I stuck the article in the scanner so it could get a wider read. This article is, of course, copyright Songlines and Paul Morrison. I'm only putting it here in the interests of fairness. I would encourage people to go out and buy their own copy (Issue 22 Jan/Feb 2004). There's a nice review of Dr Faustus' debut CD!

Bete Noire

Folk music as 'world music'

Cuba's got son, Spain flamenco, Pakistan qawwali and Senegal mbalax. South Africa's townships bring the world the beautiful a capella voices, India the hypnotic strains of the sitar, and Argentina the thrill of tango. And what do we contribute to the genre known - controversially - as world music? Lanky-haired women and hairy-chinned blokes with fingers in their ears singing about 19th century shipwrecks. Why, with all the scintillating sounds emanating from these isles, do we choose the turgid and anachronistic sounds of traditional folk to represent us on the global stage?

"But folk is our roots music!" come the protests. "Rubbish," comes my response. The pages of Songlines, the airwaves of Radio 3 and the stages of WOMAD present us with hip-hop from Cuba, ska-punk from Venezuela and R&B from Uzbekistan. If we were to be really purist about this, and allow only unadulterated music from each nation to be classed as world music, we'd be left with the Library of Congress recordings and ban all electrical instruments. No more Manu Chao. No more Khaled. No more Sting (whoops, shot myself in the foot with that one).

This is the 21st century, where the whole pleasure of world music is the cultural garam masala that has produced exciting new sounds, albeit with reference to the past. With the wealth of new music flooding over our borders, there's simply no need to include our home-grown folkies who for some reason have been elevated to a status in world music scenes that bears no logic - Eliza Carthy (pictured) has no more justification for inclusion than Ms Dynamite. The hard truth, and one that it's about time we owned up to, is that when we talk about 'world music', what we really mean is 'rest of the world music'. Music performed by foreigners in strange tongues and creating stranger sounds. It's the opposite of popular music, as we know it.

It's a peculiarly Western perspective, but that's the whole point. In Mali and Mumbai they may consider Radiohead and Eminem as world musicians - in fact, Rokia Traore chose to play tracks by the Rolling Stones and Stevie Wonder in her recent guest slot on Charlie Gillett's radio show, rather than the likes of Kate Rusby. So let's be honest about our parochial viewpoint, and please, please let's stop pushing British folk into spotlight - it's simply not relevant, and not good enough, and diverting attention from far more interesting artists. Paul Morrison