What do you think of the music (ridiculously) labelled 'world music'? Are you a fan? If so, of what artists/albums/sub-genres in particular?

i never buy this stuff...unless it is some strange instrument i want to sample 1/3 of a second off....is a digeridoo a world music?... so no ...i am not a fan.

Big fan of

Nusret Fatah Ali Khan - Fall like repetition in places
Dhaffer Youssef - has done a lot recent good stuff with the Jazzland mob, album with Markus Stockhausen was also was very good
Club D'Elf - Boston based jamming band with use of a lot middle eastern sounds - involves people like Joe and Matt Maneri, Reeves Gabrels etc

David Murray has done a lot of good recent stuff with musicians from Guadolope - check out Gwo-Tet, or the earlier West African stuff

Used to like a lot of the African stuff Peel used to play

Not sure I'm a big fan of the idea of "World Music" as a a genre. Its a bit too wide a spectrum of stuff to give one name.

hate the definition 'world' music. as you rightly suggest, stephen, it is a ridiculous term. but i understand what you are asking... & i love all sorts of things.
transylvanian romany music, a lot of percussion from across the african continent, east european liturgical music.... you name it.... i guess i just adore sound & am always on the look out for new aural experiences

i remember maybe 15 or 20 years ago hearing the trio bulgarka stuff & being astonished by the sound. that powerful reaction physical & emotional reaction is what i'm after

the mention of the digeridoo was topical to me - recently heard a great piece of music called 'digerilayover' by a guy called stuart dempster who recorded it inside some huge, old & empty water cistern which had a natural sustained echo. its quite something!

I'm thoroughly enjoying quite a bit of Fela Kuti lately.

He's in the World Music section of the record shops.

In a few words, for those who don't know - Nigerian political funk. Very good. Big band. Repetition. Brass instruments. Quite dodgy but good keyboard playing. Pidgeon English. Funny too.

Fela Kuti is great- no question- also cool if you like Can. I love the cheapo electric piano he uses on stuff like "Zombie" it sounds like Yvonne Paulette is guesting!

Other recommendations- Mari Boine Person from Sapmi (Lappland)
Javanese Gamalan music (like a punkier version of the hippy Balinese stuff)
Shona Mbira music (very Steve Reich!)

Theres a fantastic CD set called "Planet Squeezebox" which has accordion music from all over the world- amazing!

And I'm rather fond of English music too.

A question- why is Reggae never in the World Music section?

Makes me think of Peter Gabrial.....Were's the bucket? :sick:

I have some Fela Kuti from many moons ago and the only other stuff I have that may fit the bill is bits of My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts.
Though I do believe all of my music I own is from this world ;)

saw him a year or so ago.........made your average indie band look like the moaning hormonally challenged turds they are.

No mentions for Z'ev?
Or even Larajji?

Or even Tom Ze?

Some 'world' music is rather good...open your minds people

i assume you mean FEMI Kuti (Fela's son) :huh: ???
as Fela's been dead since 1997 (due to AIDS unfortunately :cry2: ).....

i also depise the term "World Music"....it's a Western concoction for lumping the rest of the world and it's various cultures into one convenient category...homogenization anyone? :banghead:

ironically i'm listening to one of my favorite shows on the local community radio...."Sound Safari"
which is mostly musics from the African diaspora...incl. the islands, south america, etc...

i'm always interested in new (to me anyway...) sounds and experiences so...

a few artists and or genres that appeal to me (and which i'd love to discover more :) )

Fela Anukulapo Kuti (genius, the "Black President" responsible for the style known as Afrobeat)
King Sunny Ade (been around for ages....West African "Highlife" style)
Baba Maal (i believe he, like Fela, is Nigerian? :unsure: nonethless...amazing stuff)
Algerian RAI music (unsure of artist names etc.. many begin with "Cheb" ala Cheb Mami, Cheb Khaled, etc...rebel protest music from during the French occupation...punk as fuck...now slightly tame...)
*Gamelan music...(south asian stylee...Javanese, Balinese, that area...beautiful and alien)
Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan (and the other gentlemen who bear similar names...Quawaali musics...haunting)
Master Musicians of Joujuka (famously "discovered" by the likes of Brian Jones and Bill Burroughs
frightening and trance-inducing ecstatic music from Morrocco)
Sufi (Middle Eastern music, i unfortunately know very little about it... -_- )

i'd also recommend the Sublime Frequencies label (run by the guys from Sun City Girls)
they put out what The Wire calls "Amateur Archives" ala Harry Smith, etc. of Eastern musics...SE Asia mostly....i've got one comp, the title of which escapes me at the moment, which is "pop" styles from Burma...bizzare :blink: )

anyway, the world is a huge place...so i've alot to learn and discover...

*in the aftermath of the tsunamis i wonder how much of these wonderful musical cultures will have survived? there's been documentation that many of these traditional styles that were passed on through generations were already threatened with extinction due to Western influences, economics, etc... :( ...we'll see i guess...

99.9% of it is unlistenable. Almost as bad as euro/techno/disco/synth/dance music at 100%.

I think this explains why you're not a big fan of the last 15 years of Fall music.

No offence mate, but I'm glad I don't have your ears... what a depressing world you must live in! -_-

I wonder who Strifeknot actually likes!

Yes, World Music is a ridiculous term, as is African Music. We wouldn't call The Fall European Music, would we? Anyway, I love jingly-jangly guitar stuff from Congo and Zimbawbe. I also love Portuguese Fado, not especially on record, but in the port-encrusted bars in Lisbon.

It's interesting how much "rap" has crept in to a lot of these "world" styles.

....*ahem*..............*cough*.............. :ohdear: could never work out which is which!! when i told people i went to the gig, i would always say 'femlla' kuti!!!

Roika Traore from Mali; beatiful songs, I have no idea what she sings about, but it seems to be full of homesickness & loss.
I put it on when I yearn for the leaden skies of County Durham...

Ravi Sankar is good, in small doese, Ragas Varanasi recommended.

World Music; stupid label, but so what, we know what it means, like "film subtitled"..it means it will take a bit of commitment from the listener.

On the DVD thread,. I rave about 1 Giant Leap, ignore the CD, but watch the DVD for a grand overview...

i love ragas

get the raga guide 74 hindustani ragas on 4 CDs with notes and mini paintings depicting the stories if yer interested

I 'got' techno while travelling thru india in 1990 repetition and trance

the hash and opium helped

This issomething I've never understood. If Fela's there, then U-Roy should be too...?

I imagine that this is what you'e getting at, Stephen, but isn't "do you like world music?" a meaningless question? Music that comes from the world? Well, I like some of it...some other stuff I'm less keen on.

I saw Dhaffer Youssef last year & it was incredible...I thought it'd be a bit coffee table, but it was cracking.
:applaud:

The hiphop beat is a kind of musical lingua franca nowadays, isn't it? like the wah wah was 30 years ago.

I'm happy to call myself an admirer of world music, so long as I never have to hear that bloody "Clandestino" record again...

Nicely put. I often turn to a bit of "world" music for variety but I get disappointed when I hear "world rap".

The last 19 years! Save for RNFLP o'course. But, yes, it may be a corollary.

Not at all! It's a happy, rich, exhilirating world in which all substandard art is excluded. There's more than enough great music I like to keep myself occupied.

I think I understand what StrifeKnot is saying. I want music to make my short hairs stand on end. It may be unrealistic, but I do want to be blown away by music. It is very rare when it happens, and rarer by the day.

And I despise the lukewarm. I'd rather have to hear something so horrible it can at least be made fun of than mediocre, generic shit, which is what 98%+ music is these days.

There has always been FAR more music that I hate than music that I love. However, I do find there are bits of music from nearly any genre that I like. I mean, I'm not too into reggae or techno, but I don't write them off completely.

(okay, modern country and jazzrock fusion I could probably do away with completely...)

And even finding most music crap or bland, I still have thousands of CDs, etc. and more I want to get all the time.

I don't mean to put words in his mouth or explain things for him, I just mean I see where he is coming from and feel some empathy with his 'tude.

The only record in my entire collection that could be described as "world music" is called Music From The Centre Of Asia. I bought it because some of the tracks are of Tuvan throat singing which is a pretty extreme form of expression and I have done myself severe internal damage once or twice trying to perform it. :)

May I suggest you go to emusic & avail yourself of their introductory offer & listen to the Dagar Bros. Rag Kambhogi.
I love the sound of this set, tell more, pray.

Funnily enough the best news I have heard in the last 24 hours is that a Genesis tribute band are coming to the Grand Opera House in York to perform the entire Lamb Lies Down On Broadway live show, complete with costumes and original slide show.

I'll get you a ticket in, shall I? :D

I hate to generate another label but I think there is a difference between "ethnic music" and "world music" wherein "ethnic music" is pure, unadulterated recordings of native music-- often field recordings-- and "world music" is usually Westernized, mass-packaged trite bullshit.

I have a lot of recordings of old Folkways Recordings like "Ituru Pygmies of the Rainforest" and a lot of obscure recordings of native amerikan ceremonial music (the northern tribal stuff and the Inuit stuff is esp. great), and I do like a lot of the 60's-era "faux world / lounge" albums because they are funny.

But the stuff that's been happening in (hate the term too) "world music" since the 80s or so is crap designed to make white yuppies think they have broad tastes. It's mostly bad new age with a lot of percussion.

Examples, please!

Let people know what to steer clear of...

I think this is a white liberal distinction Gorillabat to be honest. I don't buy this notion of authenticity. Some of the best Rai music for example, has fantastically souped-up production borrowing from RnB and hip hop.. Improves it as far as I'm concerned. And I'll take the westernised hi-life of the Bhundu Boys over too much Burundi drummers.

I do think you have a general point about the blanding out and dumbing down of some "World" music, but I also think there's boring rural tribal music and fantastic westernised "World" music.

Moi? A white liberal?

I do see your point. And I was oversimplifying. I think my feelings on this come from my belief that most "folk musics", inc. Euro and amerikan forms, sound better to me-- and more authentic-- in their purer forms, i.e. I'd rather listen to Leadbelly or Woody Guthrie than whatever passes for current western hippie-folk.

Likewise, I'd probably rather listen to field recordings of Tuvan throat singers or old recordings of Tahitian native songs than something glossier and new, done with Westernized production. etc. Up through the 60s people from the West were still going into pretty unknown territories and gathering native musics with tape recorders. Since then, a lot of cultures have latched onto Western sounds and incorporated them into their music. That's not bad, it's inevitable and it's fine, but it's a different thing.

I don't have a problem with other cultures utilizing technology or appropriating western sounds and beats-- and I think that sort of thing can create a circle that feeds all music, but to me I'm more inclined to wanna hear some real traditional Japanese koto music than modern japanese music that may combine elements of this with "pop music" conventions or some Paul Simon/Peter Gabriel hybrid.

Frankly, though, I don't listen to much of any of it. I have a collection of it but I don't go there often.

Totally agree re; the Paul Simons of this world.. and I do think "ethnic" music becomes "different" when cross-pollinated with other forms. But that's not necessarily a dilution, merely an evolution. The crucial point (and one you implicitly make) is that crude tokenist appropriation of ethnic music in the service of New Age or Fuzak albums is an insult to the source cultures, and to the intelligence.

I'm quite fond of the Nonesuch Explorer series of (mostly) field recordings issued in the seventies. I haven't loved every album I've heard in the series, but I suppose part of the appeal was that they were designed to really feel like albums (collections of music assembled in an artistic way). Nonesuch was reissuing the whole series... and then stopped after doing some Latin American ones in mid-2003. Favorites include:

Bali - Golden Rain
South America - Black Music in Praise of Oxala and Other Gods
Zimbabwe - Shona Mbira Music
Mexico - Fiestas of Chiapas & Oaxaca
Burundi - Music from the Heart of Africa
Peru - Kingdom of the Sun: The Inca Heritage
East Africa - Witchcraft & Ritual Music
Peru - Fiestas: Music of the High Andes

There was also a series of religious LPs on Philips from the mid-sixties that I quite like, of which the Missa Luba (heard in the movie if....) and Misa Criolla are perhaps most famous. The original recording of the Missa Luba was finally issued on CD by Philips earlier this year, unfortunately without the songs that originally appeared on the first side of the LP....

I haven't quite come around to thinking of non-Western music in terms of particular artists, though. I often think I should try a Fela Kuti album but I've never gotten around to it.

You speak wisely RT- We probably shouldn't expect "ethnic" musicians to treat their music as museum pieces. I love all the field recording stuff- but I dig, say, King Sunny Ade's spacy hawaiian guitar juju dub too...

In many cases it isn't that western artists have corrupted it, but that the "ethnic" (Lord, what a horrible word) musicians have sought out new technology and sounds (including, yes, rap) and, coming from a different angle, use it in different and exciting ways.

i do hope that all that pure and authentic music you all seem to like hasn't drawn on any 'outside' influences

lets hope they're keeping it real in the rainforests (because there are going to be a lot of angry people on this site if they aren't)

after reading some of the contributions here, at long last i can now understand what F***ways recordings are all about and who they are for

anybody listen to the various Klezmer bands around the place?

This is dead right. I was not trying to be a tokenist or evince a ghettoized interest in "authentic, unadulterated" folk music by the cute little backwards brown people of the world. I don't even like using the term "ethnic."

All I can say is, for ME, I am much more interested in hearing the sources...the more pure forms, if you will. Just like I'd rather listen to the Carter Family than Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris performing Carter Family songs.

I'm not bothered by the seeking out and use of modern or western music or a general updating of recordning techniques and sounds. I don't wish for cultures of the world to exist as they did 50 or 100 years ago. It's not like I picture women in shawls on the steppes of Russia to be pumping wellwater and singing their delightful little ancient folk melodies.

It's just an interest in the sources. I loved Zeppelin as a kid, then I discovered that they (and others) were taking from earlier musicians like Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters and Big Bill Broonzy. So I busied myself looking into those recordings. Then I discovered that THOSE musicians were taking from earlier blues artists like Mississippi John Hurt, Blind Lemon Jefferson and Skip James, etc. So I tracked THOSE down and I get much more of a thrill from the original recordings than the updated, modern versions of those recordings. The updating had to occur and it produced some great music (along with a lot of Claptonian bullshit)-- but I just like finding the roots.

[QUOTE]

i am always suspicious of these 'natural' metaphors ('roots')
they can never do justice to the way that music changes or to the way in which influences work
they suggest a linear, chronological 'development' (easy to see in the examples you pick)
i just don't believe in this whole approach, which is actually nothing more than yet another version of the Fall (myth not band)
wouldn't a more dynamic model be better (which would account for the complexity of musical changes and tastes)?
and it would certainly help avoid any of that tendency to see history as a process of adulteration (which your examples are close to suggesting)

i thought your choice of the notion of cover versions to illustrate your argument was worth follwing up on (i would have thought that the relation between a song and its cover versions is far more complex than you suggest?)

there is a story by argentinian writer Borges in which he writes about the influence of Kafka on Shakespeare (which everybody should read re this whole discussion!!!!!!): of coure, as usual, i cant recall the title of the story

perhaps you could use the whole 'rhizome' instead of 'root' image that deleuze & guattari propose. the rhizome (like couch grass or potatoes.....) doesn't have such a neat beginning & end... like having roots & branches - and it is hard to tell where one plant starts and another is.... things simply connect to other things....
maybe the music is like this?

my music is now rhizomed in music i like...what a useful concept...i can get gangrene or hit cul de sacs../cumfort

that was the kind of thing i had in mind
but i find d+g heqvy going
i tend to fall back on Barthes intertextuality and mix this with Foucaults work on power
try then to see the connections between texts and the people and context in which theyare being considered
i find this 'roots' stuff intensely irritating along with anything to do with 'originals' and so on