World Music

[porcy62]

I am listening to 'A New Hot One' of David Krakauer. Whow, I forgot I had this cd.

I realized I have a lot of so-called 'world music' (not a great definition, all the music coming from the world, a part Sun Ra). I remember how great and exciting was discovering Nusrath Fateh Ali Khan and Ali Farka Toure twentyfive years ago. (I know, I know Coltrane and friends discovered WM twenty years before me).

I think I bought almost all the Real World cds, and from World Circuit, Label Blue, ecc.

Maybe it depends on my love for travelling, I still have somewhere the cassettes I bought in Burma, India, Morocco... (my tape deck passed away years ago).

Anyway I think this forum lacks an appreciation thread about it.

Edited May 26, 2005 by porcy62

[White Lightning]

A previous thread

[porcy62]

Well, you have to admit that 'Near & Middle Eastern World Music Thread' was hard to imagine in a forum's search!

I will move my post in your thread!

Edited May 26, 2005 by porcy62

[White Lightning]

Nuh, I'd keep it here. Two threads are better than one

[A Lark Ascending]

Though I can see the reasoning behind 'World Music' as a label in the 80s it's a bit patronising now. We are talking about the music of most of the world, after all.

I was trying to find a flamenco record a few weeks back and it was a nightmare in the shops. Most had 'World Music' arranged alphabetically under artist. Browsing for flamenco was impossible unless you looked under compilations where some sort of geographic organisation existed.

It gets worse in some shops when you have 'Folk and World' sections.

[JohnS]

Nothing against world music, I just wish that jazz mags/festivals didn't give so much space to it these days.

[Dr. Rat]

Though I can see the reasoning behind 'World Music' as a label in the 80s it's a bit patronising now. We are talking about the music of most of the world, after all.

I was trying to find a flamenco record a few weeks back and it was a nightmare in the shops. Most had 'World Music' arranged alphabetically under artist. Browsing for flamenco was impossible unless you looked under compilations where some sort of geographic organisation existed.

It gets worse in some shops when you have 'Folk and World' sections.

←

Well, World Music is not a generic category. It's just a marketing category predicated on the idea that a Westerner interested in, say, flamenco, might also be interested in North African music or Cuban music or the music of the arabian peninsula.

It implied no real similarity between the music thrown into that category, just that people looking for Gipsy Kings were way more likely to be interested in Outback or Cachao or the music of Reunion than was someone buying the Spice Girls.

Having a flamenco section having any rights to the appelation is just not a viable option in record stores here. There's just not enough market for it. So you get a big "World Music" section generally subdivided into geographic (Oceana) and generic (salsa) subcategories. And usually very badly sorted.

I don't think it's patronizing at all--it's just a response to the realities of the market.

--eric

[A Lark Ascending]

I don't think it's patronizing at all--it's just a response to the realities of the market.--eric

←

Perhaps a reflection of the patronising nature of the European/North American market!

I do understand what you're saying. Having a 'flamenco' section with one CD in it would be equally annoying!

And not all record stores blanket categorise it. You can find big record stores in places like London where there are much more specific categories.

[Dr. Rat]

I don't think it's patronizing at all--it's just a response to the realities of the market.--eric

←

Perhaps a reflection of the patronising nature of the European/North American market!

I do understand what you're saying. Having a 'flamenco' section with one CD in it would be equally annoying!

And not all record stores blanket categorise it. You can find big record stores in places like London where there are much more specific categories.

←

I'd compare it to going into a record store in India and finding a section of American Music in which was thrown hip-hop, jazz, Hank Williams, Bob Dylan, Talking Heads, Los Lobos . . . etc., etc. Practically nothing in common in the music except country of origin.

I don't think I'd be insulted or even particualrly puzzled. It's just a hueristic device to help you find records. While the category might seem kind of arbitrary and neglectful of American music's increadible diversity of style, attitude, social origin blah blah blah, I don't think record store categorization systems need to reflect all these things. They just need to get you to some good music, and there you'll get all the details.

--eric

[Brandon Burke]

Perhaps a reflection of the patronising nature of the European/North American market!

Agreed. The "world music" tag has got to go. Its justfication as a marketing tool doesn't mean you have to use it.

Does this mean we should also talk about 4x4s in terms of their being "trail rated"? I mean what the hell is that...? Same goes for Sprint claiming to be the only/first wireless company "built from the ground up." That doesn't even mean anything, and yet it's the anchor of their ad campaign. The whole thing makes me nauseous...

"let the products sell themselves

fuck advertising and commercial psychology

psychological methods to sell should be destroyed"

-- the Minutemen

[Brandon Burke]

...and this is to say nothing for the fact that the term world music, for a while anyway, meant people "discovered" by Peter Gabriel.

[Dr. Rat]

Perhaps a reflection of the patronising nature of the European/North American market!

Agreed. The "world music" tag has got to go. Its justfication as a marketing tool doesn't mean you have to use it.

Does this mean we should also talk about 4x4s in terms of their being "trail rated"? I mean what the hell is that...? Same goes for Sprint claiming to be the only/first wireless company "built from the ground up." That doesn't even mean anything, and yet it's the anchor of their ad campaign. The whole thing makes me nauseous...

"let the products sell themselves

fuck advertising and commercial psychology

psychological methods to sell should be destroyed"

-- the Minutemen

←

Ummmmm, there's a difference between a "marketing category" which means a way of grouping people or things on an essentially ad hoc basis as a guide to marketers (whose job is ideally to help people find what they want and to help manufacturers and service providers find their customers), and a "marketing pitch."

The sort of mass-market fictions you're throwing out as examples really have very little to do with what we're talking about. Show me the successful advertizing campaign that touts an artist as "world music." Show me the disatisfied customers who bought it expecting something of a rather more planetary nature than the national or local music they actually bought.

Every single category you can possibly think of fails to reflect the particularity of the things in it. That's not a scandal: that's the purpose of categories. This particular category has no bearing on the music itself, it was created to help a certain niche market of Western customers find the records they wanted.

A category like "Brazilian music" (Os Mutantes? Villa-Lobos? death metal?) is every bit as stupid vis-a-vis the music it refers to as "World Music" is.

And if "World Music" is objectionable, how about "music?"

Personally I think retail ventors should be forced to sell cds alongside of power drills and hair dryers and bulk split peas. Just so none of us gets the idea that the word "music" actually means anything!

--eric

[Dr. Rat]

...and this is to say nothing for the fact that the term world music, for a while anyway, meant people "discovered" by Peter Gabriel.

←

Well, as somebody who was actually doing a world music radio show at the time Gabriel started putting stuff out on RealWorld, I have to say I don't recall "people" believing any such thing, though I can remember lots of people saying that "people" did.

My interpretation was that this is what certain people wanted "people" to have believed.

--eric

edited to clarify, I hope

Edited May 26, 2005 by Dr. Rat

[A Lark Ascending]

I think my point was merely that in the 80s when the term was first coined there was a limited following for music beyond western pop/rock; jazz; blues; classical etc. So an umbrella term made sense.

Now perhaps your average record store still shifts limited amounts beyond those categories. But interest in 'World Music' has increased greatly - lots of festivals, documentaries, radio programmes etc over here.

It just seems a very, very broad category. I'm just surprised it's still being marketed as such, even by its champions, as if the audience for kora playing, Finnish tangos and Carnatic music are necessarily going to be one and the same.

[Brandon Burke]

The sort of mass-market fictions you're throwing out as examples really have very little to do with what we're talking about. Show me the successful advertizing campaign that touts an artist as "world music." Show me the disatisfied customers who bought it expecting something of a rather more planetary nature than the national or local music they actually bought.

You're right, of course. I was basically thinking out loud there with little regard for staying on topic. Apologies.

As for the Gabriel thing, you might want to try thinking about it in terms of retail. Being someone who was already familiar with these issues at the time the RealWorld thing started is quite different than being one of the many people I saw walk into our record shop asking for world music when, nine times out of ten, they wanted something only slightly less Anglo than "Your Eyes".

Either way, point taken...

-- B

[Dr. Rat]

I think my point was merely that in the 80s when the term was first coined there was a limited following for music beyond western pop/rock; jazz; blues; classical etc. So an umbrella term made sense.

Now perhaps your average record store still shifts limited amounts beyond those categories. But interest in 'World Music' has increased greatly - lots of festivals, documentaries, radio programmes etc over here.

It just seems a very, very broad category. I'm just surprised it's still being marketed as such, even by its champions, as if the audience for kora playing, Finnish tangos and Carnatic music are necessarily going to be one and the same.

←

It is odd from a musical standpoint, certainly. There used to be a "world music" label here in the states called Xenophile, which I think got to the point.

There are people aout there who really like the new, the unusual . . . they like learning about other people and other customs in the world and music is one of the main means of their doing this.

So music festivals with Finnish musicans and Mandingo musicians on the same bill actually work for this kind of folk.

From a marketers standpoint, someone who buys a JPP cd is probably 100x more likely to like Sunny Ade than your average music customer, even though the musics sound nothing alike. So the broad category continues to make some sense.

--eric

[clifford_thornton]

OK, the moniker is kind of boring but what can you do? "Ethnic" music sounds a bit worse, actually.

I think this thread was started to, um, discuss what people like.

So, for my two cents, I really enjoy Carnatic vocal music of South India (Pandit Pran Nath, Ramnad Krishnan, etc), as well as South Indian flute music. Pannalal Ghosh plays some of the heaviest Indian flute music I've heard - sounds like a low alto or a bass flute... pretty amazing stuff, and apparently his premature death has brought him much Dolphy-esque renown in South Indian music circles.

Got some good Turkish street music, more saz than you can shake a stick at.

CT

[Jazzmoose]

Just call it "Music we don't have proper lables for" and throw it into that weird back room with the jazz and classical. That way the normals don't get frightened...

[porcy62]

As someone pointed out 'this thread was started to discuss what people like', but I will add my opinion about 'world music'.

I think that, before cd's era in the so called 'Western World' all non classical/jazz/rock music consisted of Bob Marley and national folk music. Bob Marley was more or less assimilated to rock music, like folk oriented groups like Pentangle. 'National folk music' is a term that indicate a national market for national music, so I would include italian singers from Napoli and irish traditional music, country and western, french chansonniers, ecc. Before start to arguing consider this: in a country different social/etnic groups express different culture (music) and create a market for this music, like old 'race records'. All non 'western' music was also a market for immigrants, mostly cassettes. Countries like France and Uk who has big and strong communities of immigrants developed strongest markets for music. The development of relationships between different ethnic groups, and the affirmation of etnic groups in term of social acceptance, economic situation, ecc pushed the market of this music. If you consider that a lot of 'world music' is traditionally music for dancing you can see how white teen agers started to appreciate african music at the discos.

Peter Gabriel, Ry Cooder and others enlarged the market for this music. Do we have to blame them? Did they stolen the music from blacks, to follow the accuses of Davis and other black jazz musicians toward white jazz musicians? My answear is no. On the contrary I think they provided new opportunities for musicians who live outside the 'civilized word', and gave us the opportunity to discover new music, otherwise hardly accessible. Don't forget that we hadn't Internet at that time, and if you wouldn't have a pakistan community in your country and a some sort of relationship with it, probably you wouldn't have discovered Nusrath Fateh Ali Kahn.

There were also few people that have a specific interest for this music, I remember that trading hard to find records and cassettes of Fela Kuti it was a sort of 'secret society'. Consider that a part cities like Paris, NY, London and few others, it was almost impossible to find this music some years ago.

'World music' will remain a niche market, like jazz or classical music. During the Real World explosion people bought 'world music' because it was the new thing, because it was exotic, because they were curious, for a lot of different reasons. Now we have a market for 'experts'. It's nothing different from jazz or classical, people started with Mozart or Brubeck and ended with Schoenberg and Brotzmann.

Now we have specialized shops with more specific shelves, from Kora to Finnic tango, nothing different from specialized shops of jazz and classical music. In most common shops they file M. Buble with O. Coleman, B. Spears with J. Hendrix, if I wish to buy some particular music I go in a specific shop, what's the problem?

The term 'world music' is obviously innacurate, but it makes sense.

Could you provide an accurate definition of 'jazz' who include every aspects of the music, from stride piano to Wheater Report, from Lambert, Hendricks and Ross to John Zorn, a part 'jazz is what we (or a particular group of people) call jazz'?

Categories make sense in a communication process, from general to particular.

Anyway if I would start a new thread for every different music I listen to, this would be the Porcy's forum

P.S. English is not my language, as you have noted, so consider 'cum grano salis', the above terms like 'ethnic','black', ecc..

Edited May 27, 2005 by porcy62

[7/4]

OK, the moniker is kind of boring but what can you do? "Ethnic" music sounds a bit worse, actually.

I think this thread was started to, um, discuss what people like.

So, for my two cents, I really enjoy Carnatic vocal music of South India (Pandit Pran Nath, Ramnad Krishnan, etc), as well as South Indian flute music. Pannalal Ghosh plays some of the heaviest Indian flute music I've heard - sounds like a low alto or a bass flute... pretty amazing stuff, and apparently his premature death has brought him much Dolphy-esque renown in South Indian music circles.

Got some good Turkish street music, more saz than you can shake a stick at.

CT

←

dude...Pandit Pran Nath was born in Lahore, North India, now Pakistan.

Pandit Pran Nath's first appearance in the West in 1970 essentially introduced the vocal tradition of Hindustani classical music to the U.S.

[7/4]

Tabla Trang thread

[7/4]

I've been a fan of Hariprasad Charuasia, the Hindustani bansuri flute player. He's amazing. The recordings on Nimbus are where I got my start.

Hindustani (slide) guitarist Debashish Bhattacharya is pretty amazing. I heard him at Joe's Pub last Summer.

more later...

[clifford_thornton]

dude...Pandit Pran Nath was born in Lahore, North India, now Pakistan.

Whoops, my fault... he got 'lumped'!

[7/4]

dude...Pandit Pran Nath was born in Lahore, North India, now Pakistan.

Whoops, my fault... he got 'lumped'!

←

These things happen sometimes!

[7/4]

So, for my two cents, I really enjoy Carnatic vocal music of South India (Pandit Pran Nath, Ramnad Krishnan, etc), as well as South Indian flute music. Pannalal Ghosh plays some of the heaviest Indian flute music I've heard - sounds like a low alto or a bass flute... pretty amazing stuff, and apparently his premature death has brought him much Dolphy-esque renown in South Indian music circles.

←

Pannalal Ghosh was born in Barisal, now in Bangla Desh. And he died in New Delhi.

He was praised for his adaptation and rendering on the bansuri of the khayal-ang- gayaki (the classical vocal style), particularly influenced by the great master of the Kirana gharana, Ustad Abdul Karim Khan.

Kirana gharana? I thought his name rang a bell. That's the same tradition as Pandit Pran Nath.

Hm...New Delhi is in Northern India, he's got to be a Hindustani musican too.

Here, it says:

Strange but true, he had not found his real guru, Ustad Allauddin Khan, till he was 36.

Ustad Allauddin Khan was Ali Akbar Khans father, Ravi Shankars ex-father in law.

Hariprasad Chaurasia studied with his daughter, Annapurna Khan. And of course, Ravi Shankar is Norah Jones father.

Edited May 27, 2005 by 7/4