stop saying world music

The term world music has been widely used for decades for any music that doesn’t ‘fit’ into Western genres.

Once upon a time it may have seemed like a helpful way to introduce diverse musical traditions to Western audiences, but the reality is far more problematic.

By just putting together such a vast range of music under one label, ‘world music’ flattens cultural and artistic differences into something vaguely “exotic” while reinforcing a Western-centric perspective.

Ultimately, in my opinion, it’s a term that tells us more about how Western markets view non-Western music than about the music itself.

David Byrne critiqued this very well in his essay I Hate World Music, pointing out that the label relegates these artists to the margins, making their music seem foreign or irrelevant to Western listeners.

It’s not just that the label is inaccurate— it’s frankly dismissive.

By categorising anything outside of the Western pop canon as world music, the industry effectively says: "this isn’t for us, it’s for them."

And the sheer diversity of music lumped into this category is embarrassingly staggering.

Everything from traditional African drumming to avant-garde electronic music from South America gets lazily shoved into the same box.

This leads to the absurdity of placing massively commercial acts like Bollywood soundtracks alongside obscure field recordings from remote villages.

The result is a crate in record shops or a category on streaming platforms that tells you nothing about the music itself except that it doesn’t come from the Western mainstream.

How useful.

It feels even more outrageous to me that at a time when global music is more accessible than ever, the term world music simply feels outdated and lazy.

Streaming services have allowed listeners to engage with music from all over the world without needing to categorise it under a label designed to other non-Western sounds.

Musicians are constantly blending genres together more than ever before, and these genres have now become influencing and informing each other.

Therefore the term is just no longer relevant and we should simply acknowledge and respect the specific genres.

It is certainly not difficult.