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musician’s own social media profile to draw a crowd (which only works here if they’ve already got a UK following). It’s actually hard for artists to build a career outside their own local sphere of influence because the opportunities for seeing and hearing them in the real world has narrowed. It’s this that facilitates the connection with music other than our own. Touring, particularly the club circuit, was the basis for a strong grass-roots following, as Joe Boyd explains: “Look at the revival in folk music – it’s a lot about words, ‘what’s the story being told?’ You’re not going to get that across when you’re singing in Wolof. The only way is by coming out onto the stage and singing in a way so virtuosic and spectacular that the performance is irresistible.” It’s the live per- formance that connects. People relive this experience when they buy the CD.
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Yet although gigs are key to building a fan-base and selling records, an important signpost to the music – one of the successes of the categorisation of ‘world music’ – is that we can more easily relate to it even if we don’t experience it live. The music has transcended the term. Joe Boyd, one of the team who created the name, tells me: “In a way, world music as a concept had a built-in obsolescence. The point was to get a platform for artists from outside the Anglophone world. The term’s served its purpose in that certain artists have made a career outside their home country. We know the names of
hilst the vast, open, virtu- al space of the internet would seem to give world musicians a platform, gigs increasingly rely on the
Tinariwen, and Toumani Diabate. It’s not ‘Oh, what’s the next world music concert at the Barbican?’ It’s ‘Great! Toumani, who’s a genius on the kora, is coming to play.’”
It’s a point picked up by Nigel House. “When world music first came in it was a catch-all phrase for anything that wasn’t Western guitar music: from one bag you’d sell music from Cuba or West Africa. Now it’s more specific. We don’t have a world music section, we have a Fela Kuti section or ‘Sub- Saharan Africa’ section,” adding that “although understanding of world music is more sophisticated and the big name artists do well, it’s harder now for the less well- known groups to break through.”
This is no doubt partly because oppor- tunities like the Awards For World Music have disappeared. “Though of course,” House continues, “Womad is more popular than ever and there are always obscure gems there, but not many in the audience go to find out about new groups.” Indeed, Womad, having become a byword for great music and amazing musicians, now rarely advertise the artists’ names on their bill, only the event itself. Whilst it’s a fantastic opportunity for people to hear music they wouldn’t otherwise, and for the artists to perform at an event that attracts 40,000 people, the festival experience doesn’t always translate into record sales.
The element that does seem to catch the global imagination and launch careers from the local to the global is dance – whether through easily-assimilated electron- ic dance music, like that inspiring the popu- larity of the Afrikaner group Die Antwoord, or dance itself as with Shangaan electro-like
bands such as Tshetsha that bring their local South African traditions to the footwork popularised in the US by ghetto house guru Chicago Juke.
So we’re back to dancing. Back in the clubs. And this is passionate, rhythmic and exciting, crazy dancing – yet as far away from a craze like Gangnam Style as Psy is from William Onyeabor. And as flamenco dancing carried the music from southern Spain across the globe, I’d like pizzica to have a turn, for Anna Cinzia Villani to cata- pult the equally tempestuous Italian dance from its popular local renaissance to the global stage.
But to catch the world’s imagination we have to know about it first. Not everything can ‘go viral’ on the internet. I wouldn’t have heard Tshetsha if I hadn’t spoken to Nigel House and Cordelia Terry at Rough Trade. We all need guides and introductions to meet up with great music wherever it’s from. If only the mainstream media would wake up once more to the vibrant multi-cultural world we actually live in and give us a hand.
As Terry said: “I had three copies of
the Haiti compilation left. I put it on this morning. And immediately they all sold.” Wouldn’t it be brilliant if we could hear the fantastic vibrant sounds the world has to offer when we turned on the radio, or the TV. Or could read about it as a matter of course in the mainstream press to steer us through the internet overload. It would reinvigorate the live scene. It might even shake us out of our torpor and re-inspire us to engage with the world. Who knows, maybe we’d create it anew.
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