What is World Music?
Perhaps nowhere else in the world can you experience music from around the World as you do in America, which is why America’s view of world of music is befuddling. Particularly, the creation of the catch-all genre of “World Music”. In a music store or an online catalogue, a Metallica or a Pink Floyd would be placed in a Metal and Rock bin respective, a Madonna or a Eminem in Pop and Hiphop bin. However, Zakir Hussein from India and Kayhan Kalhor from Iran would be, confusingly, put in a World Music bin. So would Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan a qawwali and (occasionally) Bollywood singer and Rokia Traore, a Malian singer. Musicians and music from around the globe; styles and genres that are a world apart. All ghetto-ed under World Music.
99% of the world’s music can be classified as World Music. But what does World Music really mean? What are its origins? How did this term become so ubiquitous? Wikipedia has a succinct definition: World Music is a Western musical category encompassing many different styles of music from other parts of the globe. Robert E. Brown, an ethnomusicologist from Wesleyan University, coined and developed undergrad/grad programs in the World Music. This term became current as a marketing device in the 80s, introducing non-Western music to a wider audience. So to summarise: World Music is a genre defined, created, marketed by West to promote non-Western music in the West. It does seem that at no point, did it occur to them to include that “other parts of the globe” in the loop.
Even the invention of the term has problematic origins — of Ethnomusicology. As Rajan Parrikar, an eminent archiver of Hindustani classical music, puts it here: “When did you last hear the music of Beethoven studied under Ethnomusicology?”. Music originating from USA/Europe is studied as music. But music from Asia/Africa/Latin America is studied under Ethnomusic. The final words of the definition of World Music, “other parts of the globe”, hammering home the point — The West and the Rest. A way of looking at things, very 19th century, very colonial.
This binary classification of West-Rest, not a very good idea to begin with, makes no sense in Music. Take for the brilliant sitarist Ravi Shankar’s collaboration with the famous violinist Yehudi Menuhin. The collaborations titled ”West meets East”, they became very successful commercially. But what is East, what is West? Yehudi Menuhin lived in Europe — West, but was of Jewish origin — East. Ravi Shankar was of Indian origin — East, but lived in USA — West. Both the Violin and the Sitar had their origins from lutes of Ancient Persia and China, East. Or perhaps it alludes to the music genre: Western classical music which has its origins from medieval church music. Now where did the Christianity originate? ”East”, right?
The music of world — they call it World Music — is as dynamic as any Western music form. It has an history dating to millennia or more. Composition, forms of notation, scales, chords as simple as a lullaby or as complex as the much studied Western forms — in fact, more so. It has within it expressions of worldly joys, sorrows, anger, religiosity, love, lust — the whole gamut. It is as simple and superficial as a Bollywood item number or a Spice Girls number or as abstract and complex as a Raga Marwa or a Mozart composition. There are folk songs and dance numbers and revolutionary anthems. There’s blues, complex ragas, drum solos, electronic music. There’s rock, pop, hiphop, rap, international collaborations and rave music — all over the world not just the west.
Geniuses in Indian music devised new instruments, composed new scales, fused new forms of music from Persia and Arabia, created new genres, schools, gharanas. Ancient China had a department of music in 250 AD. Most modern music instruments (Western and Eastern) have their origins in Persia and China. Giant personalities have strode all over music map from ancient to modern times. Tansen, a legend, from ancient era, is reported to sung Megh Malhar causing the rains to come down. Zakir Hussein, a modern legend, has created music with almost all known musical forms in the modern world. The singularity and the universality of African, Indian, Persian, Arabic, Chinese music is patently obvious and irrefutable. Still, their CDs are dumped into the World Music bin.
But isn’t all of this overthinking?
The everyday listener might say. “I just care about the music. Not what labels the market (or historical forces) have put on it.” An audiophile might say the same “Let’s not get too carried away by this — currently fashionable — credo of political correctness.” True, all we care about is the music, it is also obvious that Zakir Hussein, filed under the genre of World Music, is Zakir Hussein, his musical force remaining undiminished. Nevertheless there are deleterious of this reductionist genre which aren’t just skin deep but damaging to the music we listen to in ways, perhaps irremedial.
The first and most obvious result of ubiquitous usage of the “World Music” genre is lack of room for the worlds artistes to coexist, there’s just one webpage on a e-commerce webpage per genre, just one bin in the music store, one top-20 list in the consumer’s frontal cortex. Jostling for those twenty spots in World Music genre, most world musicians are crowded out. Only 1–2 per region make it. A typical Westerner knows about two artistes from India — Ravi Shankar, Ali Akbar Khan. Maybe two from Africa — Toumani Diabete, Ali Farka Toure. Perhaps one from Iran. None from rest of the world. Conversely if each musical tradition in the “World Music” genre had its own genre, we would have heard of twenty or more artistes per tradition; just like we do when it comes to other genres like in Western Classical, Pop, Rock, Metal etc. A second result is that of reductionism — an entire region/culture/people’s music truncated to a stereotype. Indian music: a Sitar, a tabla. African music: a blues guitar, bongos. If music coming from the region doesn’t fit the archetype it is ignored, languishing far from the spotlight. It has a hard time breaking through the ranks.
And finally, a third result is that, unfortunately (especially in the late 20th century), a greater part of high quality music recordings were produced in rich Western nations — only they could afford the state-of-the-art equipment and only their consumers could afford to pay (more) for these high quality recordings — goes only to artistes recognised in these countries while music of artistes unknown in the western world are recorded poorly in studios of their native countries with subpar equipment and untrained sound engineers who disregard sound fidelity leading to large swathe of world-class musicians whose music are not available in high quality studio or live recordings for the music lovers in the present or for preservation in posterity. This is a cultural loss, catastrophic and unforgivable. Especially amongst audiophiles who lament the inability to find good quality recordings and vinyl pressings outside the genres of Jazz and Western Classical.
This summational attitude, directed at non-western music, is a colonial artefact. Not too long ago, most of the globe was overrun by the Western colonial powers who deemed the cultures, societies, religions, and ways of thinking of their colonial subjects as primitive, outdated, unsophisticated, child-like and exotic — fit only for museums and historical archives. Thousands of years of human experiences (arts, music, history, philosophy) trashed, put in a bin, labelled as curiosities, and considered irrelevant in this “modern” world. It was wrong then. It is outdated and wronger now. Especially in a Brave New World where the Western stranglehold over culture and economy is giving way to a — hopefully — multipolar future.
Elimination of the World Music genre might cause an explosion of genres, it might overheat our heads, cause accounting and logistical headaches for music stores and websites; but it is in point of fact for the greater good of the music we love.
