Farewell! - with thoughts on the future of "World Music"

The summer is dwindling down to its inevitable end, taking my time at OIMA with it. It's been fun, to say the very least! I managed to get a ton of awesome music onto the site, and blog about topics deeply meaningful to me. But tomorrow, I clear off my desk, pack up my bags, and hand in my key to the office. And this, sadly, is to be my final post! So I want to make it count: I want to confess something that has sometimes weighed heavy on my mind during these past seven weeks. 

You see, I'm uncomfortabe with labels, with sorting and simplifying items into genres. And here's the thing: the genre that I am especially uncomfortable with is World Music! Yes, me, the World Music Archive Coordinator! Let me explain. 

Although I don't like to generalize (generally speaking (hah)), I'll admit that most music genres have a sound basis for generalization. All of jazz music or blues music, for example, draws from a common cultural antecedent. Most genres emerge at specific points in time and/or place, perhaps in response to concurrent movements in art and life. My point is that, with most music genres, there is a discernible unity. 

But there isn't much that usually unites the music shunted into the "World Music" bin. The genre includes songs originating anywhere from South America to South Africa, Bengal to Bali, Cuba to Korea - basically any place that isn't "here," by people that aren't like "us" - with an overwhelming tendency to define "here" and "us" from a white, Western vantagepoint. The genre also doesn't usually acknowledge the subtleties within even just one culture, the different musical strains that certainly exist - while Western music, with its classical, its pop, its rock, its country, etc., is allowed nuance. 

My problem is that the genre clumps internally and externally variegated cultures together. As a friend of mine once frankly stated, "World music is like the 'other' category, but with foreign stuff." It's a misc. pile. It refuses complexity. 

Now, all that said, I'm not calling for the end of World Music as a genre just yet. I think it has marketing potential and is still useful to artists. But I also think it's important - utterly important! - for us as listeners to recognize the term "World Music" as a marketing tool (which was, after all, how the term came into existence), and to acknowledge that, if "World Music" is all we can classify a song as, we haven't really begun to understand it.

Anyway, here's the awesome news: we live in an age of information! As anyone who's used Wikipedia can attest, it's almost impossibe to avoid learning something new on the internet [every five minutes]. And that's a good thing, because it means that, without even really trying, we can learn stuff, continually. 

OIMA, being a part of the internet, can contribute to our understanding of other cultures. If you like music by a World Music artist, you can click to go to their profile to read more about them. Sometimes artists include links to their websites where you can learn even more! And don't get me started on the wonder that is Google Search. 

The future is bright. One day, the term "World Music" will be just a fall-back for when we're really clueless about a song. Instead, we'll be using terms like "Sinhala sarala gee" or "Cuban bolero" or "Egyptian Sufi sacred music." We'll know more about one another. 

Till then, let's keep listening to and appreciating music from the World over, while remaining open to cultural complexity. 

And with those final thoughts, farewell OIMA! 

(Image above from a festival performance I did of the 'Gajaga Vanamma,' an upper-country traditional Sinhalese dance modelled after the movements of the elephant, performed with live singing and drumming.)