Notwithstanding all the interesting and amusing stories about marketing records contained in the article above, I would suggest that that is not the origin of the contemporary idea of a that there is some sort of"World Music"-

That would have come, in my reckoning, at least from a book called "Music of the Whole Earth" written by one David Reck, published in 1977. Reck, had listened to, played, and analyzed music from everywhere for a long time--rather than simply creating a multicultural musical encyclopedia, he sought to find and connect the underlying common elements in to a single, unified entity--

There was a lot of feeling, coming out of the sixties, that music was the universal language, and that it was somehow or other, the key to creating bridges between cultures, and world peace and such. Hence, "World Music" was a high and noble thing.

As far as the book, it is difficult to follow, owing to the fact that, rather than explaining how different kinds of music work, he uses examples drawn from those different kinds of music to explain his own concepts. If you don't know the music to start with, it is hard to use it to explain something else.

And on the idea of the universality of music, it's a nice thought, but people can be just as intolerant of musical differences as they are of every other sort of difference--