[FA Worldmusic] SXSW musings

[kapilian]

I unfortunately was not available to attend this year's SXSW, but I have 
attended SXSW ten times in the past.  My two cents regarding world music 
artists in the context of SXSW and this online discussion...

As a concert and festival producer and programmer, the principle reason 
any performing artists are booked in my seasons is because I feel they 
make sense within the large objective framework and artistic portrait I 
am trying to put across to the audience.  The totality of the talent I 
present within a given festival or a multi-artist concert event is a 
statement I am making (or a vision, if you will, I am projecting), as is 
my prerogative.  To quote a most heinous figure in our present-day 
culture, I am the decider.

In the case of world music artists, the artists of that realm who appeal 
to me occupy but one equal part of my endless range of musical interests 
along with every imaginable twig, root, and alternative disparate 
floating note of jazz, r&b, rock, blues, film scores, country, opera, 
folk, classical avant garde, hip hop, Great American Songbook, 
cajun/zydeco, electronica, mash-ups, pop singer-songwriters, throwaway 
pop stars, thrash metal, punk, Broadway, spoken word, chamber music, a 
hundred million Beatles and Brian Wilson followers who swear off their 
influences, fusions of every sort, gospel and sacred/secular crossovers 
of all kinds.... all of it that has ever or will ever be mined by the 
Alan Lomaxes and Harry Smiths of this and coming generations....

To me the only difference between Amy Winehouse, Nico Muhly, and Andy 
Palacio is how the audiences are exposed to them.  My very humble 
opinion is that every attempt should be made to integrate the 
international artists this discussion is concerned with (read: 
non-English singing and/or non-mainstream Western pop) along with 
English singing and mainstream Western pop artists.  This is an 
embarrassingly slow culture here to embrace anything "other", but it 
always does over time (ahhh, the time factor).  My otherwise liberal 
80-year-old mother has sometimes made similarly disparaging comments 
about the Korean and Chinese populations in Flushing, Queens that she 
made about African-Americans and Hispanics in The Bronx forty years 
ago.  But after an opportunity to meet and chat with some of those 
"other" people, she has softened and broadened her outlook and 
understanding.  Believe me, if my mom can move slowly towards a more 
progressive understanding of new cultures in our society (as I've often 
reminded her that her own parents were "others" once, too), then I 
believe the music of "other" cultures will continue to slowly and 
successfully infiltrate the consciousness of our mainstream society 
(read: the media).  

Amongst ourselves on this list, our part is to play a much smarter game 
of bringing all of this international music more fully into the arena of 
the audiences' attention.  But as with any and all styles of music, it 
starts and ends with one issue only:

Is it really good music?

That, in the end, is the only point that matters.