World Music

In its literal sense, world music encompasses all forms and styles of music produced by the world’s peoples. In the music industry, it is used as a marketing category for a meta-genre that encompasses classical, popular, folk, and traditional music from outside the Anglo-American and European mainstream as well as new hybrid styles. Ethnomusicologists draw on methodologies from musicology, anthropology, and cultural studies to investigate traditional music in its original cultural context and to theorize contemporary developments linked with globalization. Critical readings focusing on issues of representation, appropriation, and exploitation have been framed in terms of cultural imperialism and the politics of consumption. These are balanced by optimistic narratives of world music as a celebration of cultural diversity, a source of empowerment, and an expression of solidarity and respect. World music scholarship and production is supported by an infrastructure that includes publications, record labels, festivals, awards, and sound archives.