Sunday, 27 February 2011

What is World Music and why do we have such a category?

The term 'World music' is deceiving as technically it covers every musical genre. Yet 'world music' has become a term used mainly to describe music which cannot be fitted into conventional music categories. The world-wide popularity of Anglo-American music, is taking over the music mainstream world wide. People in countries all over the world, (many where English is not their native language) will listen primarily to exported Anglo-American 'chart toppers' as opposed to their traditional music, often loosing their cultural identity. Although artists for example Paul Simon's in his album Graceland attempt to merge more traditional, exotic music with their own western sound, this rarely increases the general popularity of traditional music by a great deal. As a result of this, 'world music' becomes the music world's miscellaneous category, containing countless unrelated artists from around the world, clearly unworthy of their own categories, showing the music industries disregard for quality and high regard for cash.

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