Review: World music - a white middle class fraud

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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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 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 - 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 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 - 11:09 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 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 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 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 - 11:20 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 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 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 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: 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 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: 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 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: 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 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: 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 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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 - 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 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 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 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 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: 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,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 - 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: 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: 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 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 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 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: 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,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 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.