International & World

14 in this category...

International & "world music" refers to any kind of music that is not a part of modern mainstream Western popular or classical music traditions. It typically originates from outside of the culture of Western Europe and the English-speaking nations. The term "world music" inparticular became current in the 1980s and is generally used to classify any kind of "foreign" (i.e. non-Western) music.

World music is basically music which uses distinctive musical inflections, ethnic scales, and modes which is usually performed on or accompanied by distinctive traditional ethnic musical instruments instruments, such as the doumbek, the sitar or the digeridoo.

The term "world music" has now replaced folk music as a shorthand description for the very broad range of recordings of traditional indigenous music and song from countries typically referred to as Third World.

Although it primarily describes traditional music, the world music genre also includes popular music from non-Western urban communities such as South African "township" music. Also in this class is non-European music forms that have been influenced by other "third world" musics such as Afro-Cuban music.