Breaking out of the World Music Ghetto
From 'The Village Voice' blog The Outbursts of Everett True: "Maybe I shouldn’t really be finding offensive a term
(‘world music’) that seeks to encompass around 95 per cent of the
world’s music (both in terms of sales and musical divergence) simply
because a handful of marketing people and record labels in the West
decided a while back that we need a phrase that describes everything
that “isn’t us,” that isn’t thoroughly Americanised, that doesn’t
follow the same set of rules blindly, that has its own many, many, many
different ways of seeing and playing and hearing, and culture. I mean,
for all I know, the originators of the phrase ‘world music’ didn’t
intend the term to be parochial, all-encompassing, patronising,
ghettoising…but it sure as hell feels that way."
For me this is an old rant: the-problem-with-the-term 'world music'. seems like it's a never-ending dialog between artists and music industry professionals that pokes its head up to rant now and again. A far more interesting conversation would answering the question: How do you break out of the 'world music ghetto'?
Does the category that lumps together thousands of unrelated genres create more obstacles than opportunities? How have some artists overcome this dilemma?
These questions will be the topic of an open conference discussion via the North American World Music Coalition at the APAP concerence in New York this winter. I invite your answers and comments here as a way to collectively move on out of this stuck place...
