Review: World music - a white middle class fraud

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: Slag
Date: 19 Jun 06 - 02:19 PM

To put it in the BROADEST category possible, "Huh?" Oh and I like most things about the Universe too.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 19 Jun 06 - 02:08 PM

The Canadian Content regulations of the CRTC (CA Radio Television Commission- hope I have that right, I never remember abbreviations) are on a precentage basis. I think this is what Art meant; 'part of every hour' would mean truncating certain programs and/or compositions.
Of course the regulations are imperfect; certain popular Canadian stars who have made it on the 'world' stage are heard too often and others are ignored by commercial Canadian broadcasters.
The regulations support Canadian content, not just music but talky-talk as well.

The national broadcaster, CBC, has two domestic services, French and English. Primarily Quebec-based, the French service is not listened to by English-speaking Canadians, and vice-versa. Except for the aforementioned 'world' stars, Quebec performers are unknown in commercial broadcasts in English-speaking Canada, and very rarely played in the CBC English broadcasts.
There are other complications.

These comments are largely digression, but those interested in the CRTC regulations will find them here: www.crtc.gc.ca/ENG/LEGAL/Tvregs.htm

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: GUEST,Art Thieme
Date: 19 Jun 06 - 11:57 AM

There is a grand new folk centered establishment on the far south side of Chicago (103rd St.) It is called The World Folk Music Company---and their meaning, pretty much, is that they love the music of the world. Whatever. They were nice enough to name their music/concert space for me. I was blown away! What a nice thing to have happen. ------ Mostly, it's the "using" of the ethnic and fusion things by the business---and the seemingly watering down and miseducating those fusions are accomplishing. I mistrust the nature of the change taking place. It seems unnatural to me in that it's not a natural process like the folk tradition. It's cash and hype and advertising driven. It's just so easy for good music to not be heard.

Years ago Canada put the Canadian Content laws in place. Every radio station had to devote a part of ever hour to Canadian artists.

It was obvious to me that it was a tough struggle to fight the money machine that was the U.S. entertainment biz. I fully understood what they were striving to do and I applauded the efforts.

As with the U.S.A. in Iraq, it's hard to resist the onslaught.

Again, I don't know where I'm going with this. Just a few observations from this beautiful summer day here in Peru.

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: The Shambles
Date: 19 Jun 06 - 07:52 AM

I just submit.....................

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fra
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 19 Jun 06 - 06:56 AM

Then there is white middle class Freud. That can be real trouble.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: Little Hawk
Date: 19 Jun 06 - 02:36 AM

Here is a much more endemic and pernicious white middle class fraud:

One day soon you will meet your one true love. He/she will be everything you desire in another person. You will get married, have 2.5 children, a dog, a cat, a bird, two cars, and at least two large televisions with surround sound. You will buy a nice house with a white picket fence and a perfect lawn and you will live happily ever after there! Your kids will soon grow up to be incredibly successful people and they will do the same as you did, only more so.

I submit that the above white middle class fraud has caused way more trouble to most people than World Music has!

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: The Shambles
Date: 19 Jun 06 - 02:11 AM

It would seem that the whole point of this thread is moot to you, then. Which leads inevitably to the question, "Why have you posted in it so often?

In the second post to this thread you asked.

I return to my opening query: what's yer point?

The point of the first post, mine and most of the rest is discussion. Which could - if was any interest to anyone - lead inevitably to the question, - why have you posted in it so often to judge and quiz the motivation of others? The answer to your question is that the answer has no relevence to the discussion and that the number of times anyone posts - is really nobody's business but the posters.

Perhaps it is better and more interesting to discuss the subject of the discussion rather than to post only to judge each others motives for posting?

One of the Word Web definitions of the word MOOT (as in that is a moot question) - is : open to argument or debate.

As you do ask, it was proposed for discussion, argument and debate, in the first that the term World music was a white middle class fraud - I will continue to post to generally support that and to explain my reasons.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fra
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 18 Jun 06 - 08:55 PM

It's fairly clear that the term "World Music" means something different in the States from what it means in the UK. Fair enough, no reason people over there should fall in line, and vice versa.   But it's as well to be aware of that kind of thing to avoid arguing past each other.

Not that any meaning is static, since inevitably in this kind of thing you have people jumping on and off the bandwagon.

I'd assume that the term would in fact be understood in this country as including quite a range of European musics. Possibly even including some that might otherwise find themselves in a "New Age" record box in some shops. (I've always rather taken it that "New Age" means good for listening to when you're stoned, in which case that could include just about anything...)

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fra
From: BuckMulligan
Date: 18 Jun 06 - 06:15 PM

It would seem that the whole point of this thread is moot to you, then. Which leads inevitably to the question, "Why have you posted in it so often?"

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: The Shambles
Date: 18 Jun 06 - 02:26 PM

I find am a lot more interested in making many kinds of music with many kinds of people than either buying or selling any one form of it.

And I find that labels don't really help towards this end at all.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fra
From: Jeri
Date: 18 Jun 06 - 09:08 AM

Roger, if "in order to sell it." means "so I can find it to buy it," then I agree. Also, labels are handy when you're discussing music generally and you don't want to name all of the specific artists, recordings, instruments, countries of origin, whether plugged in or not, whether bands or individuals, whether it's already traditional or on its way, etc.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fra
From: GUEST
Date: 18 Jun 06 - 09:01 AM

As the film 'High Fidelity' demonstrated so charmingly!

As I've said previously in this thread, the 'world music' thing is pretty Britcentric. As is WOMAD.

Here is the US, if I walk in to Best Buy or other megastores, the world music bin is just plain bizarre, and contains a lot of New Age sorts of music, with a few ancient and random "international" CDs. Same is largely true at places like Borders and Barnes and Noble, which is where a lot of people go to buy music CDs nowadays. But sometimes Borders/B & N music sections are really good. I've always put that down to someone who works there actually knowing something about the music. And when you go into indie music stores, they usually don't carry the music at all, unless the store is a folk music store specifically. In which case you don't really need a label like 'world music' anyway.

Let's face it. Those who have had a decades long affair with music traditions from around the world used to buy their music by mail. Most of them probably still do, at least partly, because of the convenience and ease of access to such music due to the advent of globalisation and the internet. Their whining about not being able to get the music 'in the old days' (ie pre-globalisation era) had more to do with the paucity of recorded material available, and less to do with the music industry distribution system. Then, there was a phase where the problem became the distribution system. Now there isn't much of a problem with either. The world does keep changing, doesn't it?

What I've never been able to understand is why this handful of Brit music industry types and their lemming followers, keep insisting the whole world must fall into lock step with them, and use their label to describe music made by the rest of us. And if we say 'no thanks, that label doesn't work for us' then we are derisively dismissed by them and mocked as know nothings.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: Ernest
Date: 18 Jun 06 - 08:40 AM

Shambles, I don`t see why labels should restrict me from exploring different kinds of music. They are just a rough categorization what kind of music is in that bin. Doesn`t say if I like the artist or not.
Nothing - if not myself - prevents me from looking into other bins. And since it is aimed at a general public (not only real music enthusiasts like us) a bit of orientation (debatable as it can be where best to put things) is not so bad.

At home we can use/develop any system we like for keeping our cds.
Best
Ernest

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fra
From: number 6
Date: 18 Jun 06 - 07:40 AM

"But are we coming close to accepting that the main and only reason music is labelled is in order to sell it"

.. which brings to mind a quote by P.T. Barnum .. "there's a sucker born every minute"

sIx

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: The Shambles
Date: 18 Jun 06 - 07:34 AM

Just labeling "music to your taste" and "music not to your taste" won`t work. How should every record store owner know what my taste of music and is what is not?

Without these labels you may be exposed to and find more music that is to your taste and the store owner may end up selling more records.

But are we coming close to accepting that the main and only reason music is labelled is in order to sell it?

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fra
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 18 Jun 06 - 07:22 AM

Labels are good, as well as telling you where to look, they also tell you what to avoid.

eric

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: Ernest
Date: 18 Jun 06 - 06:32 AM

Shambles: I don`t see it as a big problem that people have different criteria how to label music. Usually you find out pretty quick in which bins the stuff you are looking for is.

Just labeling "music to your taste" and "music not to your taste" won`t work. How should every record store owner know what my taste of music and is what is not?

I don`t want to live in a state where this could happen.

Best
Ernest
P.S. Think I should have logged out and send this message as "Guest (Vegetable)", but I am too lazy...

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: The Shambles
Date: 18 Jun 06 - 04:57 AM

As for saying "how about just labelling it music", that's a bit like going to the greengrocer's and asking him "Can I have a vegetable, please."

The fact that it is a greengrocers (if there still are such things) has narrowed it down a little - at least having made the decision to shop there, you are unlikely to be supplied with pork chops.

The test of the labels we place on anything - be it music or people - is not the cases where it looks to be clear, but the borderline cases. The less labels and sub-divisions we have - the less borderline cases and problems there will be.

Labelling music on national lines (in stores), may appear to make sense but closer examination will show it to be very problematic. But as music is our only international language (and perhaps our only hope) - this is counter-productive and limiting something that has no limits.

Perhaps in the case of music, there is now only the need for two labels - live music or recorded music?

Or even music that is to your taste or music that is not?

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fra
From: GUEST,Ken J
Date: 18 Jun 06 - 12:39 AM

Art Thieme above -- sure, if you have a megacity and the population to support a vast record store, the old "International" sections could be delightful. The one I remember from the 1970s was the one in Sam The Record Man in Toronto, which allegedly was Toronto's largest record store.   I only made one trip to the old Rose Records, and I have pretty fond memories of that too.

But my everyday life was in a middling-sized college town, and the "International" bin there, at best, was a collection of boring-looking albums from government-approved art troupes, and schmaltzy middle-of-the -road pop sung in non-English languages. Through a few quirks I'd gotten turned on to Soukous in the early 1980s, and until the World Music marketing concept hit, it simply was not possible to find Soukous albums in my town.

And yes, the world music bins are always quite racist, that's why the Scandinaian fiddle bands get tossed in there. :)

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: Peace
Date: 17 Jun 06 - 11:30 PM

Take two aspirins and call back in the morning . . . then visit the bluegrass thread where songwriters are getting it in the neck again.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 17 Jun 06 - 11:07 PM

ijust read all this


fuck it..!!

..all us musicians with a love and enthusiam for discovering music

from nations and places all aroud the world


are imperialist exploitive racists..


and probably culture rapists as well..


fuck off inellectual academic theoretical wankers..!!!


stop making my head hurrt !!

when i wAke up tomorrow


i hope i'll forget i ever typed this..



io like farmhouse cider and tunes and rythms from all arounr the fucking planet


yohyu uptight up yer own arese intellectual arguing for the sake of it wankers !

g'night sleep tight

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: GUEST,Art Thieme
Date: 17 Jun 06 - 09:25 PM

In the early 1960s I had a day job in a record store that, back then, called itself the 'world's largest record shop'! That was Rose Records in Chicago. We sold LPs---the 12-inch discs. One entire block in length, they had one isle devoted to International Music. Every country had their own bin of records (or several bins of records). The countries were separated alphabetically. And this did seem a rather good way to do it. ---- I'm not sure what I'm getting at, but we did have a system.

Art

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: GUEST,Joe_F
Date: 17 Jun 06 - 09:04 PM

Maybe it's like the aisle in the supermarket that's labeled "International Foods"? The plain English word would be "foreign"; but in certain US subcultures, including commerce & journalism, that word is considered offensive. "International" is the usual euphemism, but perhaps that is too long for the small, mobile signs in record stores.

--- Joe Fineman    [e-mail]

||: If you jump off the train before it crashes and don't break your neck, you'll probably be bitten by a snake. :||

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fra
From: GUEST
Date: 17 Jun 06 - 08:45 PM

I guess I just don't understand what the problem is looking in a couple of places in a music store for CDs I might be interested in. When I go into a music shop with the intent to find CDs, I do that anyway.

So what is wrong with an international music section? A roots music section? Sections divided by continents? Countries? Regions?

What is the problem with flipping through a couple hundred CDs, anyway? I love doing it. I'm not stupid. I am perfectly capable of asking staff if I need help, or doing more research on my own.

It is supposed to be a labor of love.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: melodeonboy
Date: 17 Jun 06 - 07:05 PM

Well, if I were looking for (black) rap music, I wouldn't look in the world music section of a record shop, whereas if I were looking for (white) Norwegian fiddle music, I definitely would. Er...., so this proves conclusively that "world music" is a racist term!?????

As for saying "how about just labelling it music", that's a bit like going to the greengrocer's and asking him "Can I have a vegetable, please."

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: The Shambles
Date: 17 Jun 06 - 11:10 AM

Would there be a better label for a mixture of traditional music (mixture even within the tracks) from all over the world played and recorded in Germany than "World music"?

How about just labelling it music?

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: Wolfgang
Date: 17 Jun 06 - 09:18 AM

All labels are useful if they help finding what one is looking for. "World music" even can be music from Germany. There are a lot of people from quite different ethnic backgrounds living in our coutry who like to play music. The neighbours who also like playing music come from a different background and know a different music. But they like to play together. So the outcome may be a potpourri of music from different parts of the world played on different instruments originally not made for the music they play now. There's nothing wrong with that if people like it.

So you could hear a Hungarian dance played on an African instrument together with a fiddle and a trumpet, the next piece could be a traditional German song with a half Scandinavian and half near East instrumentation and so on. In some moods I really like that music. Would there be a better label for a mixture of traditional music (mixture even within the tracks) from all over the world played and recorded in Germany than "World music"?

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fra
From: GUEST
Date: 16 Jun 06 - 04:54 PM

My pleasure.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: Azizi
Date: 16 Jun 06 - 04:39 PM

Great find, Guest!

Thanks for sharing it.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fra
From: GUEST
Date: 16 Jun 06 - 03:58 PM

OK, finally found a fairly recent US mainstream article about use of the term 'world music' and it's current relevance. Just so you know at least some of what I'm talking about, here you are.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fra
From: GUEST
Date: 16 Jun 06 - 03:41 PM

"The BBC classification makes more sense."

To the British, maybe. To Americans, no. I'd have to agree that the "Roots World" name is just as bad as 'world music'. Perhaps it is because it attempts to straddle a divide that can't be straddled? I don't know. But it is a ridiculous and meaningless name.

When I say 'roots music' is a serviceable term in a US context, what I mean is, the term 'roots' is used in the US to apply to American traditional, reggae, rock, country, blues, and some other genres. So if you say Cuban roots music, people have an American context to compare it to, though much is lost in the translation.

Yes, in the US we also use that despicable and inaccurate term "international" to describe music festivals where the enough of the acts comes from outside the US. However, we don't find the use of that term in association with music to be all that difficult to suss out the meaning.

WOMAD is a purely British phenomenon & export. Sure they've had token festivals in far flung places that once were familiar to the Empire. But was that because the Sri Lankans were screaming for the Drummers of Burundi to come play for them in their post-tsunami era? It was organized & promoted by the same British and European organizers who organize all the European festivals.

How many Sri Lankan musicians played, where were they put on the bill, and how much were they paid compared to the Drummers of Burundi and the British and American acts? As I recall, they had exactly one Sri Lankan act. In my view, that is tokenism. Especially considering that the first languages of Sri Lanka aren't English, but Sinhalese and Tamil.

WOMAD failed in the US because it wasn't needed (we already had our own festivals) and because it was also in direct competition with already established multi-cultural and/or international music festivals. Sure they blamed the US government, but the real reason WOMAD rarely held festivals in North America is because of lack of interest & ticket sales.

It also failed because word quickly got out that the organizers like Peter Gabriel paid put themselves at the top of the bill & paid themselves on a different scale than the 'world musicians'. When some of the 'world' American acts they tried to sign got wind of that and pulled out, there was WOMAD with egg on their faces.

WOMAD could have done great here, but their arrogance and cultural blinders stood in the way of bringing a great British festival to the US.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 16 Jun 06 - 03:04 PM

'Roots music'? Most of the music marketed under the 'World' label is not foundation music, but contemporary and fusion. A minute part is roots music from a 'certain' culture since all cultures today are mixed. Except in a historical context, 'roots music' is meaningless.
The online "RootsWorld" negates its title by reviewing and discussing music that is the result of "cross-cultural pollination"- true of almost all current music.

Looking at Hawaiian music (trying to get a somewhat isolated region), as 'roots' music we may have a few hulas and chants of pre-European type, but the music quickly developed far beyond that, adding, to the Polynesian-East Asian base, elements first from European and American sources but now containing African and Caribbean influences (e. g., reggae- which is American Indian, European and African 'fusion').

'World Music' is used mostly in Europe, but is frequently heard in American marketing as well, to group "the many genres of non-western music which were previously described as "folk music" or "ethnic music," succinctly described as "music from out there." (Wikipedia, my least favorite reference, but, in this case, usable). The BBC has developed categories and awards for World Music.

Almost none is intrinsically 'roots' music, a form having interest more to music historians than to contemporary musicians, regardless of their ancestry or geographical situation.

The big American marketers use terms like 'international' (with subcategories ,including zydeco, Latin, Mexico, Celtic, Far East and Asia, reggae, etc., some usable and some hopeless). The BBC classification makes more sense.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fra
From: GUEST
Date: 16 Jun 06 - 02:25 PM

You forgot to say "in my opinion" Mr. Stephens.

Actually, I've noticed a few people engaging in a perfectly useful conversation with me about racism here.

So perhaps the problem with my anonymity is yours? Has anyone ever suggested to you that refraining from dictating to others what they should think might be a worthwhile endeavor for you?

If you'd like to climb down off the high horse and join me under the bridge here, I'd be happy to pass you the bottle in the bag for a swig or too.

If not, you could keep riding the high horse right on by if the company doesn't suit you. No harm done.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: The Shambles
Date: 16 Jun 06 - 02:17 PM

As for Mr Shamble's wholesale condemnation of students on the Newcastle tradmus degree as 'middle-class' with rich parents, he is clearly unaware of one I know who supports herself with three jobs because she has no family to speak of (and not of 'travelling' stock anyway) and receives no financial support whatsoever.

I have of course made such no condemnation of any of these individuals.

My concern is a general one, perhaps not one shared by those who feel such courses to be a good thing but who may not really be too sure why. I tend to think that all higher education should not just be limited to ensuring that students obtain the sort employment advantages they pay for - and which will enable them to later pay back the cost.

Our music has survived pretty well up to now without such things. But I fear that now such things exist I suspect that they will be made to look to be a great success.

At least the future teachers of these subjects coming from these ranks will now have the formal qualifications to enable them to obtain these positions and will no doubt be favoured in the selection process over otherwise perfectly able applicants who may not. For in all truth, apart from this, I can see few other employment opportunities.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fr
From: greg stephens
Date: 16 Jun 06 - 02:07 PM

Anonymous accusations of racism never seem to be very helpful in discussions about folk music(or indeed anything else)

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: Peace
Date: 16 Jun 06 - 01:59 PM

Best refrain line/hook I've heard in years:

Artist/Band: Nichols Joe
Lyrics for Song: Tequila Makes Her Clothes Fall Off
Lyrics for Album: III
SHE SAID i'M GOING OUT WITH MY GIRLFRIENDS
MAGUARITAS AT THE HOLIDAY INN
OH MERCY...MY ONLY THOUGHT
WAS TEQUILA MAKES HER CLOTHES FALL OFF

I TOLD HER PUT AN EXTRA LAYER ON
I KNOW WHAT HAPPENS WHEN SHE DRINKS PATRON
HER CLOSETS MISSING HALF THE THINGS SHE BOUGHT
TEQUILA MAKES HER CLOTHES FALL OFF

CH....SHE'LL START BY KICKING OUT OF HER SHOES
LOSE AN EARRING IN HER DRINK
LEAVE HER JACKET IN THE BATH ROOM STALL
DROP A CONTACT DOWN THE SINK

THEM PANTYHOSE AIN'T GONNA LAST TOO LONG
IF THE D J PUTS BON JOVI ON
SHE MIGHT COME HOME IN A TABLECLOTH
TEQUILA MAKES HER CLOTHES FALL OFF

SOLO

SHE CAN HANDLE ANY CHAMPAIGNE BRUNCH
BRIDAL SHOWER WITH BACARDI PUNCH
JELLO SHOOTERS FULL OF SMIRNOFF...
BUT TEQUILA MAKES HER CLOTHES FALL OFF

CHORUS

SHE DON'T MEAN NOTHING
SHE'S JUST HAVING FUN
TOMORROW SHE'LL SAY
OH WHAT HAVE I DONE
HER FRIENDS WILL JOKE ABOUT THE STUFF SHE LOST
CAUSE TEQUILA MAKES HER CLOTHES FALL OFF

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fra
From: GUEST
Date: 16 Jun 06 - 01:31 PM

But the history of their exploitation is very different. Profoundly different.

Some exploitation is racist. Not to admit that is, IMO, equivalent to saying racism doesn't exist in the music industry. Clearly it does, regardless of the current popularity of R & B, hip hop, and rap music.

I also disagree that musicians must be exploited to be financially successful.

I do agree, Ernest, that we do seem to share a lot of musical tastes! I agree, 'tis a good thing.

As I went to click on this thread again, I re-read Penguin Egg's opening post. I can see how people interpreted what they said as being opposed to the music/musicians.

I have no problem with the music and musicians inadvertently caught under or deliberately putting themselves under the 'world music' banner. But I do have a problem with the term 'world music' simply because I see it as a contemporary PC euphemism for 'race music'.

I also find the term to be, in a practical sense, largely irrelevant to both the global music industry and the global music listening public. Not universally, but nearly so. There are exceptions to that, and the main one seems to be among English trad and folk music (in the British sense of folk music) afficionados in Britain. Who aren't a very large percent of the planet's music listening public, hence my claim the term is "nearly universally irrelevant".

I also think, practically speaking, it is a moronic, meaningless term. I find the term 'roots music' to be much more useful. Roots music, to me, simply means music from a certain culture.

The term 'roots music' seems to have evolved to describe more hybrid music, that is, a blend of the contemporary and traditional, whether from one's own or another culture(s).

When you use the term 'roots music' most people in the US 50 and under will know pretty much what you are talking about. Use the term 'world music' and their eyes glass over or they think you are trying to trick them into listening to folk or new age music. It is perceived by people I know as bland, white bread sorts of fluffy stuff.

I know world music is perceived very differently in the UK. We all get that. What we don't accept is that Brittania rules the air waves.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: Little Hawk
Date: 16 Jun 06 - 12:58 PM

Yeah, everybody gets exploited...one way or another. It is those who can only see exploitation or racism when it's inflicted on them that worry me.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: Ernest
Date: 16 Jun 06 - 12:51 PM

Record companies exploit musicians of colour and caucasian musicians alike. Happens with European/American musical styles also - think of all those folk-punk stuff: traditional music played amplified in a punk style. Like it or not, music and entertainment is an industry now. This may be exploitation, but it is not racism.
And what would happen without that exploitation? Those musicians would not sell their records. Which is especially bad for musicians from poor countries who could not make a living otherwise. If people buy their records, it shows that they value the artists culture.

Are you sure the term world music existed as a label for record sales in the times of those ideological aberrations you described?
I doubt this.
No, it still does not make sense.
As I will be offline now, have a nice evening.
Best
Ernest
P.S.: I think our musical tastes are not that far apart. Nice to know that there is something we can agree upon!

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 16 Jun 06 - 12:50 PM

countess richard states unequivocally that American bluegrass music is NOT world music, but English traditional music IS world music

I didn't say anything about English trad though I do believe that England is, belatedly in comparison to say Scotland and Ireland, joining the world, as borne out by appearances at WOMAD and WOMEX by some of our fniest musicians such as Bellowhead, EAC and Eliza Carthy band. As for bluegrass, I said I could see no need to include this hybrid, commercialised genre with no true sense of roots, place or community it in the 'world' rack in music shops as an eponymous one undoubtedly already existed. Other local or regional American musics such as blues, Cajun, conjunto, Appalachian or musics of immigrant communities clearly would, however, fall under the 'world' banner.

As for Mr Shamble's wholesale condemnation of students on the Newcastle tradmus degree as 'middle-class' with rich parents, he is clearly unaware of one I know who supports herself with three jobs because she has no family to speak of (and not of 'travelling' stock anyway) and receives no financial support whatsoever. She's there because she loves the music and is extremely talented. She may be one of the few who actually makes it out there as a performer as many of the others I know are fully aware that the industry is unlikely to be able to support jobs in it for more than a few. The vast majority of schooleavers nowadays go on to some form of higher education as otherwise they would be unlikely to find any sort of work. The Newcastle students know how fortunate they are to be doing their degrees in a field they love. Doubtless, they'd all be singing, dancing and playing anyway but the important thing is that they are doing it.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fra
From: GUEST
Date: 16 Jun 06 - 12:20 PM

No Ernest, they aren't just my assumptions. There are others, especially musicians of color who you would never find posting to this forum, who feel that the term 'world music' has been used to exploit them and their music cultures.

It isn't just music that does this. Nowadays, we have new code words/terms for race that are PC, and used almost exclusively by whites to define people of color. World music is one of those terms.

Don't want to get into citing chapter and verse cut-and-paste wars to "prove" someone is right, and someone is wrong.

I believe we call all learn from just discussing the subject.

'Other' is, to me and many thoughtful people, at the roots of all forms of prejudice, including racism--not excluding it, which is what I think you keep trying to do in this context.

And when it comes to the European constructs of race, we know that the British especially defined certain European cultures, like the Irish and the Germans and modern Greeks as 'other races' that weren't English.

I understand and appreciate this earlier historic categorization of Europe by race is still confounding to some people. But it is still easy to find references to it, even on the internet. Just try googling "Irish race" or "Mediterranean race" or "German race" and you will see what I'm talking about. First, it was sort of regional. Northern Europeans were perceived as being very different from Southern Europeans. Germans and Celts are often thrown together by ancient classical writers. This isn't anything new. But when you don't know the history of race constructs in Europe, it can get pretty confusing. Especially when you try and racially sort people in a contemporary vein, as the term 'world music' attempts to do.

Initially, 'world music' was intended to mean those 'other European races' because there is still an undercurrent in British identity especially, that draws from that historic well that defined southern Europe as a 'Mediterranean race'.

Does that make any sense to you?

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: Ernest
Date: 16 Jun 06 - 11:55 AM

I think these are merely your assumptions. "Other" is something quite different from "racist". As is the word "world". Of course you are free to categorize things by yourself, but for a more general consensus (which i feel is the objective of this discussion) I feel we should have a broader base. So what is everyone else thinking about this?

Greek music is also often found in the world music box - and ancient Greece was one of the cradles of civilisation, by the way.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: GUEST,chilled out global vibes Guest
Date: 16 Jun 06 - 11:36 AM

these guys are racist !!!!??

http://www.arcmusic.co.uk/index.php?page=about

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fra
From: GUEST
Date: 16 Jun 06 - 11:19 AM

In the same way that being Irish has always been 'other' to being English/British or Anglo American.

So it is easy to see how some (not all by any means!) Eastern European and Irish music slipped in to the 'world music' box early on.

Nowadays, it seems to really annoy English trad folk off that Irish trad seems to fit so easily in with the rest of the world, while English trad continues to hammer away in relative obscurity.

And I love English trad. But it isn't the music itself I'm talking about here, though.

I'm talking about race and class assumptions that go into labelling music, when done by white European and American music industry types.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fra
From: GUEST
Date: 16 Jun 06 - 11:09 AM

While that might technically make your argument true for some people, it's more an anomaly for me.

Eastern Europe has always been 'other' to Western Europe and Anglo America.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: Ernest
Date: 16 Jun 06 - 11:06 AM

And also: if eastern european music is put into the world music box (as was stated before), the term can`t be racist because those countries are inhabited by white (or better "caucasian")people. Q.E.D.
Best
Ernest

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fra
From: GUEST
Date: 16 Jun 06 - 11:06 AM

No, because I understand the word to mean something musically specific in Yiddish. To me, it simply means secular Jewish music that drew on earlier religious music traditions.

Rather like American gospel music morphing into a multiplicity of descendant secular music genres.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: Ernest
Date: 16 Jun 06 - 10:55 AM

OK, lets take a different example: Would you see the label "Klezmer" as anti-semititic?
Best
Ernest

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: GUEST,chilled out global vibesGuest
Date: 16 Jun 06 - 10:54 AM

"W O M A D"


"World Of Music And Dance" ???


.. tried my hardest.. but nope.. cant find any substantial racist
implications in that short bundle of words..

quite the contrary in fact..

always seemed a positive and progessive movement
to confront musical parochrialism and apartheid..


..so now its shortened by lazy feckers in music marketing and journalism

to mere simple


"World Music"

thats racist !!??

feck knows..

bring your own obsessive agendas to the festival picnic blanket
and we'll
all see who's got the biggest!

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fra
From: GUEST
Date: 16 Jun 06 - 10:47 AM

No Ernest, in my opinion the circumstances regarding the Irish wouldn't be defined as racism. Racism is rooted in prejudice based upon the color of a cultural group(s)' skin.

Ethnic bigotry is rooted in prejudice based upon culture, though. Just like religious bigotry is rooted in prejudice based upon religion. In the case of the Irish in the 19th century, the bigotry had to do with both their culture and their religion. That makes it somewhat unique, though not really. I consider bigotry against Irish people in 19th century America to have functioned more like anti-Semitism than racism, actually. Because anti-Semitism also has cultural roots, especially for Eastern European Jews.

But I understand it isn't easy to draw these distinctions, and that reasonable people can disagree about it.

Which is always better than spewing angry invectives, like a few posters here are doing because they apparently have issues with my choice to remain anonymous, or because they disagree with my opinion.

They are, of course, free to disagree with me or anyone else here. But they don't need to drag the level of discourse into the gutter, like Big Mick just tried to do.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: Ernest
Date: 16 Jun 06 - 10:35 AM

Guest, in the 19th century many people looked down upon the Irish people as inferiour. Does this make it racist when you label something as "Irish Folk"?

Any description of an group of people CAN be meant offensive of course, but this depends on the user. It also CAN get such a meaning if the general public understands it that way - but I don´t think this is the case with "world music", there are too many people who like it (otherwise we wouldn`t have this discussion).

Best
Ernest

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fra
From: GUEST
Date: 16 Jun 06 - 10:24 AM

It doesn't have to have conscious racist intentions to be racist though, Ernest.

When we don't examine our own attitudes and motives first though (which you can't really do without reflecting on your own prejudices), we easily fall prey to people who will examine our attitudes and motives once we walk out the door.

I never said I thought the people who cooked up the term 'world music' intended to be racist.

I do think they failed to challenge their own cultural assumptions about race and class before putting the term out into the world, though.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: Peace
Date: 16 Jun 06 - 10:24 AM

Funny,

I have never seen music to be White, Black, Yellow, Red, Brown, etc. I have seen it as being to my liking or not.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: Big Mick
Date: 16 Jun 06 - 10:23 AM

Bullcrap. GUEST, as usual, seeks to set up whole arguments based on phoney and incorrect premises:iethe inclusion of white European and American music traditions under the 'world music' umbrella is rare. It is not rare in any of the shops or outlets I have been in in the US. The term is also fluid based on what is in. Example: While Irish music is hot it has its own section. Later Latin originated music became hot and Irish/Scottish/Celtic was relegated to the "World Music" sections.

The term is simply a category in a marketing scheme. I am far more destressed by the "new age" and "celtic" terms than I am by this. This has to do with where one looks in a music shop. GUEST, as usual, seeks to promote an agenda. That is why it is a troll bait, nothing more.


Mick

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: Ernest
Date: 16 Jun 06 - 10:20 AM

I don`t think the term world music had an racist intention. It is a label under which you can put various styles of music to help selling it.

Did you ever see an advertisement saying: "This product is inferior. Now buy it - it is just as expensive as top quality"?

Regards
Ernest

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fra
From: GUEST
Date: 16 Jun 06 - 10:10 AM

Not angry either. Just talkin' happily under the bridge here. Anybody who wants to join me under the bridge is welcome. Those who want to spit on me, not.

Though I did get annoyed when what looked like some bluegrass bashing was getting started.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: Azizi
Date: 16 Jun 06 - 09:59 AM

Just for the 'record', I wrote and submitted my 16 Jun 06 - 09:14 AM
post before reading most of the exchange from Guest and others about whether the label World Music is racist.

If my assumption is correct that Guest is referring to me when she {or he} wrote that "I notice no one attacked the only known person of color contributing to this forum and thread, who said essentially the same thing I am saying?", then for the record I do have to say that I am in agreement with Guest's position that the World Music label is racist and-probably-classist.

However, Guest, I should clarify that you would not be correct that I am the only known person of color on this forum...There's a few others, and I hope that number grows.

And Guest, you may be aware that there have been a number of "frank discussions of race and class in this forum".

As to whether some people are paranoid about those discussions or not, I wouldn't know. Of course, I've been accused of being paranoid about race, but that doesn't bother me.

And btw, I'm certainly not angry, and I don't sense anger from Guest either {but she or he can speak about that if the spirit moves her or him to do so}.

All this to say, Guest 16 Jun 06 - 09:31 AM, that I appreciate your comments.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: Les from Hull
Date: 16 Jun 06 - 09:57 AM

Well of course you are entitled to your opinion GUEST. As Art Theime has said there seems to be a difference between attitudes and opinions about 'world music' between the UK and USA. I will continue to post about my own knowledge and opinion, not what I assume.

You say that the public are 'much more knowledgeable and educated consumers of music', well that's not my experience in the UK. I also know next to nothing about New Age music, but I don't immediately assume it's something to identify music that old people like me won't like.

If you read some of the earier posts in ths thread you'll find out a bit more about what world music actually means in the UK. Just because our imperialist polititians seem to have similar values doesn't mean that we're in the same country.

And your crack about 'easy to attack anonymous posters' - well we both know how to solve that, don't we? Come out from u8nder the bridge.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fra
From: GUEST
Date: 16 Jun 06 - 09:31 AM

Azizi, as I understand the use of the term in the US, the inclusion of white European and American music traditions under the 'world music' umbrella is rare. You notice how countess richard states unequivocally that American bluegrass music is NOT world music, but English traditional music IS world music?

In the UK, the inclusion of white European music traditions under the 'world music' umbrella is more recent. Initially, it was an all-encompassing term to define any music that was (as Ian Anderson puts it) 'not from here'. In other words, it was a term used to categorize music from Africa, Asia, Latin America, etc. with one label. Like 'race music' was once used, in other words.

Nowadays, English traditional musicians & audiences especially, love to park themselves under the world music banner. They are trying to market & identify themselves in a way that associates them with a more popular 'exotic other' music category, because their fellow citizens perceive their own music culture traditions as boring and/or too strongly attached to English nationalist sentimentalism.

In other words, in the UK especially, this term is awash with race implications. IMO, it hasn't caught on in the US in the same way it has in the UK, because the dynamics of race and class in the UK are different than they are in the US.

Therefore, it is ridiculous to claim the politics of race and class has nothing to do with the term.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: Azizi
Date: 16 Jun 06 - 09:14 AM

In my opinion, if world music does not includes European music, then it is racist. Perhaps that was not its' intent, but to create an umbrella category for all else but European music, for marketing purposes or whatever, can certainly lead to a they/we frame of reference.

But-then again-racism may not be the correct term since "European" is not really the same as "White". After all, there are people who are European who are non-White.

I'm wondering, are Eastern European music and music composed and performed by European minority groups such as Travelers {who after all are European, right?}included in the "World Music" category?

If not, then we aren't talking racism, but something like mainstream Western European music in multiple categories and much else from people of color, Eastern Europeans, and European minority groups lumped into that umbrella World Music category.

Those with the power define what is and is not mainstream, classical, folk and World.

And too often "what is not" is considered to be "less than". Hence the psychological implications and consequences of these types of divisions.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: GUEST,Art Thieme
Date: 16 Jun 06 - 09:04 AM

My post above related to the USA's attitudes toward the cul-de-sac called World Music. It's interesting to note the U.K.'s points of view. As some have said here, it does seem to come down to what we like being uppermost in our minds and preferences. I don't see the recism of it, but some ethnocentricity is there---as is the human nature of it all. I don't feel the anger some exhibit here is justified much by the topic and it's lack of importance generally. It's simply not liking what the newbies have morphed things into.----Is what is!

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fra
From: GUEST
Date: 16 Jun 06 - 09:02 AM

OK Les, just what is 'world music'?

And why is it 'bollocks' or 'trolling' to discuss the race and class implications of the term in a music forum that uses said term all the time?

I notice no one attacked the only known person of color contributing to this forum and thread, who said essentially the same thing I am saying?

Why is that? Because the forum dynamic makes it easy to attack an anonymous poster, which makes you feel safe and brave in attacking someone who says they think something is racist?

People here sure are paranoid about any and all frank discussions of race and class in this forum.

FWIW, I heartily agree with this statement by Penguin Egg, the originator of the thread:

"This middle class fraud has rambled on like an old jalopy for the best part of 25 years and yet has failed to fire the imagination of anyone except white middle class journalists and DJs who tirelessly peddle this "music" to an uninterested public."

I believe one of the reasons why the public is disinterested in 'world music' is because they have become much more knowledgeable and educated consumers of music, hence don't require labels like this.

Not only do I think the label itself is racist, I also think it has failed to capture the imagination of music lovers and the music buying public.

They are seeking out and buying a lot of music that has been labelled 'world music' but I would argue it isn't 'world music' they go looking for. They go looking for music by artist and genre, certainly. But as others have pointed out, one is just as likely to hit upon New Age music when one goes in search of 'world music' as they are the Mahotella Queens.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: Les from Hull
Date: 16 Jun 06 - 08:43 AM

What utter and complete b****cks from this unnamed GUEST/troll. Racism is synoymous with race hatred isn't it? So divididing up records into smaller boxes and keeping them apart would be more racist, surely.

Just because someone doesn't like a particular kind of music is no reason to visit this forum to tell us, is it? I fail to see how anyone who appreciates music at all can say 'I don't like world music', which is far too varied to be lumped together like this. As people have repeatedly pointed out, it's only a record industry convenience.

Now I know that the record industry capitalist bosses don't have the welfare of the whole world at heart, but some people in that industry are passionately interested in music.

What about all the white artists who come under the World Music label - Balkan, Klezmer, Polka, Tango, Musette. How much time has this troll spent looking through browser boxes in UK record shops - by the spelling of 'color' I'd guess not at lot.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: GUEST,Grab
Date: 16 Jun 06 - 08:29 AM

The danger is that it is only those fortunate to be formally trained in this field, are the only ones who will be expected to make a valuable contribution or the only ones to have their music listened to when they do

I don't recall Eliza Carthy or Kate Rusby having university degrees in folk music. What they've got is a lot of practical experience and a stack of talent.

FWIW, it's not necessary to have a degree in other "formalised" fields such as classical music and acting either. It'd certainly make things easier, but that's mainly by becoming part of a community that gives you connections to know who to talk to. But there's plenty of actors who never went to RADA and plenty of classical musicians who never went to RCM. If you've got talent *and* you're keen enough and/or lucky enough to find the right people to get you going, you're likely to get somewhere without a degree. If you've not got the talent, all the letters in the world after your name won't help you.

Graham.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fra
From: GUEST
Date: 16 Jun 06 - 08:24 AM

Au contraire, Jeri. This sort of labelling of music by American and British white music industry hacks has everything to do with institutionalized racism in the music industry. It isn't new, as a couple of us has pointed out. Just because the person/people who invented the term are popular/powerful people in the British folk scene doesn't mean the term isn't racist.

People's refusals here to engage about racism and classism in music in this thread merely demonstrates their own ignorance and fear regarding race and class issues. This thread is a discussion of a term the original poster believes to be racist and classist. So why is using the racism inflammatory in this context?

How can one be trolling by mentioning race in a thread about race? Or are you just trying to demonize a poster who's opinion doesn't match your worldview?

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: GUEST,Dani
Date: 16 Jun 06 - 08:15 AM

I don't know how I wandered into this thread.....

While I hate the concept of throwing things together into "I am not taking the time to find out what this is and name it properly" but I certainly understand it: I do it at home all the time.

But FINALLY, a definition of 'folk' that I can love:

"..i have a lifelong love of natural organicly evolving bastardised mongrel
immigration inspired music
grown from a process
of clumsy collisions and uncontrived exchanges
between diverse older previously geographicaly isolated musical cultures.."

Amen

Dani

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fra
From: Jeri
Date: 16 Jun 06 - 08:14 AM

'Racism' is a word meant to get people's hackles up and has little to do with labeling music from various and sundry non-English speaking peoples so folks can find it and buy it. Bogus point, good troll.
--------------------------------------------
I don't think 'Little Boxes' bashes people's dreams. It bashes the society that makes people believe the ultimate dream is to live and think just like everyone else. It bashes the society that punishes people for being different in any way. 'Those people' aren't buying folk CDs, they're buying rap and pop CDs, and if it's not heard on the 'little box' 10 times a day or more, the people who are afraid to risk society's disdain aren't listening.

'World music' is a huge box, painted with bright colors, and one has to rumage around a lot to find what they like.

People can dream about their little box house in the suburb and their kid's little box university education. Societies - economies and education systems - make it damned hard to dream of anything more. They also make it damned hard to love, or even find music that isn't cookie-cutter standard so it fits in a little box. World music doesn't fit in those cramped quarters. I can't say I like most of it. I have to listen to a lot to find something I like. That's the whole point though: I get to sort through it all and choose what I like instead of picking something from a little box.

Dreaming of getting a little box life is't the problem. The complacency that allows people to believe that, once they've gotten to the box, that's all there is and they should be satisfied, is a spirit-killer. People should be able to attain their little box life, or their little box music, and keep dreaming and looking for something they can love.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fra
From: GUEST
Date: 16 Jun 06 - 08:03 AM

The term world music is, quite simply, idiotic.

It is just the latest racist substitute for what used to be called 'race music' by the music industry.

Because whites are the people who invariably make up these 'marketing terms' it is ridiculous to say that racism isn't part of the equation.

And while 'world music' is a term used by a few in the US--mostly by corporate chain stores--it isn't one most people would recognize as anything but what it is--a term for music by musicians of color who aren't American or British.

Sad and pathetic to see how little distance the British music industry (which would include said daft magazine & all inventors of this racist 'marketing term') has travelled since the days of 'race music'.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: The Shambles
Date: 16 Jun 06 - 07:40 AM

It is all types and classes of people who make music.

However, it does tend to be those from the middle classes who are the ones generally paid to write about it.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: The Shambles
Date: 16 Jun 06 - 07:38 AM

No, because we *really* want our children to go back to being share-croppers...

Some may and some may hope their children become powerful Wall-Street bankers - but most I hope, would like to think that some of the genuine community values passed on to them and which produced the music, will be passed on through their children and not sacrificed entirely to some illusionary materialist dream.

I expect that children of UK families not able to provide university education in folk music should be able to make music as good as those who few who do. The danger is that it is only those fortunate to be formally trained in this field, are the only ones who will be expected to make a valuable contribution or the only ones to have their music listened to when they do..................

For example - it may not be neatly packaged as such but there are today many children of traveller's families (unlikely to be receiving the benefits of a university education) who are actually producing real folk music.

Perhaps we will also be seeing articles in Froots waxing lyical about these young musicians? Or perhaps not

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: Little Hawk
Date: 15 Jun 06 - 10:56 PM

Yes, it is an increasingly false world. I dial the phone, which was once a useful instrument of direct communication with other human beings, and I get a mindless computerized voice that cycles me through useless menus of choices I don't necessarily want and then finally puts me on hold waiting for a real human...where I sit listening with increasing irritation to music I don't want to listen to...which is interrupted every 30 seconds by another computerized voice that tells me...

"Your call is important to us..." (Bullshit! It isn't! They don't give a damn.)

"Please stay on the line..." (Well, duh!)

"And the first available representative will by with you shortly..." (Yeah, right...I'll believe that when it happens.)

And then the infernal music comes on again, and I wait another 30 seconds and the message comes on again, and I do that for who knows how long until I finally get fed up and hang up!

I then send the fuckers an email, and resolve not to bother even trying to phone anyone in future. Fuck them. The phone has become a torture instrument and an avenue for telemarketers to harass people.

It's unreal, all right. It's ludicrous.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: GUEST,Sean Laffey
Date: 15 Jun 06 - 09:58 PM

Hey Folks.

Get a grip of the post-modernist zeitgeist. Almsot evreything we do in our leisure time is driven by a psot modernist system. What do I mean ,well, modernism (dates to the late 1830's as a technical definition) would piuit the eman of production as the central facet of civilised life, its regualtion, comtrol and limitations posing the central questions of the age. BUT now we are in an ear when the human input into the prodcution of things is reducing daily, heavy industry is run by robots, pizzas are produced on a production line, food ids frozen and cooked in a microwave in minutes. The big questions of the age are about informaton and marketing, getting your point across, influencing the buying decison , whether that be inones' choice of religion, automobiles or CDs. If you get your msuic by shopping for it rather than hunting it down with your poetable MP3 recored, you are aprt of the postmodern movement. So labels and catergories are necessarily false but necessary intis increasingly false world...

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: Little Hawk
Date: 15 Jun 06 - 08:52 PM

It is a very common thing for people who yell loudly about "racism" all the time to themselves practice it on others...usually without any realization whatsoever that they are so doing. Their very volatility in regard to the issue gives them away, in fact.

The same often applies to people who yell loudly about sexism.

And that is the height of irony.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: GUEST
Date: 15 Jun 06 - 08:34 PM

"The term 'world music' is, very simply, a racist British referent to music that isn't white and theirs"

So how come all those European bands get included in the world music box, and Eliza Carthy got a nomination in the BBC Radio 3 Awards For World Music, and Bellowhead showcased at Womex?

And isn't referring to us Brits in the way you do extremely racist?

"It is also a totally irrelevant term outside the UK. The rest of the world has no problem with 'marketing terms' such as Irish traditional or Korean jazz or newgrass."

Er, really? Have you ever visited the USA? Not that I'd recommend it - appears to be full of bluegrass fans, Brit-bashing racists and philosophers whose eyes are starting to revolve as they fall out of their trees.

Why on earth are you all wasting your time and energy arguing about a box in a record shop? There's some music out there you might like which you've not heard before . . .

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: GUEST,Art Thieme
Date: 15 Jun 06 - 07:58 PM

Is what is. What goes down is what happens. It might be completely wrong (or right ;-) Still, I do hate to see the watering down of the roots musics I love most in the name of that vague ideal called the melting pot. David Amram was among the first to blend all the acts at the given folk festivals into a finale musical hodge-podge of multi-decibel fusion and/or confusion. --- Add the big $$$$$ and that's how World Music was born.

But, again, is what is! And the name of the game is "BLUR"!! Clarity is sacrificed. Misinformation becomes the norm.

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fra
From: GUEST
Date: 15 Jun 06 - 07:55 PM

PS, I love bluegrass. Go to a couple of festivals every year.

Like jazz and blues, it is some of the best fusion music ever produced in North America by the regular folk.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fra
From: GUEST
Date: 15 Jun 06 - 07:50 PM

Azizi nailed it for me.

The term 'world music' is, very simply, a racist British referent to music that isn't white and theirs.

Her high & mighty countess proves that it isn't 'just a marketing term' when she decrees that bluegrass can't be shelved with 'world' music.

It is also a totally irrelevant term outside the UK. The rest of the world has no problem with 'marketing terms' such as Irish traditional or Korean jazz or newgrass.

Apparently, the rest of the music world isn't as stupid as British music consumers who can't find their way round a music store to find their album, without reading some daft magazine first.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: Little Hawk
Date: 15 Jun 06 - 05:17 PM

Indeed! It's relevant for everybody. That's certainly my understanding of the word "democracy".

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: Grab
Date: 15 Jun 06 - 01:40 PM

The lesson is perhaps to be careful what you dream - for it just might come true and not really be what you want after all?

No, because we *really* want our children to go back to being share-croppers...

As the quote says in the top-linked site when you google Malvina Reynolds, "Democracy is based on the conviction that there are extraordinary possibilities in ordinary people." That is just as relevant for those whose best bet at a decent life for their families is a "little box on the hillside", as it is for people who find they can make a living through performing and can then look down on the "ordinary people" who listen to their music.

Graham.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: Little Hawk
Date: 15 Jun 06 - 01:33 PM

Oh, Penguin Egg, you are soooooo right! Yes, we in the white middle class met secretely in conclaves all over the western world 25 years ago with but one thought in mind: to concoct and promote a totally phony brand of music called "World Music" and foist it on people solely to make money and push our namby-pamby knee jerk liberal values down everyone's throat and dilute and destroy cultural heritages everywhere.

I can well recall the enthusiasm with which I and every other middle class white I knew then joined in this secret effort, and look how successful it's been! I relish the thought that we succeeded with our despicable plan so well.

I can't think of any white middle class person I know who wasn't in on the plot. We're all to blame, and we're proud of it. Go ahead...finger us! We don't care! We laugh at your feeble attempts to derail the train we have set in motion. We will bury you under an avalanche of mish-mash that has no real constituency and does not exist as a separate musical form or even as a loose umbrella. We will smother you with it.

Yes, we were all in on it. All of us. We are white, we are middle class, we are all irredeemably evil, and we are responsible for everything wrong that has ever been done to anyone else, and oh....it's sooooo obvious! Go, man, go! Tell the world all about it.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: Scoville
Date: 15 Jun 06 - 01:26 PM

A box may not already exist labeled "bluegrass". Usually one does, so I don't know why it would even be an issue, but if it didn't--well, it's not country, it's not rock, it's not blues, but it's definitely very representative of a regional culture of a given country. (As opposed to fusion, which is what you would get if, say, you played "Whiskey Before Breakfast" on a Chinese pipa, where tune and instrument are otherwise utterly foreign to one another.)

And "crossover" is by no means bad or new. Crossover has been happening for centuries and is part of the development of a musical identity.

My brother recently got into Cuban music, which would almost certainly fall into World unless you live in an area with a heavy Latino population that has a separate Latin section (Texas often does, but I'm sure other places don't). It's not necessarily old music, either, but it's very much Cuban.

I've even seen Cajun in the World section, which is both weird and sort of obvious. It's regional here, but it's pretty foreign even to most of the U.S.





The other option would be to ask the guy at the counter where they stock the [whatever you're looking for]. Personally, I've never had trouble finding what I want in a record shop because of ambiguous classifications because most things aren't going to be "eligible" for more than a handful of categories. Some places put Norman Blake in bluegrass, some in country, some in Americana, and some in other (next to World), and those categories are normally located near each other because of the potential for overlap.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: Peace
Date: 15 Jun 06 - 01:22 PM

And it's good that y'all likes what ya likes, too.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: Peace
Date: 15 Jun 06 - 01:16 PM

The tendency of people to put labels on things and then put those things in little boxes can result in folks missing much that they might otherwise enjoy. I will listen to any music--including rap which I dislike--and give it a few minutes. Listen to the first 30 seconds of "The Rite of Spring". Great piece of music, but for people who think 'classical' is junk, they won't. It has many close relations (musicall) to acid rock, punk rock, rhythms from other cultures. Sorry. I just dislike the labels. As I said, I likes what I likes.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 15 Jun 06 - 01:14 PM

"That'll be Blue Mink then, PFR."

[if only this board had emoticon smilies available for us to
indicate the degree to which we are sometimes taking the piss..]


spot on mate !!!!!!

.. and they weren't wrong


.. actually.. my dad made me watch them on the telly at the time
cuz he thought they were up to something interesting !!!

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 15 Jun 06 - 01:09 PM

.. btw.. i'm white provincial working class council estate boy

who somehow passed eleven plus and went to grammer school

and a 'lefty' polytechnic culture & ideology course in the early 80s


[long live early 80's post punk agit-pop
and the key historical moment
of the womad inspired importation
of the Drummers of Burundi !!!!!]

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 15 Jun 06 - 01:09 PM

That'll be Blue Mink then, PFR.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 15 Jun 06 - 01:06 PM

I had an argument in the library when I found Eliza Carthy, Robin Williamson and Nic Jones in 'Irish'. They gave me a packet of stickers and told me to re-label them.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 15 Jun 06 - 01:03 PM

whilst i seem to have an inate aversion to music college graduate composed
intellectual exercises in scored accademic 'fusion' music..

..and am equally unmoved by most sterile corporate over-commercialised pick & mix
'world' celebity
guest duets concerts & products that have been prefabbed into
uncomfortable alliances
only existing to maximise profits in different global markets..


..i have a lifelong love of natural organicly evolving bastardised mongrel
immigration inspired music
grown from a process
of clumsy collisions and uncontrived exchanges
between diverse older previously geographicaly isolated musical cultures..

so chuck the whole ****ing lot in big hot noisy mixing pot
with a few gallons of cider & vodka & whiskey & rum & tequila & chilli peppers !!!

..bound to be something poured out of that messy haphazard cultural caldron
i'd enjoy listening and staggering/dancing to !!!!!!!

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fr
From: greg stephens
Date: 15 Jun 06 - 12:57 PM

What goes in the world record box obviosuly varies in different countries. This is not anyhting to do with racism, it's practicality. Presumably in American shops there is a bluegrass box, so that's where you find bluegrass. In England, there probably isnt a bluegrass box, so Alison Krause could go in there.
   In England, there is probably a box for English folk, so that goes in there. If there's isnt a box called English Folk, shove it in world music, seems fair enough. A big shop may have a whole box for African, but puts the Asian and Oceanic in World. And, with accuracy culturally(if not geographically) they often put Zimbabwe,Senegal, Ghamna etc in Africa, but Morocco goes with Turkey into World. All seems quite sensible to me. Most classification systems work Ok, as long as you dont get steamed up about the dodgy grey areas. Same with libraries. It works OK, until you start demanding by what right they put Jane Austen in one place, but Mills and Boon in another. Then it gets tricky.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 15 Jun 06 - 12:47 PM

Crossover? Hmmmmm, well it DEFINITELY ain't 'world', innit . . .

The cut-off point has to be arbitrary, to a degree, when determining what goes in which box in a retail record shop which is, after all, what we are talking about. I can see no justification for stuffing bluegrass (a modern hybrid form of bits of many traditions) into the 'world' box when, doubtless, one already exists labelled 'bluegrass'. Nickel Creek, however, belongs in the 'crap pop' section, or better still, the bin (erm . . . that's 'trash can' or 'garbage' to you lot over there).

It's not a matter of thinking whatever you want. Those who stock the racks have got to agree on what to put where or else no-one will ever find anything.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: Ernest
Date: 15 Jun 06 - 12:34 PM

I think Buck has a point in his criticism of the "Little Boxes" song. It is those people that are buying musicians cd`s, filling their concert-halls etc. Migrating workers (or whatever socio-romantic pictures come to mind) couldn`t afford that. They probably dream of getting a little box for themselves. And in spite of all benefit concerts and the likes (attended by people from little boxes again) any social security system is relying on people living in little boxes.
Six is right: we haven`t changed - and probably we can`t more than to a certain degree.
Bak to original topic: Many things you hear as world music is not very traditional any more, but has taken up various influences (similar to bluegrass). As a label, everyone understands that it is a box containing african, asian, south-american styles etc.or mixtures of those or wirh modern styles.
Regards
Ernest

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: Scoville
Date: 15 Jun 06 - 12:29 PM

Countess, I don't particularly like bluegrass, either, but it's hardly "not rooted in tradition". Just because it's not that old doesn't mean it isn't ROOTED in tradition--it borrows very, very, heavily from both old-time and blues (which, by the way, is not that old, either, in its recognizable form). There is a lot of stylistic innovation but--and this takes into account, of course, that there are lots of styles within bluegrass, as well--there is a lot of crossover.

Why would it have to be rooted in a single tradition? A) it's all American. B) Most American music is not rooted in a single tradition. Blues sometimes borrows from old British ballads. Piedmont blues is a combination of blues and Appalachian music, to the point where it's often hard to tell if the musician is black or white. Old-time is descended from British and Irish traditions but is by no means the same thing, and later it appropriated ragtime and Tin Pan Alley elements without losing its identity (and both "Old Joe Clark" and some versions of "Liza Jane" are from African-American tradition).

I don't like modern bluegrass. I cannot stand Alison Krauss. I don't think she's bad, I just hate the style. If you're thinking of that kind of thing (or Nickel Creek, or whoever), I can see why you would think that if you don't listen to bluegrass. But it's much more obvious in earlier, less-commercialized bluegrass.

. . . and now that I've made a big fuss, yes, I agree we're all entitled to think what we want, but I don't see how having multiple roots from the same country disqualifies something as "world music".

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fra
From: number 6
Date: 15 Jun 06 - 11:51 AM

"Little boxes"

Excellent post Peace!

It says it all pertaining to this thread. Sad, it's the year 2006 and we still categorize all aspects of our lives, culture, arts into 'little boxes' Back in the time of that song I thought we were heading into a new direction. We really haven't changed at all.

sIx

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: GUEST
Date: 15 Jun 06 - 11:41 AM

I am sure that between the two of you, you'll let the rest of us know what we're allowed to think. Damned critics can't even agree with each other.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 15 Jun 06 - 11:30 AM

Greg, I said it's not rooted in a SINGLE tradition, but contains some elements of many and this is why it is not 'world music'. And too many fast banjos, yes.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: The Shambles
Date: 15 Jun 06 - 11:28 AM

Those little boxes and the kids in the university represented the realization of huge dreams by a generation who had come through the Depression and WWII and had worked hard and risked their lives for the opportunities that those little boxes represented - opportunities that in many cases had not existed for prior generations of (my) family.

The lesson is perhaps to be careful what you dream - for it just might come true and not really be what you want after all?

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fr
From: greg stephens
Date: 15 Jun 06 - 11:25 AM

Countess Richard: bluegrass(especially in its modern forms) bores me rigid. On that we agree. However, we must part company when you say it isn't rooted in tradition. I can think of few forms of music more deeply rooted in tradition. But alas, the fruit is a little too full of pips for my taste. (Not a very good metaphor, I'm afraid. I just mean all that breakneck banjo irritates the hell out of me. Now, if they'd just stick to that high singing I'd be with them all the way).

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fra
From: BuckMulligan
Date: 15 Jun 06 - 11:20 AM

no doubt, no doubt. When you come from some of the places that many of those folk came from, yeah, to have a little box and send your kids to university is a huge dream. When one has to quit school in the eighth grade to work to support a family of siblings, or grows up in an industrial tenement, yeah, a little box house of one's own in a suburb is a huge dream, and the prospect of one's kids not having to repeat one's own life is a huge dream.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 15 Jun 06 - 11:14 AM

Huge dreams?

Maybe it's just saying that they could try aspiring to rather more meaningful and less materialistic and selfish dreams?

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fra
From: BuckMulligan
Date: 15 Jun 06 - 11:11 AM

CR - ok, fair enough. I'd assume it wouldn't come under the World Music umbrella because it's rooted in white, northwestern european tradition.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fra
From: BuckMulligan
Date: 15 Jun 06 - 11:09 AM

Y'know, I have ALWAYS hated that song, and disrespected Reynolds for it. Those little boxes and the kids in the university represented the realization of huge dreams by a generation who had come through the Depression and WWII and had worked hard and risked their lives for the opportunities that those little boxes represented - opportunities that in many cases had not existed for prior generations of (my) family. The sneering self-righteousness of that song is just rude and disrespectful of literally millions of people.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 15 Jun 06 - 11:09 AM

As I said in Post #8, 'world music' is a marketing term coined to give retailers a box to put it in and to give you a clue as to where you're likely to find it in the record shop.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: Peace
Date: 15 Jun 06 - 11:04 AM

Malvina Reynolds

Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky-tacky,
Little boxes, little boxes,
Little boxes, all the same.
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they're all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same.

And the people in the houses
All go to the university,
And they all get put in boxes,
Little boxes, all the same.
And there's doctors and there's lawyers
And business executives,
And they're all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same.

And they all play on the golf-course,
And drink their Martini dry,
And they all have pretty children,
And the children go to school.
And the children go to summer camp
And then to the university,
And they all get put in boxes
And they all come out the same.

And the boys go into business,
And marry, and raise a family,
And they all get put in boxes,
Little boxes, all the same.
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they're all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same.



We jus' love to put things in little cubicles, don't we?

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 15 Jun 06 - 11:02 AM

Music which is 'rooted in a tradition' is not necessarily a criteria that determines whether or not I listen to it. I don't listen to bluegrass because I don't like it (and I played in an old-timey band once). I said it was not 'rooted in a tradition', meaning that it emanates from certain elements of several and is thus a manufactured genre which would not, here in the UK anyway, come under the umbrella of 'world music', any more than wifty-wafty, new-agey, celticky, stuff does.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fra
From: BuckMulligan
Date: 15 Jun 06 - 10:50 AM

The statement "Bluegrass isn't music 'rooted in a tradition' but a relatively recent US invention (by Bill Monroe, principally) combining elements of a number of evolving traditions brought into a specific US region by a variety of immigrant musicians." seems self-contradictory to me.

As a separate, definable form, what we call bluegrass is indeed traceable to Monroe; given that, as you say, it combines elements of several traditions, how then is it ever not "rooted in tradition?" That strikes me a little like saying that a version of Barbry Allen that's backed by a Piedmont-style finger-picked guitar is not "rooted in tradition" because the twain hadn't met in real life. Of course bluegrass is "rooted in tradition."

And surely you didn't mean to imply that you wouldn't care to listen to it BECAUSE is isn't "rooted in tradition" did you?

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 15 Jun 06 - 10:33 AM

Yes, I'd far rather listen to Nine Inch Nails than bluegrass too. But whatever point you are making is far from clear. Bluegrass isn't music 'rooted in a tradition' but a relatively recent US invention (by Bill Monroe, principally) combining elements of a number of evolving traditions brought into a specific US region by a variety of immigrant musicians.

What Jim Causley was referring to was performing music wholly rooted in the English tradition to (mostly) English people at a (predominantly) mainstream festival and surprising them greatly.

We would seem to be two very different nations divided by a far from common language by an ever-widening pond. That in some ways makes me feel better.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: Scoville
Date: 15 Jun 06 - 10:16 AM

"A final quote from Jim talking about a 3 a.m. set at Glastonbury:

It fascinates me how you can put this music in front of people who haven't heard it, and it sounds so exotic to them, even though it's from their own backyard. I feel like saying 'this is our world music here!' "




I loaned a bluegrass tape to a high school classmate who listened mostly to Nine Inch Nails and had literally never heard bluegrass. He listened to about 10 seconds of it and then gave it back, horrified, telling me he'd never heard such awful noise before. It was pretty priceless.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: Scoville
Date: 15 Jun 06 - 10:12 AM

1. I've heard a lot of music that purported to be "world" music that sounded a whole lot like what I have come to know as "new age" music. I came to the conclusion that "world music" is a poorly-defined genre that serves musicians poorly, as well as potential listeners.

2. The term does NOT include 'new age' or 'fusion', the first of which is absolutely not tradition-based and the second is by definition a combination of two or more traditions.


I have to say that #1 pretty well describes what I often hear being played as "World Music" around here, presumably because a lot of New Age-ish stuff pretends to borrow from Celtic themes. I'm not saying that's good, bad, or otherwise, just that that's my observation.

Obviously, I then have to disagree with #2 because, whatever the definition of "World Music" should be, or is formally, that's not always how it is used.

All I know is that if the radio says it's World Music hour, I have to change the station because I'm not going to like it. It's not that I don't like non-European/American traditions, it's that the stuff they play is very often not traditional, no matter what the tradition. I don't think that was the original intent of the category, but it kind of snowballed.

I don't have a problem with using "World Music" as a category since it at least helps us in the CD store when we need a gamelan fix. I also don't mind finding U.S. regional music in "World Music" because, after all, it's SOMEBODY'S international music even if it's not ours.

By the same token, I don't mind "Americana" because some stuff just isn't quite rock, isn't really country, isn't really bluegrass, and sure as Hell ain't blues or old-time.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: Grab
Date: 15 Jun 06 - 09:49 AM

1) folk music, which I love, has been swallowed up by this category

This would be folk music, as in Irish, English, Scottish, Shetland, Welsh, Cornish, Breton, Norwegian or other traditional? or the various derivatives of those such as Appalatian or Cape Breton? or blues-inspired folk from Big Bill Broonzy and Mississippi John Hurt? or subsequent American singer-songwriter stuff from Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Tom Paxton and co? or subsequent British, French, etc singer-songwriter stuff like Bert Jansch, John Renbourn, Jacques Brel? or folk-rock from Pentangle and Fairport Convention? or folk-punk-rock from the Levellers or the Pogues? or electronic folk-rock from the Blue Horses and others? or pop bands like Crowded House who write acoustic-heavy songs?

By putting this music onto a shelf and labelling it "World Music", you are creating a genre

A genre is *always* a rather arbitrarily-created category to hold many things which may be loosely related to each other but which are not themselves the same. And it doesn't mean that the genre is self-enclosed either.

Folk music is such a genre. So is "world music". So is blues. Some people in all three have been influenced by each other, and by other genres such as pop and rock. Some people within that genre may *not* have been influenced by other sub-categories within that genre - for instance, I doubt like hell that Bob Dylan has had any significant connection with the Shetland or Cape Breton fiddle traditions - but that doesn't stop them all being loosely grouped into the "folk music" genre. This doesn't mean that the genres shouldn't exist, does it?

Or if it does, and you're saying that all genres should be split into more accurate descriptions of music types, then *you* must also also give up the existence of the "folk music" genre, where you say you like music from that genre but have not thought to describe in detail which of the *many* sub-cultures of folk music you like. By saying simply that you like "folk music", you've rather exploded your own argument there.

The old argument that we hear time and time again is that in a multi ethnic society, we must open our ears to all types of music and that if you do not, then you are narrow minded – and by implication, racist.

If you're not prepared to at least give all types of music a fair go, then you're certainly narrow-minded. If you're rejecting it simply on the basis of it coming from a different culture, you're likely also racist. If, after listening to a bunch of examples of that type of music, you realise that it's not for you, then that's fine - we don't all have to like the same kind of music. But dismissing it (and criticising its very existence) without being willing to experience it is the very definition of narrow-mindedness, is it not?

there is something a little self-righteous about these listeners who give themselves a moral superiority which they do not in any way deserve

*All* listeners to "world music", you say? You feel yourself able to generalise about all these people you've never met? See definition of narrow-mindedness above...

Graham.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 15 Jun 06 - 09:30 AM

Guest Penguin Egg (the first poster) is just another of those many voices saying "You there, shut up! You aren't [select one]

talented
authentic
creative
equipped* enough

to make music. There are important, official people whose job it is to make music, so put that instrument away, stop singing, and start buying their stuff!"

People like that are everywhere. The thing to do is ignore them.

*equipped means having the most expensive of any instrument, etc.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: GUEST
Date: 15 Jun 06 - 09:16 AM

"No self-respecting 'World' Music festival or magazine would promote a UK 'pop' group but would and do promote groups who may be the most popular 'pop' group in their country. This is a form of reverse snobbery that benefits no music making".

WOMAD - in recent years: Echo and The Bunnymen, The Proclaimers, Crowded House

back then: New Order, The Fall, Simple Minds

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 15 Jun 06 - 07:54 AM

England lags way behind other countries such as Scotland, Ireland, Sweden and Finland who have long held their traditional music in far greater respect and given it equal academic credence with other genres. The first Newcastle graduates qualified only last year from a course which requires similar AB grades as any other music course (though these may be waived on merit at audition). Students normally take two studies, one of which may be voice, and although the course is very much performance-based, they also pursue musbiz modules to prepare them for a variety of careers, like any other academic degree. And about time too.

These TDI members (in common with many of the other students I have talked to) have, of course, a deep interest in trad music, dance and song though their attitude is far from precious. Speaking of Topic's Voice Of The People series of source singers for whom singing was a part of their identity, they say how they are drawn particularly to the free-spirited and anarchic singing style of travelling people which they have studied carefully. To quote Lauren McCormick: 'We're drawn to thoise singers not just because they sing great songs but because of the way they sing them. They're not only bearers of a tradition but creative musicians in their own right. We don't listen to them out of a sense of duty, we listen to them for pleasure. They're great singers'.

Because we are no longer a society in which traditional arts are passed on while down a mineshaft or toiling in a cornfield, contemporary performers are learning their craft by electronic means and from each other in somewhat more sophisticated surroundings. Seems like progress to me. Isn't it ridiculously Luddite to call this 'middle-class fraud'?

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: The Shambles
Date: 15 Jun 06 - 07:27 AM

I wonder how much better these 'source singers' would have sounded like had they been taught how to do it at university and obtained degrees in the subject?

Is doing it this way also the future or another white middle-class fraud?

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 15 Jun 06 - 06:39 AM

look at fRoots

I'm doing that right now as the new July edition has just come through my letter box. The cover feature is about The Devil's Interval (subtitled The Rise & Rise Of The Younger Tradition) in which Jim Causley, Lauren McCormick and Emily Portman (undergraduates on the Newcastle tradmus degree), discuss at length with Brian Peters their wide-open attitudes and experimental, ingenious, part-switching approach to vocal harmony which manages to sound entirely unforced and spontaneous, while being in fact highly sophisticated. Yes, they've been back to their roots and have the deepest respect for source singers but don't copy them blindly but seek to take the music forward. Significantly, they enthuse graphically about the new type of venue, performance spaces run by young people who are products of an eclectic social and musical background to whom it is entirely natural to have so-called 'traditional' English instruments (like melodeons growing on apple trees maybe?) playing eastern music followed by Japanese techno, Congo-Brazilian collaboration and finishing up with a DJ. Places which so-called 'f*lkies' around here would view with disdain if they knew about them and would never dream of attending. They should. It's the future.

A final quote from Jim talking about a 3 a.m. set at Glastonbury:

It fascinates me how you can put this music in front of people who haven't heard it, and it sounds so exotic to them, even though it's from their own backyard. I feel like saying 'this is our world music here!'

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: Folk Form # 1
Date: 15 Jun 06 - 06:06 AM

If people want to listen to "world" music, of course I would not stop them. However, my gripe against this title is: 1) folk music, which I love, has been swallowed up by this category- look at fRoots; 2) By putting this music onto a shelf and labelling it "World Music", you are creating a genre; and 3) there is something a little self-righteous about these listeners who give themselves a moral superiority which they do not in any way deserve.

I am not narrow minded. Someone asked me exactly what sort of music I like: well, I like a lot, mostly music from the west, but that is a broad sweep that includes Afro American-music. I like folk music and we all know what I mean by it. In Pakistan, it may mean something else, which is fine, but it is different. If someone wants to listen to music from Zimbabwe-also fine; but do not plonk it into the artificial melting pot of World Music where it does not belong.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: The Shambles
Date: 15 Jun 06 - 04:57 AM

No self-respecting 'World' Music festival or magazine would promote a UK 'pop' group but would and do promote groups who may be the most popular 'pop' group in their country. This is a form of reverse snobbery that benefits no music making.

I would like to see the bigger festivals like Glastonbury - who have different stages for different styles - mix them up a bit.

With special festivals or special stages you tend to see act after act who are all from different parts of the world and who may be very talented but who, when they are singing words that you cannot understand, tend to limit the excitement and lessen the effect of the new.

I suggest the best way to promote good acts like these would be to put them on the main festival stage sandwiched between the two (currently) biggest conventional acts.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: Paco Rabanne
Date: 15 Jun 06 - 04:28 AM

Agreed Shambles. If the current marketing situation existed 40years ago The Rolling Stones would probably be sold as 'World music'

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: The Shambles
Date: 15 Jun 06 - 03:15 AM

In the 50s and 60s many artists from the UK were inspired by the fine styles of music they heard coming from the USA. And although few had any direct experience of the folk or circumstances that produced this music - because of the genuine respect for it and a real need to make it - the best of them were (over time) able to add some elements of their own which in turn fed back and enriched the whole of music making.

One can only hope that the same thing will happen with music emanating from other parts of the world. I suggest that it will happen best without attempts to market these forms of music which may be seen as self-concious and patronising attempts to champion it - or as it was proposed (for the sake of discussion) in the first post as white middle-class fraud.

I think the danger of this approach and reaction to it - can be seen as magazines and now many festivals, confine themselves to artists who fit in to some idea of what this 'World' or 'Roots' music is - and exclude from it much fine music making that may not fit this idea.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 15 Jun 06 - 12:55 AM

All this raises another question- how do you separate upper, middle and lower class music nowadays?

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 15 Jun 06 - 12:51 AM

If you don't like the term, propose another. But like McGrath and Amos, I find it a useful grouping for music outside of the Euro-North American mainstream.
The BBC Music Magazine prints many fine reviews of musicians and their recordings under that heading each month.
For July, reviewed and discussed is much music that I would like to hear, none of it belonging to the usual Euro-North American cluster. Included are:
The Gotan Project and the cd Lunatico, in which tango's roots are explored by some of the best Argentinian and Parisian tango musicians.
Ojos de Brujo, devoted to the 'now' sound of Spain, a mix of music some call fusionista.
Descarga Oriental, music by an Algerian pianist and a Cuban percussionist.
Nour Ensemble, a Franco-Iranian group exploring a mixture of Gregorian plainsong, Spanish cantigas and Persian and Kurdish music.
Gwenllian, by Welsh triple harpist Lilo Rhydderch (a tradition kept alive by Welsh gypsies.
Sounds from a Bygone Age, music by Romica Puceanu and the Gore Brothers, Gypsy ghetto songs.

Last month, especial attention was given to music by some central Asian groups, as I remember. The term 'World music' is non-rigid, and covers much that does not fit the usual categories.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: michaelr
Date: 15 Jun 06 - 12:17 AM

M. Ted, your point is illogical. Every part of an elephant can be measured, documented, analyzed, and taught to others. But nowhere in its anatomy will you find evidence that the animal is called "elephant".

Cheers,
Michael

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: M.Ted
Date: 14 Jun 06 - 11:58 PM

Something that puzzles me to no end is the fact that people seem to have extreme problems defining and categorizing music, when music, by its very nature, consists only of elements that are precisely and carefully defined so that they can be exactly reproduced.

Notes, melody, chords, rhythm, measures, all can be marked out exactly, and often are. Every element can be documented, precisely recreated, and even taught so that others can precisely recreate it--so why all the vagueness and ambiguity?

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fra
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 14 Jun 06 - 08:03 PM

Labels are handy, but they get extended and distorted over time. It's happened with "Folk music" and its happening with "World Music", as also with "Roots Music", or "Jazz" or "Country". Or "Classical" for that matter.

Sometimes people playing or enjoying a particular kind of music want the label because they see it as helpful in getting people to listen to it; sometimes it's the other way round. That's why new labels get invented that overlap with the old, but don't coincide with them.

It can't be helped. The thing to remember is that labels are a kind of map, and "the map is not the territory".

"Traditional Music" is a pretty good label, because it's more resistant than most to this process, and implicitly recignises that there are a lot of different traditions in different parts of the world. (Where it falls down is maybe when it's taken to suggest that there is a single tradition in particular countries or regions, and that's rarely true, especially over time, and when its used as a way of trying to invalidate music from different traditions, or changes in tradition.)

I'm pleased to see that this pretty interesting thread has grown out of that rather addled opening post with its "white middle class fraud" posturing. I like it when Mudcatters can do that, because all too often we don't.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: 282RA
Date: 14 Jun 06 - 08:03 PM

Of course all language is a fraud. what else could it be?

Words can never tell you what something IS. It might say what it DOES but never what it IS. What it DOES we can grasp since we decide that anyway. What it IS is unknowable, inexpressible. But we confuse DOES for IS and hence the fraud.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: M.Ted
Date: 14 Jun 06 - 07:56 PM

"All labels are useless and describe nothing."

Is this, in your view, because in language, there is no real connection between words and the things they are supposed to describe? If this is true, then all word meanings would constitute "fraud", not just musical genres.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: 282RA
Date: 14 Jun 06 - 07:21 PM

All musical labels are frauds, guy.

"Folk music" is as fraudulent as "world music." Why? Cuz ALL music is made by "folks." What music isn't made by some folk somewhere? All music then is folk music. The heaviest, loudest, meanest ripping thrashing metal is as validly a folk music as Pete Seeger singing "Little Boxes."

Same with "alternative music." Alternative to what?? Alternative to Whitney Houston? Well, the Monkees are as alternative to Houston as the Goo-goo Dolls. Jazz is as much an alternative to rap as country is. All music is an alternative to any other music.

Same with "country music." Is there any music not made in a country? If they mean country as in rural, shouldn't it be called rural music? But then rural Japanese music sounds nothing like rural American so shouldn't our country music be called rural American music? But then couldn't early blues be termed the same? And the Canadians listen to the same country stuff we do and play it the same way and are just as good at at it might be offended to be left out so maybe it should be called rural American/Canadian music.

All labels are useless and describe nothing. Why world music is singled out by you for this rebuke is puzzling unless we conclude that you are simply close-minded about world music. Btw, I have bought quite a lot of this world music and I'm not a white or a DJ. I also play quite a lot of it precisely because I hate doing nothing but a straight Euro-centered set. I love bossa nova, Indian and Arabic music, Indonesian gamelan, traditional Chinese and Japanese, Eskimo chants, Tibetan Buddhist chanting, and most African forms.

As for whether your dislike for these musical forms (which borders dangerously on disrespect) is racist or not, well, I guess only you know that for certain--I don't know or care. But you ARE biased against it.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: M.Ted
Date: 14 Jun 06 - 07:00 PM

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--

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: GUEST,Jack Campin
Date: 14 Jun 06 - 06:36 PM

Who are you, "The Shambles"?

Ian Anderson picked fights with a quite few people on uk.music.folk. We had a brief epidemic of posters whose theme song might have been "nobody loves me, everybody hates me, think I'll go and eat worms". Ian's bete noire Janet Ryan was another one. I don't think many of us actually did hate either of them.

There are at least two other Iain/Ian Andersons in the folk world: one is a presenter on Radio Scotland and the other is a youngish Scottish musician. I think all of the others are better than the crap flute player.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fr
From: greg stephens
Date: 14 Jun 06 - 06:17 PM

A remarkably effective designation, Ithink. "World music" tells me pretty much what to expect, and any box of CDs labelled that is pretty much guaranteed to give me some delightful surprises. And(this is purely taste) I know I am likely to like all the records in the box. Unlike the term "folk", which nowadays can mean so many things that I really havent a clue what might be in the box.
The starter of this thread, like a lot of people, seems to think that classification into genres always implies a moral or aesthetic judgement, which always causes needless controversy. Mudcat is so full of threads with discussions along the lines of
A: Richard Thompson isn't folk.
B: How can you say that, you nazi, Richard Thompson is wonderful. (The second remark is presented as some kind of disagreement with the first, when it is obviously nothing of the kind. It is merely a knee-jerk reaction by someone who isnt following the discussion).
   The threadstarter seems to imply there is something bad about the term "world music", and almost seems to be saying it is a good thing not to like Zimbabwean music. It's neither good nor bad, it's just a fact,whether you like Zimbabwean music or not (though it doess seem to be a rather sweeping statement to dismiss an entire nation's music, just because Ian Anderson calls it "world music").
      Anyway, I think it's a great term, keep using it. What will always cause the controversy, though, is which (if any) English records go into the box. Tickell, Boden and Boat Band in the recent fRoots playlist, I noticed. Seems fair enough to me.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: GUEST,World Of Folk
Date: 14 Jun 06 - 05:54 PM



Tosser, was it?

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: GUEST
Date: 14 Jun 06 - 05:50 PM

Do you have a working class beard?

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: The Shambles
Date: 14 Jun 06 - 05:11 PM

As a lad from solid working-class stock - the thought of this Mr Anderson recognising me in the street as middle-class - is far more insulting that him describing me as a fraud or anything else.

When he was a contributor on uk.music.folk - he has called me far less flattering words than a fraud.....

The Jethro Tull Mr Anderson has enough talent and creativity (even on one leg) that should he recognise me in the street - he is quite welcome to call me any name he wishes.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 14 Jun 06 - 05:01 PM

I am more or less middle class, whitish, and like music from Zimbabwe (I think..don't know it as such) and also polkas from Poland. I can't think of how it harms anyone so otherwise who of adult persuasion would mind? I hate music with jangly rhythms though...and music that sounds to my Polish-loving ears whiney...and angry....I like lots of pretty stuff like they do in Zimbabwe and Caribbean and likewise Hawaii. mg

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fra
From: number 6
Date: 14 Jun 06 - 04:55 PM

I'm from New Brunswick (Canada)and categorically belong to the middle class and I listen to Middle Eastern and Indian music. That and along with any other music I like.

So there.

sIx

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 14 Jun 06 - 04:54 PM

Yes . . . and?

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: The Shambles
Date: 14 Jun 06 - 04:49 PM

That Ian Anderson is a telented musician - this one is the man who decided to remove the word 'Folk' from the title of his magazine.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 14 Jun 06 - 04:45 PM

No he wasn't. He is not known for the dubious ability to play a flute standing on one leg in a totally pants band.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fra
From: pdq
Date: 14 Jun 06 - 04:35 PM

He was the leader of Jethro Tull, one of the most interesting rock groups ever.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 14 Jun 06 - 04:32 PM

Ian Anderson is the editor of fRoots magazine (among other things). He is not, in my experience, a fraud; more of a musical mentor.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: Wesley S
Date: 14 Jun 06 - 04:20 PM

I must have missed something living in the USA. Who is this particular Ian Anderson and why would someone consider him a fraud ?

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 14 Jun 06 - 02:52 PM

A white middle-class fraud (like Mr Anderson) should certainly be well able to recognise a white middle-class fraud when he sees one

I should think he will, Roger, if he comes across you. He certainly knows who I am when he sees me in the street.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: The Shambles
Date: 14 Jun 06 - 02:47 PM

Thanks very much to Countess Richard's link to the fRoots article explaining exactly how the expression 'World Music' came about. It's by white middle-class jounalist Ian Anderson who explains what I want to say much better than I could.

A white middle-class fraud (like Mr Anderson) should certainly be well able to recognise a white middle-class fraud when he sees one.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: Amos
Date: 14 Jun 06 - 02:01 PM

Actually, as far as I have ever heard, "World Music" is NOT a genre, and I have never seen it presented as a genre in the musical sense.

And to answer a rather silly question, Sir Egg, you are not required to like anything you do not like. Even if you DO like something else. The proposition is absurd on the face of it.

The only use I have heard the phrase used for is to describe a collection of ethnic music types from various roots, not necessarily related to each other. It is only meaningful in the context of the Western music marketplace, where the dominant categories are all English-speaking.

A

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: Les from Hull
Date: 14 Jun 06 - 01:41 PM

Sorry for the above. I missed.

Thanks very much to Countess Richard's link to the fRoots article explaining exactly how the expression 'World Music' came about. It's by white middle-class jounalist Ian Anderson who explains what I want to say much better than I could.
It's not all positive, but World Music (or Musique du Monde in neighbourly Paris) is way ahead on points. It sells large quantities of records that you couldn't find for love or money two decades ago. It has let many musicians in quite poor countries get new respect (and houses, cars and food for their families), and it turns out massive audiences for festivals and concerts. It has greatly helped international understanding and provoked cultural exchanges -- people who've found themselves neighbours in the same box have listened to each other and ended up making amazing music together. Oh, and it has allowed a motley bunch of enthusiasts to not yet need to get proper jobs. I call it a Good Thing, and just feel a bit sorry for people with the thinking time on their hands to decide they hate World Music... Lighten up, guys, it's only a box in a record shop.
For less narrow-minded people who may enjoy some different kind of music here's a link the BBC Radio 3 Awards for World Music (which unusually for a Radio show was on the television). click 'ere There's also a budget-priced CD of the award winners, also recommended. My own favourite from that concert (although I wouldn't presume to tell anyone else out there who to like) was Arto Tuncboyaciyan from the Armenian Navy Band - with extra points for inventive use of a beer bottle!

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: Les from Hull
Date: 14 Jun 06 - 01:37 PM

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: Azizi
Date: 14 Jun 06 - 01:32 PM

Euro-centric institutions have defined what is folk music and what is classical music as music from that is composed by European people. All else is "other".

Dividing the world of music in this way has political, pyschological, and economic implications that I'm not happy with.

We {people of color} are the world. But European people are the world also.

And so-on one level-the term "World music" is indeed a misnomer and an artificial construct. And also on one level it is a 'racist' term.

However, you work with the world you're in and not the world you wish you were in.

I accept the fact that 'World music' is a hodge-podge 'category' for different genres of music from non-European cultures. I welcome the musical fusion of different cultures such as the Afro-Celtic music and the East-Indian/dancehall Reggae music. I recognize that there are few [if any] musical genres that are pure. And that doesn't bother me in the least.

I believe that the purpose of this catch-all "World Music" category is to introduce folks throughout the world to a multitude of different music that we otherwise might not have been aware of.

Once introduced to this music, some folks will find music that they like, and some won't. It bes that way sometimes.

But some people might discover that they do like certain music within that hodge podge category. And they may like that music so much that eventually they move to the next level of understanding in which they find out the name of that type of music, and then seek out other examples of that music. Hopefully, they will then support the artists who compose and perform that music by purchasing their CDs. And because they found out that they liked that music, maybe they will take a chance and purchase another type of music from that same continent of from another continent. And maybe they will even take the time to learn a little about the cultures from which those musical forms originated.

And then, maybe just maybe, if the person is a musician he or she will start to take risks and experiment with 'fusing' the music traditions of his culture with that of this 'foreign' culture that he or she is just learning about.

And eventually-who knows?- we will realize that all music really is World music since "We-all of us-are the World".

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: Wesley S
Date: 14 Jun 06 - 01:26 PM

"white middle class journalists and DJs who tirelessly peddle this "music" to an uninterested public"

Penguin Egg - If what you say is true then this music will disappear on it's own. But if the CD's are still being stocked in your local record store - and if they are still selling - then you're wrong. The marketplace is driven by one thing only - and that's money. I suggest that the best thing you can do to make "world music" go away is to not spend any of your hard earned money on it.

And if someone has been forcing you to listen to it without your consent - call the police.

Is it alright for those people who DO like world music to continue to listen to it ?

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: Alba
Date: 14 Jun 06 - 12:54 PM

"there isn't any music which isn't "world music" since that's where it comes from" I was thinking pretty much the same Myself McGrath.

Interplanetary Music. That would include World Music (Earth Music) and would perhaps bear the label 'Universal Music' or 'Galaxy Music' even ..*smile*
J

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 14 Jun 06 - 12:53 PM

Yes, McGrath K, 'world music' might well be a daft term but if you read through the history indicated at the link above, no-one has yet come up with a better one to categorise musics from cultures other than White European/American that are rooted in a tradition. The term does NOT include 'new age' or 'fusion', the first of which is absolutely not tradition-based and the second is by definition a combination of two or more traditions.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fra
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 14 Jun 06 - 12:39 PM

From what WYSIWYG said there I suspect the term may not hav ethe same meaning in the states.

It's a convenient labelling system that makes it easier to find music from other traditions and cultures. Of course when you think of it it's a pretty daft term - there isn't any music which isn't "world music" since that's where it comes from.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: Paco Rabanne
Date: 14 Jun 06 - 12:04 PM

At least it's not as bad as the dreaded "fusion" word.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: wysiwyg
Date: 14 Jun 06 - 12:03 PM

I've heard a lot of music that purported to be "world" music that sounded a whole lot like what I have come to know as "new age" music. I came to the conclusion that "world music" is a poorly-defined genre that serves musicians poorly, as well as potential listeners.

That said, there is a lot of good music from all over the world, and I appreciate anyone's attempts to bring it to my attention. I guess, to some extent, I rely on Mudcat to do that.

~Susan

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: Les from Hull
Date: 14 Jun 06 - 12:00 PM

Although the term 'world music' is a made-up phrase primarily designed by record companies to enable assistants in record shop to have somewhere to put certain CDs, that dose not mean that the music has not value. I listen to lots of music in this so-called categaory and enjoy it immensely. It doesn't bother me one little bit that it's a meaningless category, at least I can find it in the record shop.

I'm more bothered about your comments about 'white middle-class journalists and DJs'. I presume by this you are referring to people like Andy Kershaw, Lucy Duran and Charlie Gillett (in the UK) whose selection of interesting sounds from around the world has added greatly to my listening pleasure.

Perhaps people on this forum would be more interested if you told us what music you do like, rather than to post here with your narrow-minded view of the many kinds of music you don't like.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: GUEST,Russ
Date: 14 Jun 06 - 11:57 AM

If I remember correctly, "word music" was a label invented by the people who distribute and sell records. They needed a label to put on a bin. They wanted to dump all the musical odds and ends from around the world into a single bin rather than categorize them more properly in separate bins.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 14 Jun 06 - 11:56 AM

It's a marketing term to give retailers a box to put it in:

History of World Music.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fra
From: BuckMulligan
Date: 14 Jun 06 - 11:44 AM

I was mistaken, apparently. I thought it was intended to be a dialogue.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: Peace
Date: 14 Jun 06 - 11:35 AM

Thank you for the clarification.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: GUEST,Penguin Egg
Date: 14 Jun 06 - 11:29 AM

My point is quite clear and I have no wish to reiterate it again. However, thank you for your input.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: The Shambles
Date: 14 Jun 06 - 11:18 AM

The point is valid but no music making is a fraud.

Most labels applied to it - in order to sell it are a fraud.

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: Peace
Date: 14 Jun 06 - 11:17 AM

Keriste on a crutch. If ya don't like it, don't listen to it. I don't like opera. I don't like rap. I don't like acid rock. I don't like "Danny Boy" done by anyone. I do agree with Popeye--"I likes what I likes." To paraphrase Buck, "What's yer point?"

Subject: RE: Review: World music - a white middle class fra
From: BuckMulligan
Date: 14 Jun 06 - 11:14 AM

What's your point? The term "world music" - AFAIK - is a handy term to indicate basically "not Euro-American". I don't think I've ever heard anyone argue that it's a genre, what idiot would do so? If you don't like Zimbabwean music, more power to ya, and who frickin cares? I return to my opening query: what's yer point?

Subject: Review: World music - a white middle class fraud
From: GUEST,Penguin Egg
Date: 14 Jun 06 - 11:05 AM

Is it not time we called time on World Music? This middle class fraud has rambled on like an old jalopy for the best part of 25 years and yet has failed to fire the imagination of anyone except white middle class journalists and DJs who tirelessly peddle this "music" to an uninterested public. What is world music? It is anything you want it to be. That being the case, there is no such thing as world music, and the quicker we learn this, the quicker we can dismiss this sham. Why should someone into folk music from the British Isles like music from Zimbabwe? Why should someone who likes music from Bali like reggae music? The old argument that we hear time and time again is that in a multi ethnic society, we must open our ears to all types of music and that if you do not, then you are narrow minded – and by implication, racist. The guilt buttons are pushed and the liberal knee jerk reactions come into play. It is a ludicrous argument. Music is music and that is that, you either like it or not. If you do not like music from Zimbabwe, and I do not, does that mean I do not like the people? What if you are Irish and you don't like the Dubliners – does that mean you are a self-loathing Irishman?   


World music is a mish-mash, a false genre, that has no real constituency. It does not exist as a separate musical form or as a loose umbrella. It is an illusion. What constitutes world music shifts from one person to another. It is interesting to note that interest in world music does not extend beyond the shores of "white " countries. If you go to Africa, Bali, or wherever, these people could not give a toss about world music, even if they turn up for the world music festivals – only if they are paid, of course. And good for them. They should not tolerate white men patronising them for a single moment.