This was my first glimmer of understanding what folk music literally meant; it was the music of folk. Whether they are folk from Africa, Jamaica, Germany, The Ukraine, or India it didn't matter. Folk were folk and they all had different types of music representing their different people.
The music was usually either uniformly poorly recorded, with surface noise creating a Phil Spector like wall of sound that made voices toneless and brass strident, or recorded for anthropological reasons by an earnest musicologist who took portable recording equipment with them into the jungles to record the strange music of these distant lands. In those pre World music days few and far between was the performer given anything more than short shrift by the forces in charge of music in the continental America's and other bastions of civilization.
For every Ravi Shankar who experienced some popular success there were hundreds who went unknown and unappreciated by people outside of their own countries. Even worse were the North Americans whose music was considered "ethnic" and didn't fit into any of the easy pigeon holes of pop music. How much zydeco music did you ever hear on the radio prior to the term "World" music being introduced into our lexicon?
It wasn't until 1982 that World even became a designation in music's vocabulary. It was with the formation of the World Of Music, Arts and Dance (W.O.M.A.D.) and their ensuing festivals and recordings that the term began to enter popular music as a means of describing non Western music.
According to the Wikipedia entry on World Music, it was at a 1987 meeting of distributors, producers, and others associated with the genre of music that the term was decided upon. They were desperately looking for a means of distinguishing themselves from the field so that retailers would be more encouraged to both stock and promote their materials and not just dump it into the folk music section.
All it took was a simple show of hands by those attending and the idea was approved. It was supposed to be only a temporary thing, a way to initially publicize a compilation, but it ended up sticking and brought us to the current status of things.
There have been many players in the world music scene, ranging from individual pop musicians who have had a genuine interest in expanding their repertoire and broadening their horizons (Harry Manx, Ry Cooder and Bob Brozman), to whole labels dedicated to the compilation, distribution, and selling of this new brand. Some of them were more genuine in their interest; seeking out, recording, and promoting individual artists as well as investing in the local music industry, while others simply swept down upon the back catalogues of older companies and repackaged royalty free music.
Article comments
1 - dj earball
Thanks for the thoughtful article! I have long appreciated Putumayo, and learned a few new things from this piece. When I first was digging into "world music" I thought Putumayo was amazing. Actually, I still think so, though I now know much more and have become acquainted with some of the other fish in the sea. Putumayo does a great job at introducing listeners to new artists, but you won't find a great deal of diverse sounds within any single compilation. It's a very different approach from, say, World Music Network, whose Rough Guides often take a wider variety of tunes falling under the umbrella of a nation or a musical style. Not that one is right or wrong; they're just different approaches, and will appeal to different listeners. The curious will find both to be great jumping off points for further explorations in global sounds.