What an offensive, stupid, arrogant phrase "world music" is. Over the last ten years or so, as my horizons have broadened, I have become a devotee of many musicians from outside the English speaking world, and-- surprise, surprise-- they're all very different. Virginia Rodrigues and Vinicius Cantuaria from Brazil, Ali Farka Toure from Mali, Baaba Maal from Senegal, Karsh Kale from New York (via India), and Johnny Clegg from South Africa, to name just a few, all make regular stops in my stereo. In that list of six artists, we have a stunning diversity of styles and influences flung wide across four continents. Only a putz would lump all this together with samba, Dervish music, Balinese gamelan music and Tibetan devotional throat-singing and call the whole "world music." One imagines a less couth time when the British, sitting comfortably at home at the center of a decaying empire, would have complacently dubbed such alien sounds, "wog music."

It is better to reserve the term "world music" for those truly adventuresome pairings that defy easy categorization. A gentleman I worked for a few years ago had a vision of a future in which, thanks to broadband internet, a musician could set up a beat on a calabash in Timbuktu and have it embellished in real time by a tablaist in Mumbai and a bassist in Paris, the whole being mixed and chopped by a DJ in London as it was sent out to thousands of listeners around the world. Although sadly for him his grand vision has yet to pan out (that last mile of cable is so expensive!), he's on to something. We live in a time where previously unimaginable opportunities exist for collaboration and cross-fertilization, and things are finally coming to a point where globe-trotting music seems natural, even obvious. "World" music, then, means music that draws upon the whole world (or at least parts of it)--much better than simply being code for "music from where the brown people live."

Sometimes late at night I stumble onto performances on local Spanish-language cable stations by no-name musicians who effortlessly step between top 40 pop, Latin, funk, and rap without thinking about the ramifications. It's usually Friday night, and the party is on no matter what the music is called. Los Angeles-based band Ozomatli are one of these anonymous groups gone gold. Recently nominated for a Latin Grammy for their 2003 EP, Coming Up, Ozomatli are part of a new generation of (formerly) underground collectives who combine Latin American rhythms with hip-hop and whatever else sounds right to them (they even have a full time tabla player in the band). Ozomatli intended their new album, Street Signs to be a bold statement of purpose, a giant step beyond the Los Angeles street party sound they have already perfected, and for the most part they have succeeded grandly.

The group put their lofty ambitions right up at the front--"Believe," the opening track on Street Signs, augments the band's Latin rhythms and wah-drenched guitar with the keening sintar of Moroccan Hassan Hakmoun, French-Gypsy violinists Les Yeux Noir, and the Prague Symphony Orchestra. Oh, there's also several verses in Spanish and the English-language flow of the band's MC Jabu. World Music, y'all!