New+World+Music

World Music

The term "world music" has been credited to ethnomusicologist Robert E. Brown who coined it in the 1960s. The term became current in the 1980s as a marketing/classificatory device in the media and the music industry, and it is generally used to classify any kind of non-Western music. In musical terms, world music can be roughly defined as music that uses distinctive ethnic scales, modes and musical inflections, and which is usually (though not always) performed on or accompanied by distinctive traditional ethnic instruments, such as the kora (West African harp), the steel drum, the sitar or the didgeridoo.

Music from around the world exerts wide cross-cultural influence as styles naturally influence one another, and in recent years world music has also been marketed as a successful genre in itself. Examples of popular forms of world music include the various forms of non-European classical music (e.g. Japanese koto music, Indian raga music, Tibetan chants), eastern European folk music (e.g. the village music of the Balkans) and the many forms of folk and tribal music of the Middle East, Africa, Asia, Oceania and Central and South America.

Literary Movement Music of the 20th Century (Home)