What is “World Music”?
I think “world music” is the simple term used for music made in countries other than England and North America. This makes it easier for record shops to create a section in the store for music created in other countries. This means that because there are so many countries which produce their own music, it would be impractical to make a section in the shop for each country. However, by calling music from other countries “world music” it seems as though music from England and North America is not music from this world.
World music could also describe music which includes influences from the country in which it was made. For example, traditional instruments or the words being sung in the language of that country. It is sometimes easy to know which country a song was created in, which I think makes it unfair to typecast all foreign songs into a single category.
1 comment:
This post makes some reasonable assumptions about the composition of the world music category, and hints at the commercial implications of being able to group problematic types of music under an umbrella term. You should, though be careful not to jump too quickly to the assumption that music by artists from areas other than the UK and USA would be considered world music. Would you for instance consider U2 or Bryan Adams world music? And what of artists like Massive Attack (from Bristol) who have recorded with celebrated Pakistani singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan?
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