In preparation for this week's Arts Presenters session titled "Genre Hopping: How Some Global Artists and Presenters Have Avoided the 'World Music Ghetto'", a heated online discussion has exploded on the topic. While the questions posed were meant to instigate a conversation about "breaking" global music into the "mainstream," some took issue with the term "world music ghetto." Others, had compelling things to say about how and when global music crosses over to larger audiences. Some commented on the role of the decline of mass media has made the question itself somewhat out of date. Here is the first of a handful of comments people in the field have made. This one comes from artist manager and concert presenter Derek Andrews of Toronto...
The 'designation' of being labeled 'world music' is not ghettoizing.
I can appreciate that the stigma could indeed be limiting, but in general, I see the use of the label, a positive means of identification.
Indeed, I would suggest that the pool of talent that we have come to know as 'world music' lives in a meadow, not a ghetto. The meadow is inhabited by like-minded creators from all the various aspects of team building, musicians, labels, media, managers, agents, etc. I feel that members of the meadow work constructively to manage an environment that feeds career development prospects.
From the strength of enjoying a healthy meadow environment, we are able to travel out of the meadow to other areas of music categorization, and in some cases, more than (expected) independent music level success (meaning: more than a few thousand CDs sold!).
But to my mind, the key is that we set our aspirations on achievable targets. The 'specialty' music that lives in the margins of 'commercial' or pop music enjoys spikes of sales activity on occasion when / if the music lines up with a cultural obsession / convergence.
How do you manipulate a cultural convergence? Why have artists like buena vista social club, cesaria evora, ali farka toure, nusrat fatah ali khan, the bulgarian state choir, etc. Caught the imagination of the western music buying public in great numbers?
A lot of things came together at once and that alignment of their sound and a decent business plan / team can be credited with the success. I would suggest that the above artists (and others who have enjoyed commercial success) are the shining beacons of our healthy meadow.
What does that mean to the hundreds or thousands of practitioners who aspire to similar commercial success. I think very little. I think that many artists shine with less modest commercial success, and the evaluation of success by commercial (industry) standards, while useful, is not the primary means by which we should consider our environment. Radio airplay, touring, merchandising and all the many other revenue streams play into the economic health of a music project. Given all the levels of success, and levels of development, we should be careful to consider a balance of economic, artistic and other points when we define success. And the health of our brand.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/best_selling_music_artists
While I realize dmitri poses the question for the purpose of stimulating a creative discussion on how to 'cross over', and I encourage that discussion, I would suggest that we drop the dark cloud of a ghetto as we look out for those (other) green pastures.
The world music community should be proud that it has an identity, one that can live next all the various communities of music creation.
No, I didn't take any happy pills before writing this. I've been meaning to offer this alternative perspective for some time. ;-)
-- Derek Andrews, Toronto
