(Credits: Far Out / Shervin Lainez)
Fans, critics and artists are continuously arising with questionable neologisms used to differentiate between kinds that want to be separated, whether or not that’s classic rock, hyperpop or neo-soul. Sure, there are variations between these phrases and their roots, however are they completely different sufficient to warrant a convoluted definition that makes them a separate entity altogether?
As daft as these may really feel to you, they’re in the end helpful in narrowing down the variations between genres to the finer particulars. However, a much more regressive flip of phrase that’s sadly simply as prevalent is one which paints vastly completely different kinds with the identical brush, and there’s arguably nothing extra ignorant and dismissive in style categorisation than the usage of the term ‘world music’.
Last time I checked, Liverpool wasn’t on the moon, and due to this fact by that metric, ought to The Beatles be thought-about as ‘world music’ owing to the truth that they’re from Earth? Obviously not, however what the term tends to be used for is a means of describing something that sounds vaguely overseas to an English-speaking viewers who’ve unwittingly picked up on it. To some extent, The Beatles have been proponents of ‘world music’, having helped introduce components of Indian classical music into their experimental psychedelic works.
A much more notable proponent of celebrating music from different corners of the world have been Talking Heads, who have been identified for their celebration of African rhythms of their work, citing the likes of Fela Kuti as a serious affect on Fear of Music and Remain in Light. However, frontman David Byrne has some passionate emotions about calling this, or the rest for that matter, ‘world music’, and went to nice lengths to attempt to encourage listeners to wipe it from their vocabulary.
In 1999, Byrne printed a controversially-named essay known as ‘I Hate World Music’, and whereas the singer admits he was merely being flippant as a method of grabbing consideration, the deeper function of the article was to illustrate simply how narrow-minded and redundant the term is for describing music from different cultures.
As the founding father of Luaka Bop, a report label that specialises in each reissuing and releasing new music from around the globe, Byrne very clearly doesn’t hate ‘world music’, however actually has sturdy emotions about those that unwittingly use the term. In a 2013 interview with Epiphany, he clarified precisely what he meant with this strongly-worded essay title, and argued that ‘world music’ was wrongly turning into a catch-all term for what he calls “exotic-sounding restaurant music”.
“I was kind of saying let’s get rid of that idea,” Byrne affirmed. “Let’s focus on the more positive aspects of what was happening at that time, and continues to happen. North American audiences in particular, who are in general pretty insular, aren’t very receptive to non-English language stuff, but there are a few artists from outside of that world who made some inroads and had been accepted as being artists.”
He continued by suggesting that this breaking down of limitations between cultures was a major growth, however that individuals wanted to be extra conscious of the truth that these new discoveries deserved greater than merely to be dismissed as ‘world music’: “To me, that’s major. They realise there’s certain artists in there that have made an emotional connection to them, and whose music they really like. There’s nuances, there’s artists out there, and there’s a world that’s as deep as the English language pop music world.”
He’s completely proper to recommend that the music from, say, South America, is intrinsically completely different from the music from Africa, and that even inside these continents there’s room for distinctly completely different kinds to emerge. ‘World music’ is a wholly redundant and culturally insensitive term that we’d like to eradicate from our musical vernacular, and if we begin to recognise what all of those completely different kinds we’ve begun to get pleasure from are, we’ll find yourself being extra educated and knowledgeable in regards to the world in consequence.
