– Timothy Brennan, “World Music Does Not Exist,” Discourse - 23.1, Winter 2001, pp. 44-62

I understand that world music describes a powerful market niche. What world music DOESNT describe is the wealth of material that is labeled it, as a genre-label its about as vague and useless as something like ‘hardcore’ — even ‘pop’ is more specific, since it at least contains ideas of popularity. Whereas “world music” can be anything from a Peter Gabriel soundtrack to Last Temptation of Christ to old archival recordings of Tuareg circumcision rituals to Israeli army songs to Gilberto Gil. Clearly it is not a genre as such.

if anything, it’s a signifier of otherness — nonWestern otherness usually, but that’s problematic as well, since most ‘world musicians’ don’t think of themselves as such.
For example , if you hear music from Morocco you might think, ‘oh, this is great world music’, or even ‘oh, this is great arabic music’, but with a bit more intimacy, you start seeing the complexity and abundance in its specificity: no world music is produced in Morocco, but there IS lots of rai, chaabi, berber, gnawa, reggada, alaoui, chaabi, andalusian, rap, classical, and a whole lot more.

but critiquing the term World Music is like shooting fish in a barrel!. if its useful to you, then that’s good enough! I’m totally fine w/ someone calling MuddUp! a world music blog — in this case, the terms vagueness works in its favor.

but i am curious: what should a Haitian compas drummer, or a traditional Thai singer, or an Iranian heavy metal guitarist, think of as ‘world music’? Should they auto-exoticize? the term world music is fittingly parochial, in the end, tending to describe the person doing the labeling rather than the music being labeled.

thnx for the links! FYI, i contributed some world music flava to Ghislain’s album. the track Exils features violin from my bandmate Abdelhak which I recorded & produced over a few sessions and sent to Ghis in exchange for his beat on my Taqasim track (Also w/ Abdel)

As written earlier I do not understand your discomfort with the label ‘world music’, and feel unfairly treated for liking it.

To my surprise you get a buck back from an unexpected corner.

What about “global ghettotech”

http://music.aol.ca/article/Ghislain-Poirier-global-ghettotech/225/

Also check out Guillaume’s reflection’s on Kuduro

http://masalacism.blogspot.com/2007/10/kuduro-one-year-later.html

Let the music play!

Jozef

Fine position. But is it helpful to get the great music that you focus on in this blog get global reach?

On my bookmarks your blog is under world. Sorry. Have a lot of fun.

Jozef

“Beyonce marks Ethiopia millennium

Pop star Beyonce has joined millennium celebrations in Ethiopia with a concert for 5,000 fans.
The concert was part of the country’s year-long celebration of its 2,000th birthday according to its ancient calendar.

The star gave a two-hour performance in Addis Ababa, singing songs from her new album, B’Day.

Beyonce told screaming fans that they had been one of the best audiences of her lifetime.

Lukewarm reception

However reaction to Beyonce’s opening act, multi-platinum-selling rapper Ludacris, was lukewarm from a crowd that tends to be loyal to music in its national language, Amharic.

“Rap music doesn’t suit Ethiopia,” said local music promoter Michael Melake.

“Ethiopians need a melody. It’s all about the black American experience, and we don’t relate to that.” he said.

In September, at the start of the year 2000, Ethiopia’s capital hosted another concert by Black Eyed Peas, but reception for the hip-hop group was also stilted.

Beyonce, who began her world tour in Moscow last week, will continue on to Romania, Turkey, India, Thailand, Indonesia and China.”