Genre
A label agreed at a London meeting in 1987 to solve a shelving problem. We keep it while knowing exactly what is wrong with it.
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Selection World
Colombian cumbia
Ten tracks
The running order ignores the years and follows the melody instead, instrument by instrument. Cane flutes and drums first, then an accordion that crossed an ocean by mistake, then a brass section. One title turns up twice, at number one and at number seven.
Selection World
Fado
Ten tracks
A fado title comes in two halves: the song, and then in brackets the tune it sits on. Ten tracks lined up from the tunes nobody owns to the ones carrying a name, with proof in the middle that the same melody comes back under different words.
Genre World
Ethiopiques
Buda Musique
A record brought back from a trip in 1984, the original masters found in Athens in 1997, and a series that was meant to run to twelve volumes and reached twenty-seven. How a French CD collection put twenty years of Addis Ababa music back into circulation.
Genre World
Rail Band
Buffet Hôtel de la Gare
After independence in 1960, orchestras in Mali were founded by the president. The players were public employees, the instruments belonged to the state, and the best band of the lot worked the buffet of the railway station hotel in Bamako.
Monograph World
Tom Zé
World music is not a genre, it is a box. The term was agreed at a meeting of small labels in London in June 1987, for a practical reason: shops did not know where to file those records, and without a category they would not order them. It worked as a commercial strategy and created a problem that has not gone away.
The problem is that it gathers everything that is not Anglo-American, as though Brazil and Mali had something in common beyond not being London. We use it as a side door rather than as a description: inside are specific scenes, with their own studios, labels and internal arguments, and they deserve to be told one at a time.