[FA Worldmusic] The REAL ghetto: Nation of Origin?

[Marco Werman]

Very good points.  I've wrestled with this issue as I've experimented
with various systems of organizing the music collection for our program
which deals with many different types of music, though most of it
conventionally falling under the heading "world music."  Do I file
according to country?  Doesn't work since there are so many
trans-national collaborations.  By genre?  That's a non-starter as David
points out with the example of Slavic Soul Party.  The great
democratizer still seems to work best of all:  artist alphabetical
order.
Marco Werman


-----Original Message-----
From: fa-worldmusic-bounces+marco.werman=bbc.co.uk at folk.org
[mailto:fa-worldmusic-bounces+marco.werman=bbc.co.uk at folk.org] On Behalf
Of David Rogers
Sent: Tuesday, January 08, 2008 2:55 PM
To: fa-worldmusic at folk.org; 'Dmitri Vietze'
Subject: [FA Worldmusic] The REAL ghetto: Nation of Origin?

Hi All,

 

I wonder if world music isn't limiting its prospects for genre-hopping
by another kind of "ghetto": the nation-of-origin record bin.  (You all
remember thumbing through these, back when there was a Tower Records?)

 

To a surprising extent, world music artists are still ghettoized by
where they and their music supposedly come from.  (Imagine if classical
recordings were divided by "Italian / German / British / Russian /
American".)  This classification may have worked 40 years ago, when
world music consisted mainly of field recordings.  But today, it's a
distortion.

 

Where do you put a Brooklyn East-European-march-funk band like Slavic
Soul Party?  A composer like Golijov?  (oh, that's right, he's
"classical")

 

The European market and press typically keep the geography buckets, but
add a category for "global fusion."  And it's not just a token gesture:
this is where many of the most acclaimed acts are filed.  But still, the
system obscures the truth that most of our most recognizable "regional"
styles (Malian blues? African rumba?) are plainly the result of fusion.

 

Back in the U.S. of A., many institutions have a strong bias towards the
nation-of-origin concept.  Everybody's looking to book the next Buena
Vista Social Club.  But take a look at the artists and you'll see that
most of the innovative new acts are polyglot in style (and ethnicity).

 

This is not just a music issue either.  If part of the value of world
music is that it contributes to a more global perspective in its
audiences and the countries that sustain it, then the American
persistence in ghettoizing by country speaks of a failure by our
industry to move the American consciousness.

 

 

David Rogers 

Jumbie Records Artist Management

http://www.JumbieRecords.com <http://www.jumbierecords.com/>
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