I_Hate_World_Music

I Hate World Music The article “I Hate World Music” is written by David Byrne, a prominent figure within the musical industry, and who is credited with playing a key role in shaping what we now know as popular music. The author begins the article by explaining what he believes we, as western society, perceive to be ‘world music’. According to the author, world music consists of any non-western music, and is treated with ambiguity and obscurity by consumers too afraid to explore an area of the musical world that may be new or unusual to them. He also claims the term refers to a bin in record stores for music that cannot be placed into a specific musical category. ‘World music’, the author points out, is an extremely vague term that fails to capture the incredible diversity of music that exists throughout the world outside of western pop culture. As an example we are told: “Albums by Selena, Ricky Martin and Los Del Rio, artists who sell millions of records in the United States alone, are racked next to field recordings of Thai hill tribes”. According to the definition supposedly used, ‘world music’ consists of the vast majority of music, author, world, western, musical, pop, music, consumers, according, article, world, towards, term, points, life, culture, consists, argument, written, english, david, byrne, westerners, way, volume, visibly, very, vast, various, values, vague, unusual, unknown, united, underlying