures.

Like "jazz" or "blues," "world music" is a marketing rubric used by radio programmers and record store buyers, which has caught on with the general public. But while those older terms may be inexact--who is to say where blues leaves off and jazz or rock picks up?--at least the material in each genre shares common traits, a 12-bar structure or improvised solos, that give the category some meaning. World music is instead an odds-and-ends bin of ethnomusicologists' finds and pop stars' patchwork projects. The grouping expresses less about the music than about the marketing strategy--a strategy that as it succeeds commercially is undermining the artistic invention it claims to promote, eclipsing the truly original global collaborations that are out there.

Much of the "world music" of the guide books and record stores would better be termed "other people's music." In this file, listeners can find such disparate sounds as Balinese gamelan, Jamaica's choppy reggae rhythms, and the eerie simultaneous tones of a single Tuvan throat singer. These aren't music styles that draw inspiration from around the globe; many, in fact, grow out of ancient traditions and are connected to their homelands in ways that most American and European pop isn't. This is a point world music promoters miss entirely. "As cultural and political walls crumble," the liner notes to a Warner Bros./Reprise World Music Sampler pontificate, "the universal impact of global grooves cannot be denied." But in truth, such easy notions of globalism and universality do more to obscure than to illuminate the meaning that these traditional musics have to their musicians and their audiences.

Just as the labels "race," "rhythm and blues," and, more recently, "urban" have been used by white marketers to lump together black popular music ranging from gospel-bred soul to gangsta rap, so "world" is now used to describe everything non-Western to an American audience. It's a tag designed to attract buyers who are eager for new sounds--and are presumed to be uninterested in actually understanding them. Were we being honest, we would call this music "exotica."

An even greater part of what is being passed off as the new global fusion is simply mix-and-match. A Western musician "discovers" a non-Western talent and plugs this artist's work into a very conventional Western pop format. The unfamiliar sound adds spice, and the New Age overlay of political correctness adds marketing steam. It's as if we were somehow supporting Australian aboriginal rights by listening to Western rock that happens to have a didgeridoo echoing the usual bass line. This is music marketed as much to Western consciences as to Western ears--and it is equally unchallenging to both.

We probably have Paul Simon's Graceland to thank for it. With this 1986 album Simon hit the timing jackpot. On Graceland, he enlivened the waning appeal of his pleasant, inconsequential pop with the vocal charm of the a cappella Ladysmith Black Mambazo, a group of black South African musicians, just as international opposition to apartheid was coming to a head. In truth, the music has a freshness that lasts under repeated listenings: Simon's signature gentle melodies mesh well with the rolling harmonies of Ladysmith and the bouncy rhythms of mbaqanga, or "township jive." But the overall effect is soothing rather than revolutionary. The song structures are unchanged from the basic radio-friendly verse-chorus-verse of Western pop, the harmonies mostly predictable, the rhythms only slightly altered from the familiar. This was no fusing of essential elements from different cultures, no discovering of similarities between another music's meaning in its own context and the meaning of your own.

No, the spirit propelling Graceland onto the charts and more recently onto dozens of "best of the century" lists was more political than aesthetic, and while the cause was undeniably worthy, that did not make the art any more exciting.

Simon's success brought us a host of second-rate followers--Dr. Didg, Dave Matthews, and their ilk--who add an accordion, bodhran, or didgeridoo to their music and sell the results as morally compelling. Unlike Simon, who did open the market for Ladysmith and other groups similarly palatable to audiences raised on Western pop, his dullest (and, unfortunately, most popular) imitators offer only a new kind of parochialism.

Their music is offensive on its own terms, and also because it has eclipsed the honest collaborative work that is going on in the world--and, in fact, was being done by artists who reached beyond their borders long before the world music category existed. Dizzy Gillespie heard the rhythms of Africa distilled through the work of Cuban musicians and helped work that syncopation back into American jazz in the 1940s. Brazil's Antonio Carlos Jobim returned the favor in the 1950s, when he slid the cool tones of West Coast American jazz into the rhythms of his native samba, and came up with the bossa nova.

Ten years later, when Jamaican bands, such as the Skatalites, discovered American rhythm and blues, they incorporated the souped-up tempos and some of the instrumentation--notably the horns--into their own version of an Afro-Caribbean sound and created ska. When English punk bands heard the music Caribbean immigrants were making in their clubs in the 1970s, they brought those clipped beats back into rock, enlivening punk's original no-frills sound with a rhythmic variety still heard on rock radio today.

These artists came up with musics utterly distinctive and personal. Jobim wasn't just duplicating a sound. What entranced him was the emotional essence of what the American musicians were doing--a freedom-seizing attitude that spoke to his own condition--and that's what he incorpo-rated into his music.

Today, too, there are serious artists for whom the global influence is subtle and organic. We do live in a shrinking world, and not just because CDs of Bulgarian choirs or Arab ululations can be purchased online; today's best global fusions arise out of a more personal and intense engagement with what was once the music of elsewhere. But with the flood of so-called "world music," these musicians are in danger of being overlooked. Take Zap Mama, a Brussels-based vocal group that draws on the Bantu as well as the European heritage of its leader Marie Daulne. Before Daulne was born, her family fled its native Zaire after her Belgian father was killed in a political upheaval. She has made an unpredictable peace between the gently percolating polyrhythms and cascading harmonies of her mother's continent and the jazzy funk and playful soul of her father's world.

Even in Bali, art is reaching beyond its borders and with results far more intriguing than simplistic add-a-sound ideas about world music would have suggested. Ketut Yuliarsi is a Balinese gamelan composer who now writes, in the Western tradition, out of purely personal inspiration and not in the age-old manner of composing for religious purposes. He presents his works at the annual arts festival in Bali's capital, Denpasar, and his group Bodiswara has played in Tokyo, Singapore, and Australia. But when he tries to have his pellucid compositions performed around his home island, he is invariably asked, What ritual is it for? What festival does that tune accompany? When he cannot name a purpose, more often than not his work is refused.

The resistance he is facing is a good indicator of the musical challenge that daring collaborations provoke. It recalls the confusion that reportedly greeted the bossa nova in the 1950s. The rhythm is wrong, it's not samba, Brazilian critics said. You're right, it's not samba, Jobim answered them with the tune "Desifinado," which translates as "out of tune." But the rhythm isn't wrong; it's just what it ought to be. The song was an international hit. Its lyrics:

If you insist upon classifyingMy behavior as antimusical,I, even lying, must argueThat this is bossa nova.This is very natural.

Such art without boundaries is truly world music, whether or not the marketers get behind it. ¤

The instruments pictured are the didgeridoo (opposite page), accordion, and bodhran.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
issue: after microsoft: the open-source society

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
B alinese gamelan sounds like magic: part rain on the roof, hammering down in relentless cascades as it does on this small, tropical Indonesian island; part sunlit shimmer, as the quavering melodies float from the synchronized mallets of as many as 50 or 100 musicians in the gamelan orchestra.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
A friend once remarked to me that the term "world music" evokes an annoying Pan flute. Maybe that's why some musicians bristle at a category that embraces everything from Youssou N'Dour to klezmer: If you say you're going to a world-music concert, you've told me nothing. "It's an imperfect term," concedes Jacob Edgar, a vice-president at Putumayo World Music, the label behind those compilation CDs sold in coffee shops. "I mean, in America, you call world music anything that's not American music-but in Argentina? Anything that's not Argentinean?"

It's a marketing term, pure and simple. It did not emerge naturally but was chosen in June 1987 by about twenty music-industry professionals in a London hotel. Weary of music stores' inability to file their records, they named the genre, then distributed browser cards to shops and designated October "World Music Month." The first press release read: "You no longer have to worry about where to put those new Yemenite pop, Bulgarian choir, Zairean soukous or Gambian kora records." (And it worked: Putumayo and its ilk sold many more records.)

Then again, asks Edgar, "What is jazz? Louis Armstrong? Ornette Coleman? The point is to enable people to find your music." So, a modest proposal: Last year, when the World Music Institute teamed with Joe's Pub to showcase French-Yiddish-Gypsy music and the like, they called it GlobalFEST. Of course, "global music" has the same problem, but it doesn't evoke that Pan flute. Maybe we should put it to a global test.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A friend once remarked to me that the term "world music" evokes an annoying Pan flute. Maybe that's why some musicians bristle at a category that embraces everything from Youssou N'Dour to klezmer: If you say you're going to a world-music conce [...]

# data[].attributes.body
mind your step

# data[].attributes.body
- Mind the Gap
- Strike a Chord
- WorldMusic!

- World.Music.Fest

- World Sounds & Grooves!

- Music of the World Fesy

Add your ideas here!!

# data[].attributes.body
Examples:
- Rauw Fest
- Crossing Border Festival