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in our own culture: there were no new bands like the Stones or Fairport Convention coming up. The blues fans, the jazz fans, the rock’n’roll fans could only find that combi- nation of virtuosity and spontaneity in the music of Bulgaria, Mali, Columbia or Cuba.”
In the concert halls, where the audiences were older and not allowed to dance if they wanted to, the music became associated with political worthiness: a middle-class, aspirational, leftish-lifestyle badge signify- ing cultural awareness. World music came to mean something acoustic and the musi- cians adapted their traditional music and their clothing (while actually what they were doing at home might be incorporating more Western musical elements into their sound and swapping their robes for sharp suits) to the demands of the concert hall.
The fusion that artists might find suc- cess with at home would not get them far abroad where audiences were looking to perceive a sense of ‘authenticity’, which was seen as absent in the shiny manufactured pop of mainstream culture. Joe Boyd (founder of Hannibal Records) argues that fusion is one of the failures of the world music market leading in part to the creation of music aimed at it: to imagined audiences beyond the local, which paradoxically fails to realise success with them.
Charlie Gillet believed the same, telling me in 2004 that “Youssou N’Dour is a good example of this. After his first international success in 1984, with Immigrés, he signed to Virgin and started making records with and without Peter Gabriel, which were now very deliberately aimed at that audience which Immigrés had in a sense accidentally unearthed. And they were very different from it. They had regular drums. A lot of the qualities that some of us were trying to escape from were the very things that he was putting into his records for the first time. That kind of thing happens a lot, inevitably and invariably. One of the giveaways is a snare happening on the second and fourth beat.”
Joe Boyd also points out that “with
technology, musicians can make music in the bedroom. But it’s boring, it won’t go down in history the way that great records have. It suffers from the same phenomenon as Western music. Once you put on the drum machine you take away from the virtuosity and spontaneity of a performance.”
Yet musicians absorb, are inspired by and create with different sound worlds. And this has resulted in brilliant music that’s transcended local cultures and connects with people the world over. And some of it’s still thriving if the experience of the world’s finest independent record shop Rough Trade is anything to go by. Cordelia Terry who works at the Notting Hill branch says “People from across the board are fans of world music. The stuff that’s selling really well at the moment are Soundway reissues and their modern bands, like Fumaca Preta inspired by Brazilian psych music; old cumbia compilations; Cuban African music; Thai music – The Sound Of Siam, ’70s funk from Thailand. And Strut, a general reissue label, with really good, unusual world reis- sues like a compilation of ’70s Haitian music which sounds fresh and relevant with its use of the synth, its rhythms and it’s good for sampling! Then there’s the new Cuban duo, Ibeyi, sisters whose dad was a percussionist in the Buena Vista Social Club.”
What’s selling now: Nigeria retro with William Onyeabor.
Western musicians pointing the way to other musicians and music across the world: Paul Simon paved the way for Ladysmith Black Mambazo’s global career, Peter Gabriel gave the heads up to Youssou N’Dour, Ry Cooder was the Western name in Buena Vista… and now there’s Damon Albarn’s Africa Express. All this might seem like the musical equivalent of a Western aid agency, giving rise to all the same contest- ed issues of cultural sensitivity, but it gets column inches, airplay and stage time. And whatever you feel about the fusion, it can at least reach an audience outside ‘world music’ and encourage people to look fur- ther back and discover the local music of the non-Western musicians.
S
Then once there, thanks to techniques such as sampling, we might not find alien sounds but music that is both comforting and exciting, safe and exhilarating (in the way that humans need to get fired up about new music). With luck we might hear
he also mentions William Onyea- bor whose career was given a boost by being covered by stal- wart club favourites Hot Chip, fol- lowing in the fine tradition of
it thanks to almost lone voices in the media – the musician DJs on BBC 6 Music with their eclectic taste and fearless love of music wherever it’s from and whatever the language, like Cerys Matthews or Guy Gar- vey and the indomitable Iggy Pop introduc- ing us to what the world has to offer. On the telly it’s down to Jools Holland and Mark Cooper (fR 367/8). Meanwhile even Radio 3 has cut its world music output, most recent- ly losing Lucy Duran’s brilliant World Routes, with only late night World On 3 and Late Junction left to fly the flag.
Thanks to Bush and Blair’s holy war, 9/11 and the economic crash in 2008, we don’t get to see it live much either. In a situ- ation which must have Nigel Farage yodelling with delight, world musicians have extreme difficulty getting visas and, even if they’re granted, the cost can be prohibitive. Then when they get here it’s hard to get bums on seats. Experienced world music tour producer Katerina Pavlakis told me that “Since the economic crash in 2008, audiences have collapsed, particularly out- side London. People are less likely to experi- ment. They’d rather spend £15 in the pub than on someone they’ve never heard of.
Buena Vista Social Club: briefly made world music a magnet for the major labels.
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