[FA Worldmusic] music chains and knowledge transfer

[Steve Hochman]

The problem, as I wrote in one of my Around the World columns a  
couple of months ago, is just how does one define "world music" in a  
meaningful way? Well, that's just one of the problems with the term,  
but the one relevant to this discussion....


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Check out my column:
http://www.spinner.com/category/around-the-world/
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On Aug 14, 2007, at 9:23 AM, Mark D. Moss / Sing Out! wrote:

> At 11:57 AM 8/14/2007, Dore Stein wrote:
>> What I meant is I'm not a fan of music categorization.  It results in
>> arbitrary boundaries that encourage pre-conceived biases and
>> discourage open-minded listening.
>
> As someone who *likes* categorization, I'd argue this: I don't treat
> the labels I put on music as a box with high, impenetrable sides and
> coils of barded wire ... I treat those labels as a way to
> *communicate* with folks who might not be able to necessarily hear
> the music I'm writing or talking about. This might not be a *big*
> problem for a radio programmer (though if you want to build your
> audience beyond accidental stumbling onto your show, I'd argue that
> you need to be able to describe your show to folks as well).
>
> The trick here, I'd agree, is to educate folks that all music has
> cross-influences, connections and roots that intermingle, and to
> encourage the use the artefacts of "labels" as a way of *making*
> discoveries, not predetermining what they might not like. So many of
> those labels themselves have such amorphous, personal definitions
> (World, Americana, folk, jazz, new age, etc.) that treating them
> rigidly -- either in marketing OR as a listener -- is pretty  
> foolish, imo.
>
> Looking at Dore's web site, for instance, he *does* use labels:
> world, roots and jazz (albeit in exactly the kind of non-simplistic,
> communicative fashion that I would suggest). Perhaps without the
> dogma, we're really not all that far apart?
> _____________________________________
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