The discordant note of 'world music'

You've probably been too busy getting dizzy with some Gillespie trumpet magic to notice that the phrase 'world music' has been performing a remarkable geopolitical trick: it means music from everywhere - except parts of the world powerful enough to claim their own musical genres. Born from African musical traditions, seasoned in New Orleans, exported through Paris, Tokyo and Bombay, improvised by people on every continent, it's not 'world music'. It's Jazz - with a capital J, with its own critics, histories, festivals, university studies, and folks prepared to explain why Art Blakey came in fractionally late in 1959.

America produced so many extraordinary jazz musicians - and listeners, writers, record labels and evangelists - that the music got sovereign status. Nobody would dream of filing Miles Davis under 'world music'. Yet, even in India, you'll get baul, Hindustani classical, Indipop, filmi music, desi rap, Carnatic classical all bundled in one laundry basket. It's actually revealing of what people think of their own music to not have enough popular critical space to chat about it. If Punjab had been a superpower, who knows, bhangra may have had 12 sub-genres, specialist magazines, and furious arguments about whether the 1967 split between 'Majha' and 'Malwa' marks a certain aesthetic decline. Instead, alas, it's bunged in 'world music'.