Stephanie G. Mathis EMI Nigeria Ltd was established by the British conglomerate EMI more than 50 years ago. Many other Nigerian releases were imprinted with Western labels like His Master’s Voice and Parlophone in the second half of the 20th Century. RCA, Columbia, and Odeon Records produced records outside Africa in Brazil, India, and the Philippines, releasing both local and Western artists.
The term “world” was coined by the American ethnomusicologist Robert E Brown in the early 1960s to describe the music he worked with artists from Asia, Africa, and Indonesia. The term “world music” was first used in the 1980s, during the Western boom. It became a popular way to catalog and market non-Western traditional and vernacular songs.
Kiff No Beat. Pan2409, CC BY-SA
In the mid-1980s, thousands of young people in Britain tuned into BBC Radio 1. They heard John Peel and Andy Kershaw, champions of world music, play the Bhundu Boys and The Kilimambogo Brothers, Ali Farka Toure, Timbuk 3, and Ivor Cutler, alongside The Smiths and Timbuk 3. The term world music was used to introduce non-Western music, especially to those who were only familiar with performers from the UK or US.
Kershaw, in particular, brought these sounds to a wider audience. Some of the music that he played was available in the world music sections of HMV and Tower Records the following week. The consumers had only scratched the surface of the incredible variety of vernacular songs produced across the globe.
I HATE World Music.
How appropriate is world music to the post-global music of today? Answer: Not very. Yet, in a record store, you can find eclectic music, labeled as “world music,” next to the blues and country. In recent years, there have been many discussions about this topic in the field of ethnomusicology. James Porter said as far back as 1995 that the exclusion of Western art music from world music was problematic.
David Byrne, in his article in The New York Times in October 1999, opened the piece with “I HATE World Music” and explained that the term was used to dismiss the music of “exotic artists” as being something “foreign”, somehow “irrelevant” to one’s life.
The term is also devoid of any cultural or geographical context. Even rap has many sub-categories, such as crunk, trap, drill, and others, which are all regional but only exist in the Western World. The term “world music” is also vague and general, excluding Western-made hybrids and fusion music.
These terms are stigmatized by their generalist tones. The world music label, which essentially divides music into “Western” music and “non Western”, misses the mark and creates an impression of exoticism – places that exist in other areas. It is a worryingly narrow-minded and imperialist approach.
Let’s dance
What’s next? Western interest in non-Western music is growing dramatically . Record labels in Europe produce many official reissues, such as Xtasy’s E Je Ka Jo album (Let’s Dance). Listeners have been able to discover new music through social media in the past few years, resulting in a shift in the way music is consumed.
Universal’s new infrastructure for Africa is a great opportunity to remind the industry that, at a moment when even the sub-genres in Western music need further sub-genres to properly define and market the music, it’s important to make sure the music of other places than the West accurately represents the artists who created it.
