The term ‘world music’ is often associated with music other from that of Anglo-American culture. The traditional and authentic culture of ‘world’ or ‘local’ music represents not only, ‘…a tiny subculture.’ (J. Guilbault. World Music.) Yet it promotes a distinctive sense of national, historical and cultural identity for the people.
Yet this definition of world music is problematic in itself, as a number of texts are seen to be a combination of both local and global music, by use of language, instruments, musical styles or even ideas represented in both distinctions.
Subsequently, the fact that world music is made more accessible through the internet, television, theatre and film leads one to question the effects of global music within the world music network. For example, if one is exposed to world music through these medians does it then become ‘global’?
An important point to make is that it is through an individual’s interpretation of what world music is that defines it. In a sense, music is universal and in discovering world music or the music of a certain culture, one discovers the culture as a whole. Is this not why world music really exists, for us to appreciate and learn from cultures other than that of our own?
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A relatively clear and concise assessment of the term World music. I would like to believe that the enlightened nature of your definition is the exclusive reason for the genre's existence but I fear that at least part of its remit is simply to help classify music for commercial sale that would otherwise defy categorisation.
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