ABOUT ME AND WORLD MUSIC

Hi! Welcome to my new world music blog. It’s good to be back here writing, not playing with widgets and gadgets, so I hope the new layout is pleasing enough. I think it’ll only get better. As I make the transition from a travel blog to a music/film one, there are other changes that are both cause and effect, undercurrents and overtones to the most obvious one. One is the transition from a personal blog to a professional one. Related to that is the transition from a non-commercial site to a more commercial one (I hope). Hey, I got bills to pay and habits to feed. The difference is also more apparent than real anyway, one of degree not kind. I get no salary for this, so any pocket change is welcome. If you’re thinking of buying something from Amazon anyway, I could use the commission. Thanks. If it’s starting to look like Chinatown here, well that only adds to the ambience, right? Lastly there’s the transition from a nomadic to a sedentary lifestyle for me. (Pssst! Don’t go there, Hardie…) Okay, so let’s move on to other things. So, for those of you who don’t know me, and maybe some who do, maybe you’re wondering what qualifies me to pontificate on world music and film?

I’m no musician and though I studied some film and video and made at least a few, my experience is not vast. I never even heard the term ‘ethnomusicology’ when I was going to school, and Putumayo was a river in Colombia where I went looking for yage in the steps of my patron saint Uncle Bill Burroughs. I never found the vine (though it’s now available over Internet), but I did meet Mr. Burroughs at Naropa in 1982. Now that doesn’t qualify me as an expert in music or film, so I guess I’m just a fan, hopefully an educated one. I’ve traveled in fifty some-odd (some very odd) countries and kept house in a couple of them, worked in even more. I got into world music at a slow point in my career while listening to my stepson obsess over the Thai group Carabao. I liked Carabao a lot a decade ago when I first heard them, but understanding the lyrics opened up a whole new dimension, like the first time I heard Dylan or Costello or Cobain. There are very few lyricists that good. It’s mostly about the music. I felt that they deserved a larger audience, and still do, and I even adapted a few songs to English, but it’s not that easy to create entire new dimensions or wormholes between worlds.

So, though I’ve long liked ‘world music’ I’ve only been serious about it for just a few years. I like the ‘indie’ and ‘Americana’ genres just as much probably, and the terms are all equally vague and subject to interpretation, but world music deserves special care and attention. We’re talking about real people here, rare specimens at that, and if left to the whims and fancies of the American marketplace, world music could easily die on the vine. If you don’t believe me, just look at the current status of world arts and crafts. Once-flourishing cottage industries now lie abandoned as fashions change and the natives don’t, so income is lost; or they do change and traditional culture is lost. Fortunately except for Britain and Ireland Europe has little music of its own, compared to America, so is world music’s main patron. France deserves special mention for the help it gives, especially to its Francophone former dependencies in West Africa. So now that I’ve learned a bit about world music over the last few years, it never ceases to amaze me that many people have no idea what it is. That’s understandable, since the term gets tossed around very loosely even by its main protagonists, to the detriment of us all, in my opinion.

To some promoters, especially on the US West Coast, ‘world music’ is a new market-savvy term for reggae, simple if not pure, like calling granola ‘muesli’ for new sales hooks. On your favorite airline’s in-flight play list it’s likely a very smooth version of foreign pop music or light jazz. To drum circle and percussion enthusiasts, it’s totally different, anything but smooth and heavily oriented toward Africa. For Europe it’s heavily oriented toward Africa and Europe’s own ethnic and cultural minorities, especially in the Balkans, East Europe, and Spain. The US East Coast follows much of that logic and adds a strong Latino and Caribbean emphasis, including the US’s own rich Louisiana heritage. It’s a categorical mess, with ethnicity crucial to some, meaningless to others. The best definition I’ve heard goes something like, “non-English music from all over,” to which I would only clarify ‘non-English SPEAKING’ and add minority CULTURES regardless of language. Ghana and Nigeria should not be excluded because of English proficiency.

For the uninitiated I’ll give a quick history lesson. World music first come to the public’s attention around twenty-five years ago when somebody, probably inspired by Bob Marley’s success and untimely death, decided that Africa was ripe for the picking. Thus the ‘scramble for Africa’ began, and ‘world beat’ was the catchword. Oil-rich Nigeria was relatively prosperous and numerous bands had long caught the fever of pop music from the US and UK. From there Fela Kuti and King Sunny Ade were quickly signed, and enjoyed wide success, spawning many imitators. Many Western rock legends such as Paul Simon, David Byrne, and Peter Gabriel at this point were inspired to get involved and facilitate the process, creating record companies, festivals, and collaborating, a process which continues to this day. Ry Cooder went even deeper and resurrected almost-dead genres in his collaborations with Buena Vista Social Club and Ali Farka Toure’ and in the process helped move world music beyond its original slick ‘world-beat’ phase into something more meaningful. To this day Cuba and Mali are the shining examples of world-music’s ability to transcend its circumstances.

Fast-forward to the present and world music stands at the cross-roads, like all minority interests, torn between purity and loyalty to its roots or assimilation into the mass culture developing rapidly with the global MySpace generation and widespread use of English language. It’s a delicate balancing act, made more difficult by its own proponents’ almost stubborn refusal to develop it into one commercially viable genre, and its inability to make much sense in the wake of its conglomeration from too-numerous sub-genres, far too many to even mention. While one music blogger derides the term ‘world-beat’ as ‘cutesy’, I find it useful, basically dividing all music into two categories- fast and slow. A more elaborate analysis might settle simply on the American nomenclature of rock, jazz, blues, folk, pop, modern urban and country styles, to which I’d only add ‘traditional classical.’ Almost all world music could fit into one of these categories, albeit prefixed with the country of origin.

Obviously the term ‘world music’ is something of an Anglo-centric one; that’s a given. English language is the de facto international medium, neither rare nor well-done. Nevertheless world music festivals can and do occur in non-English-speaking countries to broad audiences. Most people ‘get it,’ but the promoters don’t always, booking a US blues or bluegrass or straight-ahead jazz band just to be ornery I think, maybe smirking, “I figure the US is part of the world, isn’t it?” This is not helpful. We want different music with different rhythms in different languages from different cultures, plain and simple. Is that so hard? Nevertheless a play list and Top 40 of sorts is emerging, which I think is good. Some blogs will go on and on about Bob Marley, Paul Simon, and Ry Cooder. That’s old news. Others will tell you about bands so obscure that they don’t even have a MySpace site. Enlightenment lies along the middle path. To experience the depth and diversity of what’s currently happening in world music, listen to the following, if you haven’t already, and then see what you think. These acts are all alive and kicking and coming soon to a city near you. Here goes (off the top of my head, in no certain order): Tinariwen, Dengue Fever, Manu Chao, Lila Downs, Angelique Kidjo, Vieux Farka Toure’, Orchestra Baobab, Etran Finatawa, Seun Kuti, and Ozomatli. That’s just for starters. Who says World Music has no hooks?