world-wide-music

World music is a general categorical term for global music, such as the traditional music or folk music of a culture that is created and played by indigenous musicians and is closely related to the music of the regions of their origin. Cultural appropriation in Western music The term has been credited to ethnomusicologist Robert E. Brown, who coined it in the 1960s at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, where he developed undergraduate through doctoral programs in the discipline. To enhance the process of learning, he invited more than a dozen visiting performers from Africa and Asia and began a world music concert series. The term became current in the 1980s as a marketing/classificatory device in the media and the music industry, and it is generally used to classify any kind of non-Western music. There are several conflicting definitions for world music. One is that it consists of “all the music in the world”, though such a broad definition renders the word virtually meaningless. The term also is taken as a classification of music that combines Western popular music styles with one of many genres of non-Western music that were previously described as folk music or ethnic music. However, world music is not exclusively traditional folk music. It may refer to the indigenous classical forms of various regions of the world, and to modern, cutting edge pop music styles as well. Succinctly, it can be described as “local music from out there”, or “someone else’s local music”. World music may incorporate distinctive non-Western scales, modes and/or musical inflections, and often features distinctive traditional ethnic instruments, such as the kora (West African harp), the steel drum, the sitar or the didgeridoo. Music from around the world exerts wide cross-cultural influence as styles naturally influence one another, and in recent years world music has also been marketed as a successful genre in itself. Academic study of world music, as well as the musical genres and individual artists with which it has been associated, can be found in such disciplines as anthropology, folkloristics, performance studies and ethnomusicology. Examples of popular forms of world music include the various forms of non-European classical music (e.g. Japanese koto music, Indian raga music, Tibetan chants), eastern European folk music (e.g. the village music of the Balkans) and the many forms of folk and tribal music of the Middle East, Africa, Asia, Oceania and Central and South America. The Breton musician Alan Stivell pioneered the connection between traditional folk music, modern rock music and world music with his 1970’s album Renaissance of the Celtic Harp. The broad category of world music includes isolated forms of ethnic music from diverse geographical regions. These dissimilar strains of ethnic music are commonly categorized together by virtue of their indigenous roots. Over the 20th century, the invention of sound recording, low-cost international air travel and common access to global communication among artists and the general public has given rise to a related phenomenon called “crossover” music. Musicians from diverse cultures and locations could readily access recorded music from around the world, see and hear visiting musicians from other cultures and visit other countries to play their own music, creating a melting pot of stylistic influences. While communication technology allows greater access to obscure forms of music, the pressures of commercialization also present the risk of increasing musical homogeny, the blurring of regional identities, and the gradual extinction of traditional local music-making practices. Although it primarily describes traditional music, the world music category also includes popular music from non-Western urban communities (e.g. South African “township” music) and non-European music forms that have been influenced by other so-called third-world musics (e.g. Afro-Cuban music), although Western-style popular song sourced from non-English-speaking countries in Western Europe (e.g. French pop music) would not generally be considered world music. Paris is one of the great European capitals for world music. For many years, the city has attracted numerous musicians from former colonies in West Africa and North Africa. This thriving scene is aided by the fact that there are many concerts and institutions that help promote the music. Algerian and Moroccan music have an important presence in the French capital. Hundreds of thousands of Algerian and Moroccan immigrants have settled in Paris, bringing the sounds of Amazigh (Berber), raï, and Gnawa music. Algerian raï also found a large French audience, especially Cheb Mami. The West African community is also very large, integrated by people from Senegal, Mali, Ivory Coast, and Guinea. They have introduced manding jeli music, mbalax and other styles. The origins of the term world music (in relation to the selling of this type of music) began in 1982 when World Music Day (Fête de la Musique) was initiated in France. World Music Day has been celebrated on 21 June every year since then. On Monday 29 June 1987 a meeting of interested parties gathered to capitalise on the marketing of this genre. Arguably popular interest was sparked with the release in 1986 of Paul Simon’s Graceland album. The concept behind the album was to express his own sensibilities using the sounds he had fallen in love with while listening to artists from Southern Africa, including Ladysmith Black Mambazo and Savuka. This project and the work of Peter Gabriel and Johnny Clegg among others had, to some degree, introduced non-Western music to a wider audience. This was an opportunity which could not be ignored Before 1987, world music had a following but it was still difficult for interested parties to sell their music to the larger music stores. Although specialist music stores had been important in developing the genre over many years, the record companies, broadcasters and journalists had been finding it difficult to build a following because the music, itself, seemed too scarce. However, they were aware that the jazz and classical markets had developed a crossover audience and decided that the best way forward would be to have a collective strategy in order to bring the music to a wider audience. At the outset of the 1987 meeting, the musician Roger Armstrong advised the reason why something needed to be done: (He) felt that the main problem in selling our kind of material lay with the UK retail outlets and, specifically, the fact that they did not know how to rack it coherently. This discouraged (the retail stores) from stocking the material in any depth and made it more difficult for the record buyers to become acquainted with our catalogues. The first concern of the meetings was to select the umbrella name that this ‘new’ music would be listed under. Suggestions included ‘World Beat’ and prefixing words such as ‘Hot’ or ‘Tropical’ to existing genre titles, but ‘World Music’ won after a show of hands, but initially it was not meant to be the title for a whole new genre, rather something which all of the record labels could place on the sleeves of records in order to distinguish them during the forthcoming campaign. It only became a title for the genre after an agreement that despite the publicity campaign, this wasn’t an exclusive club and that for the good of all, any label which was selling this type of music would be able to take advantage. Another issue which needed to be addressed was the distribution methods which existed at the time. Most of the main labels were unhappy with the lack of specialist knowledge displayed by sales persons which led to poor service; there was also a reluctance amongst many of the larger outlets to carry the music, because they understandably liked larger releases which could be promoted within store. It was difficult to justify a large presentation expense if the stock going into stores was limited. One of the marketing strategies used in the vinyl market at the time was the use of browser cards, which would appear in the record racks. As part of the world music campaign it was decided that these would be a two colour affair designed to carry a special offer package; to aid the retailer a selection of labels would also be included In an unprecedented move, all of the world music labels coordinated together and developed a compilation cassette for the cover of the music magazine NME. The overall running time was ninety minutes, each package containing a mini-catalogue showing the other releases on offer. By the time of a second meeting it was becoming clear that in order for the campaign to be successful, it should have its own dedicated press officer. The press officer would be able to juggle the various deadlines and also be able to sell the music as a concept to, not just the national stations, but also regional DJs who were keen to expand the variety of music they could offer. The DJ’s were a key resource as it was important for ‘world music’ to be seen as something which could be important to people outside London – most regions after all had a similarly rich folk heritage which could be tapped into. A cost effective way of achieving all this would be a leafleting campaign. The next step was to develop a world music chart, gathering together selling information from around fifty shops, so that it would finally be possible to see which were big sellers in the genre — allowing new listeners to see what was particularly popular. It was agreed that the NME could again be involved in printing the chart and also Music Week and the London listings magazine City Limits. It was also suggested that Andy Kershaw might be persuaded to do a run down of this chart on his show regularly. October 1987 was designated ‘World Music Month’. A music festival, Crossing the Border, was held at the Town & Country Club in London, and it was the start of the winter season for both WOMAD and Arts Worldwide. The main press release stressed the issues inherent in the campaign. Since the early 80s the enthusiasm for music from ‘outside’ Western pop culture has been steadily mounting. More and more international artists, many of whom are big stars in their own countries, are coming to England on tour. They started off, like the Bhundu Boys, playing small clubs and pubs, but now many acts are so popular that they are filling larger venues. The excitement and word-of-mouth appeal is backed up by radio. Examples of shows that feature world music include World of Music on Voice of America, Transpacific Sound Paradise on WFMU, The Planet on Australia’s ABC Radio National, DJ Edu presenting D.N.A: DestiNation Africa on BBC Radio 1Xtra, Adil Ray on the BBC Asian Network, Andy Kershaw’s show on BBC Radio 3 and Charlie Gillett’s show on the BBC World Service. Today, mainstream music has adopted many of the features of world music, and artists such as Shakira and the members of the Buena Vista Social Club have reached a much wider audience. At the same time world music has been influenced by hip hop, pop and jazz. Even heavy metal bands such as Tool and Nile have incorporated world music into their own. Some entertainers who cross over to recording from film and television will often start with world music; Steven Seagal is a recent example. World music radio programs these days often play African hip hop or reggae artists, crossover Bhangra and Latin American jazz groups, etc. Public radio and webcasting are an important way for music enthusiasts all over the world to hear the enormous diversity of sounds and styles which, collectively, amount to world music. The BBC, NPR, and ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) are rich sources for world music where it is possible to listen online as well as read about the artists and history of this genre. Some musicians and curators of music have come to dislike the term “world music”. To these critics, “world music” is a parochial, catch-all marketing term for non-Western music of all genres. On October 3, 1999, David Byrne, the founder of the Luaka Bop music label, wrote an editorial in The New York Times entitled “I Hate World Music” explaining his objections to the term. Byrne argued that the labeling and categorization of other cultures as “exotic” serves to attract an insincere consumership and deter other potential consumers  There are many world music festivals and jazz, folk, roots, and new age crossover events. A small selection is represented here: The Ariano Folkfestival is a five-day world music festival held every summer in Ariano Irpino, a small town in southern Italy. The California World Music Festival is held each July at the Nevada County Fairgrounds. The World Sacred Music Festival is held annually in Olympia, Washington State, sponsored by Interfaith Works. FloydFest in Floyd, Virginia, United States, has featured artists from a wide diversity of styles including Ani DiFranco, Geno Delafose & French Rockin’ Boogie, Trumystic, Nickel Creek and Akoya Afrobeat Enemble. The Finger Lakes GrassRoots Festival of Music and Dance in Trumansburg, New York, United States, has featured artists from a variety of world and ethnic music genres including Tinariwen, Thomas Mapfumo, Michael Franti, D’Gary, Boubacar Traore, Mamadou Diabate, and many more from around the world. The WOMAD Foundation puts on festivals in countries around the world, featuring artists such as Youssou N’Dour, Robert Plant and Jaojoby. The Festival in the Desert takes place every year at Essakane, near Timbuktu, in Mali, West Africa and has achieved international status in spite of the difficulties of reaching its location. Rainforest World Music Festival is another world music festival held in Malaysia. Stern Grove Festival is a San Francisco celebration of musical and cultural diversity. Examples: Lucinda Williams, John Doe, Ojos de Brujo, O-Maya, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, the Funk Brothers and also symphony orchestras and operatic stars. The Starwood Festival has been held in July every year since 1981. It has fat burning furnace review featured such world music acts as Amampondo, Babatunde Olatunji, Badal Roy, Sikiru Adepoju, the Prodigals, Yaya Diallo, Merl Saunders and the Rainforest Band, Baka Beyond, Stephen Kent, Cyro Baptista, Airto Moreira, Muruga Booker, Gaelic Storm, and Halim El-Dabh. World Music Festival Lo Sguardo di Ulisse, first held in 1997 in Campania. Festival Músicas do outdoor table tennis table Mundo, Sines, is a world music festival first held in 1998, in a beautiful village near the coast. Mawazine is a festival of world music that takes place annually in Rabat, Morocco, featuring tinnitus treatment Arab and international music icons. The TFF.Rudolstadt takes place annually on the first full July weekend in Rudolstadt, Thuringia, Germany. The German World Music Festival der Klangfreunde takes place every first weekend of August, at Schlosspark Loshausen. Klangfreunde e. V. is a non-profit organization. Radio 1’s Big Weekend held in May annually , it moves from town to town, it is the biggest free ticketed event in Europe. Musicology (Greek: ??????? = “music” and ????? = “word” or “reason”) is the scholarly study of music. The word is used in narrow, broad and intermediate senses. In the narrow sense, musicology is confined to the music history of Western culture. In 18th birthday ideas the intermediate sense, it includes all relevant cultures and a range of musical forms, styles, genres and traditions. In the broad sense, it includes all musically relevant disciplines and all manifestations of music in all cultures. The broad meaning corresponds most closely to the word’s etymology, the entry on “musicology” in Grove’s dictionary, the entry on tourbillon watches “Musikwissenschaft” in Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, and the classic approach of Adler (1885). In the broad definition, the parent disciplines of musicology include history; cultural studies and gender studies; philosophy, aesthetics and semiotics; ethnology and cultural anthropology; archeology and prehistory; psychology and sociology; physiology and neuroscience; acoustics and psychoacoustics; and computer/information sciences and mathematics. Musicology also has two central, practically oriented subdisciplines with no parent discipline: performance practice and research, and the theory, analysis and composition of music. The disciplinary neighbors of musicology address other forms of art, performance, ritual and communication, including the history and theory of the visual and plastic arts and of architecture; linguistics, literature and theater; religion and theology; and sport. Musical knowledge and know-how are applied in medicine, education and music therapy, which may be regarded as the parent disciplines of Applied Musicology. Traditionally, historical musicology has been considered the largest and most important subdiscipline of musicology. Today, historical musicology is one of several large subdisciplines. Historical musicology, ethnomusicology, and systematic musicology are approximately equal in size – if numbers of active participants at international conferences is any guide. Systematic musicology includes music acoustics,the science and technology of acoustical musical instruments, physiology, psychology, sociology, philosophy and computing. Cognitive Musicology is the set of phenomena surrounding the computational modeling of music. Music history or historical musicology studies the composition, performance, reception, and criticism of music over time. Historical studies of music are for example concerned with a composer’s life and works, the developments of styles and genres (e. g. baroque concertos), the social function of music for a particular group of people (e. g. court music), or modes of performance at a particular place and time (e. g. Johann Sebastian Bach’s choir in Leipzig). Like the comparable field of art history, different branches and schools of historical musicology emphasize different types of musical works and different approaches to music. There are also national differences in the definition of historical musicology. In theory, “music history” could refer to the study of the history of any type or genre of music (e.g., the history of Indian music or the history of rock). In practice, these research topics are more often considered within ethnomusicology (see below) and “historical musicology” is assumed (ethnocentrically) to imply Western Art music. The methods of historical musicology include source studies (esp. manuscript studies), paleography, philology (especially textual criticism), style criticism, historiography (the choice of historical method), musical analysis, and iconography. The application of musical analysis to further these goals is often a part of music history, though pure analysis or the development of new tools of music analysis is more likely to be seen in the field of music theory. Music historians create a number of written products, ranging from journal articles describing their current research, new editions of musical works, biography of composers and other musicians, or book-length studies. Music historians may examine issues in a close focus, as in the case of scholars who examine the relationship between words and music for a given composer. On the other hand, some scholars take a broader view, and assess the place of a given type of music in society using techniques drawn from other fields, such as economics, sociology, or philosophy. New musicology is a term applied since the late 1980s to a wide body of work emphasizing cultural study, analysis, and criticism of music. Such work may be based on feminist, gender studies, queer theory, or postcolonial theory, or the work of Theodor Adorno. Although New Musicology emerged from within historical musicology, the emphasis on cultural study within the Western art music tradition places New Musicology at the junction between historical, ethnological and sociological research in music. New musicology was a reaction against traditional historical musicology, which according to Susan McClary, “fastidiously declares issues of musical signification off-limits to those engaged in legitimate scholarship.” Charles Rosen, however, retorts that McClary ’sets up, like so many of the “new musicologists,” a straw man to knock down, the dogma that music has no meaning, and no political or social significance. (I doubt that anyone, except perhaps the nineteenth-century critic Hanslick, has ever really believed that, although some musicians have been goaded into proclaiming it by the sillier interpretations of music with which we are often assailed.)’ (Rosen 2000).Today, many musicologists no longer distinguish between musicology and New Musicology, since many of the scholarly concerns that used to be associated New Musicology have now become mainstream, and the term “new” clearly no longer  Ethnomusicology, formerly comparative musicology, is the study of music in its cultural context. It is often considered the anthropology or ethnography of music. Jeff Todd Titonhas called it the study of “people making music”. Although it is most often concerned with the study of non-Western musics, it also includes the study of Western music from an anthropological or socologIcal perspective, cultural studies and sociology as well as other disciplines in the social sciences and humanities. Though some ethnomusicologists primarily conduct historical studies, the majority are involveod in long-term participant observation. Therefore, ethnomusiological work can be characterized as featuring a substantial, intensive ethnographic component. Closely related to ethnomusiology is the emerging branch of sociomusicology. Mickey Hart (above, at the Web 2.0 conference in 2005) is a noted musicologist. Hart performed drumming and percussion for many years with the U.S. rock band the Grateful Dead as part of a dual drum set ensemble, along with Bill Kreutzmann. Popular music studies, known, “misleadingly,”(Moore 2003, p. 2) as popular musicology, emerged in the 1980s as an increasing number of musicologists, ethnomusicologists, and other varieties of historians of American and European culture began to write about popular musics past and present. The first journal focusing on popular music studies was Popular Music, which began publication in 1981. It was not until 1994 that an academic society solely devoted to the topic was formed, the International Association for the Study of Popular Music. The Association’s founding was partly motivated by the interdisciplinary agenda of popular musicology though the group has been characterized by a polarized ‘musicological’ and ’sociological’ approach also typical of popular musicology (Moore ibid, p. 4). Music theory is a field of study that describes the elements of music and includes the development and application of methods for composing and for analyzing music through both notation and, on occasion, musical sound itself. Broadly, theory may include any statement, belief, or conception of or about music (Boretz, 1995). A person who studies or practices music theory is a music theorist. Some music theorists attempt to explain the techniques composers use by establishing rules and patterns. Others model the experience of listening to or performing music. Though extremely diverse in their interests and commitments, many Western music theorists are united in their belief that the acts of composing, performing, and listening to music may be explicated to a high degree of detail (this, as opposed to a conception of musical expression as fundamentally ineffable except in musical sounds). Generally, works of music theory are both descriptive and prescriptive, attempting both to define practice and to influence later practice. Thus, music theory generally lags behind practice in important ways, but also points towards future exploration, composition, and performance. Musicians study music theory in order to be able to understand the structural relationships in the (nearly always notated) music, and composers study music theory in order to be able to understand how to produce effects and to structure their own works. Composers may study music theory in order to guide their precompositional and compositional decisions. Broadly speaking, music theory in the Western tradition focuses on harmony and counterpoint, and then uses these to explain large scale structure and the creation of melody. Music psychology applies the content and methods of all subdisciplines of psychology (perception, cognition, motivation, personality and so on) to all aspects of musical behaviour and experience (performance, listening, composition). Music cognition is the study of music as information, from the viewpoint of cognitive science. Since it primarily addresses the processing of musical information by humans, it may be regarded as a subdiscipline of music psychology. The discipline shares the interdisciplinary nature of fields such as cognitive linguistics. Performance practice draws on many of the tools of historical musicology to answer the specific question of how music was performed in various places at various times in the past. Although previously confined to early music, recent research in performance practice has embraced questions such as how the early history of recording affected the use of vibrato in classical music, or instruments in Klezmer. Within the rubric of musicology, performance practice tends to emphasize the collection and synthesis of evidence about how music should be performed. The important other side, learning how to sing authentically or perform a historical instrument is usually part of conservatory or other performance training. However, many top researchers in performance practice are also excellent musicians. Music performance research (or music performance science) is strongly associated with music psychology. It aims to document and explain the psychological, physiological, sociological and cultural details of how music is actually performed (rather than how it should be performed). The approach to research tends to be systematic and empirical, and to involve the collection and analysis of both quantitative and qualitative data. The findings of music performance research can often be applied in music education. In its most narrow definition, historical musicology is the music history of Western culture. Such a definition arbitrarily excludes disciplines other than history, cultures other than Western, and forms of music other than “classical” (“art”, “serious”, “high culture”) or notated (“artificial”). A somewhat broader definition incorporating all musical humanities is still problematic, because it arbitrarily excludes the relevant (natural) sciences (acoustics, psychology, physiology, neurosciences, information and computer sciences, empirical sociology and aesthetics) as well as musical practice. Within historical musicology, scholars have been reluctant to adopt postmodern and critical approaches that are common elsewhere in the humanities. According to Susan McClary (2000, p. 1285) the discipline of “music lags behind the other arts; it picks up ideas from other media just when they have become outmoded.” Only in the 1990s did historical musicologists, preceded by feminist musicologists in the late 1980s, begin to address issues such as gender, sexualities, bodies, emotions, and subjectivities which dominated the humanities for twenty years before (ibid, p. 10). In McClary’s words (1991, p. 5), “It almost seems that musicology managed miraculously to pass directly from pre- to postfeminism without ever having to change – or even examine – its ways.” Furthermore, in their discussion on musicology and rock music, Susan McClary and Robert Walser also address a key struggle within the discipline: how musicology has often “dismisse[d] questions of socio-musical interaction out of hand, that part of classical music’s greatness is ascribed to its autonomy from society.” (1988, p. 283). According to Richard Middleton, the strongest criticism of (historical) musicology has been that it by and large ignores popular music. Though musicological study of popular music has vastly increased in quantity recently, Middleton’s assertion in 1990—that most major “works of musicology, theoretical or historical, act as though popular music did not exist” — holds true. Academic and conservatory training typically only peripherally addresses this broad spectrum of musics, and many (historical) musicologists who are “both contemptuous and condescending are looking for types of production, musical form, and listening which they associate with a different kind of music…’classical music’…and they generally find popular music lacking. He cites three main aspects of this problem (p.104-6). The terminology of historical musicology is “slanted by the needs and history of a particular music (‘classical music’).” He acknowledges that “there is a rich vocabulary for certain areas [harmony, tonality, certain part-writing and forms], important in musicology’s typical corpus”; yet he points out that there is “an impoverished vocabulary for other areas [rhythm, pitch nuance and gradation, and timbre], which are less well developed” in Classical music. Middleton argues that a number of “terms are ideologically loaded” in that “they always involve selective, and often unconsciously formulated, conceptions of what music is and gradation, and timbre], which are less well developed” in Classical music. Middleton argues that a number of “terms are ideologically loaded” in that “they always involve selective, and often unconsciously formulated, conceptions of what music is.”