What is world music? And why does it exist?

World music is a type of music with no clear definition. It is put into a category of its own. For example if you went into a HMV music store you would find ‘world music’ in its own section. In order to assess what world music is you have to also think about the differences between what is considered local or global music. Guilbait says ‘world music is usually described as the blending of modern and traditional music’. World music is created by a specific country, often using traditional and modern instruments to create a trademark sound which is easy for individuals to associate with that country. The USA and the UK are the main producers of music and they have increasingly begun to acknowledge world music. Through their interest in this music, an advance in technologies have began to reach around the world allowing world music to be recorded and promoted much more widely, which means it gradually has begun to reach the USA and the UK, where it becomes increasingly more popular, and can often lead to major record deals.

Is Popular music a mass produced commodity or a genuine art form?

Theodor Adorno believed that popular music was a mass produced commodity. He said that “the whole structure of popular music is standardized”. He believed that it couldn’t be justified any other way. Adorno’s believe was that popular music was produced by the capitalist society in order to create profit and to keep audiences passive. He said popular music was too simplistic and compared it to classical music which he saw as a form of art. Whilst it is true that popular music is produced to the masses, it could be argued that it is a form of art because it something created by an artist to express a feeling. Gendrom criticises Adorno’s theory saying that you can’t mass produce a song because it’s a recording of a moment in time. So, whilst Adorno has a point that popular music is massed produced, he focuses on the industry making profit and not at how and why the artists create the music. Popular music could be considered as an art form as it privileges popular criteria, whilst Adorno’s example of classical music only appeals to a smaller, more selective audience.