World Music Appreciation Thread

It's been a while since I made a post, I've been absurdly busy with work and school. Although, I feel this is a thread that is long overdue in these parts. The music we listen to every day, the music we hear on the radio, is horribly over-classified. People will tell you there are a thousand miles between this style of rock and that style of rock. Grindcore is COMPLETELY different than metalcore. This is completely false. It's just an inch. As I've said in most of my posts, there are hundreds of other countries with their own instruments, their own styles of music, even their own harmony systems. Indian music for instance, is based on quater tones while Western music is based on half and whole tones.

Thanks to the digital age, we have an infinite amount of resources to obtaining music, researching music, and even studying under other musicians through youtube videos, instructional DVDs, and internet interviews. I luckily got my chance through YouTube to study under a man by the name of Bob Brozman. He started his life and career as a blues musician, but through his studies ended up learning the "blues" of over 40 countries. He not only opened my eyes to the big picture of music, but also helped me train my ears and curiosity to explore the big picture, the rest of the world.



In this thread, I'm going to post a few videos of some of my favorite world artists and explain briefly their style, background, and why I personally enjoy them. World music almost always uses a different harmony and rhythm system than we do in Western music, so it's going to almost certainly just sound like noise, but with each listen, I promise it will make more sense and become more and more beautiful.

Rodrigo Y Gabriella
First up, I'm going to start with latin music because it is the easiest to digest for people new to world music. Rodrigo and Gabriella started their careers as metal musicians, toating their B.C. Riches and creating a shrine to their favorite band, Metallica. Upon the band breaking up, rather than giving up music or continuing their current route, they bought two cheap nylon string guitars and went acoustic.

Rodrigo maintains a vicious pick style technique that combines the precision of a skilled metal guitarist with the fluidity and melodies of a Paco De Lucia reincarnate. This meshes with Gabriella's faux-flamenco technique to create blazing melodies, powerful rhythms, and songs that are driving from beginning to end.



Paco De Lucia
Paco De Lucia is a god among men, pure and simple. Although he isn't the greatest by far, he is hailed as the man who brought flamenco to the forefront of Latin culture. What he shares with Rodrigo Y Gabriella is the blazing Latin melodies, sophisticated flamenco rhythms, and pure "dancibility"!

Flamenco is a style of dancing as well as a style of guitar. And flamenco is actually played on the streets as an improvised art form. The singer and guitarist take turns improvising guitar and dancing over each others motions. Beautiful, beautiful, music.



Antonio Forcione
This man right here is really something, my new favorite acoustic guitarist. (in case you haven't caught on yet, I'm a religious acoustic guitar player and fanatic). He flawlessly blends Indian, Jazz, Latin, Rock, and Brazillian music into one beautiful shell. He has touch, tone, feel, phasing, and my favorite aspect of guitar playing: Spontaneous sound. A master of both rhythm and melody. As I said, my new favorite guitarist.



Bela Bartok
Oh man, this guy is seriously burning up. My percussionist told me about this fellow. He's a composer, a pianist if memory serves, who specialized in the arrangement of Romanian folk music. This guy will probably be the hardest to swallow musically. His music, to me at least, sounds more like a musical conversation than a traditional song structure. His rhythms are built more around metric modulation, swelling, and silence. After a few listens, his music began to sound to me like amazingly well scored movie music. Silence, slight music, loud music, hit points, etc.



Lily Afshar
Also a new find for me. I revisted one of my old Acoustic Guitar magazines and happened to discover an article on her that I failed to read. Once mastering the classical guitar with a Western repitoire from schools such as Florida State Conservatory of music, she went back to her roots and began arranging Iranian music. When asked as a child why she didn't play Iranian music, she replied, their is no Iranian guitar music. Which is a shame, because as an owner of all three Lilly Afshar albums, her music is absolutely breath taking.



Babatunde Olatunji
I just felt an inkling to add a few new artists to my recommendations thread to see if I could breath a bit of life into the thread. It didn't really take off to well the last time, hopefully there will be more interest now. First up with the next wave is Nigerian percussionist, Babatunde Olatunji, who is most famous for his amazing sense of rhythm, tone, and chants. Djembes are very spirital drums. They are said to contain three different spirits: That of the instrument carver, the tree the drum was carved from(real djembe drums aren't made from composite wood, they are carved from a single three), and the animal slain to create the drum head. Babatunde was a huge influence to everyone around him, from his smaller drum based ensembles to his huge arrangements such as the video below. You Santana fans may remember a song by the name of Jingo from his debut album? It was an interpretation of Babatunde's "Jin-Go-Lo-Ba". Just to refresh my point that listening to world music can help bring about new exciting Western music.



Ravi Shankar
Anyone who actively reads my posts on this community is no stranger to the name Ravi Shankar. Ravi Shankar, father of Anoushka Shankar and Norah Jones, is an Indian sitarist and former teacher of George Harrison. Ravi Shankar has composed everything from simple to intricate Ragas and even movie scores. He is internationally renowned as the best modern sitar player in Indian music. I can't even find words to describe his music besides intense, emotionally crippling, fast paced, and beautiful. He is also a recipient of the Bharat Ratna, the highest civilian honor in India. The video below is a duet with his daughter.



Anoushka Shankar
As I said before, Ravi Shankar definately made some talented off-spring. Ravi's daughter and Norah Jones' half sister Anoushka is no exception to the rule. Born in London and growing up in the UK, she began studying sitar under her father at the age of eight and performed her first Raga at the age of 13. Although her heritage is 100% Indian, she speaks with a flawless American accent and has various Westernized ideas in her music. She is a skilled composer who I hope to see surpass her father sometime in the near if not immediate future. Not to mention, she is absolutely beautiful.



Zakir Hussain
Lastly for todays adds is Zakir Hussain, who is almost unarguably the best tabla player that has ever lived. His collaborations include Anoushka and Ravi Shankar, George Harrison, and John McLaughlin(solo, Shatki, and Remember Shatki). He blends precise over-the-bar-line rhythms with articulate phrasing and beautiful tones to create what is essentially the most beautiful Indian percussion I've been blessed to hear so far.

Good thread. I don't listen to a lot of world music. What I do listen to tends to just be foreigners singing western style music - not really the same thing as "world music". I do listen to celtic music sometimes, though.l here's a song by Gjallerhorn.

Edgar Cruz is a local artist here that plays a little bit of everything. His classical and flamenco guitar skills are amazing. You should check him out.

Paul Simon is a good example of fairly mainstream world music. His stuff in the 80's was really diverse and heavy on the african tribal music elements. Good stuff.

But honestly, most of what I think of as "World Music" is delivered by pretentious aholes like Yanni, John Tesh, etc... I despise those two "artists" but would like to hear some GENUINE tribal type of music. The kind that Woody Guthrie recorded in his travels to Africa.

Also, would you consider Enya and Celtic music as "World Music" or just "Celtic" or "Ethereal"?

I really don't consider celtic to be a world genre because every nation kind of has their own flavor of celtic. The only Celtic music I would consider "world music" would be people living in the area of Scottland that still speak Galiec. Edgar Cruz is a beast, but he's still pretty much just a classical guitarist. Granted, I would love to hear him play flamenco.

When I finish the thread up tonight, y'all will have a better idea of my definition of world music. Thanks for posting, though!

I enjoy many types of music and from many parts of the world as well.

I don't know if thats the same as "world music", as a genre.

I would agree with Musicman in that, when I hear the label "World Music" it is usually the types he mentioned, which is not for me either.

This is a guy named King Sunny Ade. His music is labeled as "juju" and I believe he is one of the founding fathers. Although I've seen him classified as "world beat". Don't know if that's the same...

This is from his debut album in 1982. I really enjoy the (sort of hawai'ian sounding) guitar.



or check out this shorter video, which features many precussion instruments and various sound effects. Pretty great stuff.

While neither case are quite what I would describe as world music, they're both great examples to my overall point.

World music is hard to swallow, harder to digest, and even harder to understand. But when taken in stride and soaked in, it can help us bring out amazingly beautiful music we didn't know we had in us.

For instance, with the two videos above. Hawaiian Slide guitar was a very interesting thing for me, not quite worldly, we're still in the United States. However, from Hawaiian music, I got into Caribbean and Brazilian music. (under the guidance of Bob Brozman of course.)

That said, I updated the thread with information / a video of Bela Bartok and Lily Afshar. If this thread gets a good deal of attention/discussion, I'll dip into my music collection and find some more videos.

I don't know if Korpiklaani counts as "world music"... they're a Finnish folk metal band - but I really mean FOLK metal. With violins, accordeons and the like. Most folk metal bands started as metal bands and then added folk music, but Korpiklaani started as a folk ensemble and then added metal.

Korpiklaani may very well be the happiest music in the world - except for Flogging Molly, perhaps. Judge for yourself...

Korpiklaani - "Happy Little Boozer"

Great example. Taking Finnish folk and adding metal(invented in the Western World) is exactly the kind of thing I'm trying to get at. Taking this beautiful, insane, style of music from another country that you don't even really understand 100%, but then channeling that and making great music.

That said, I just updated the thread with a few new people to try to get a real discussion started. Ravi Shankar, Anoushka Shankar, Babatunde, and Zakir Hussain. If I can get a little discussion started, I'm going to be adding some Brazillian, Peruvian, Arabic/Middle Eastern, and Afro-Cuban artists to my first post.

In my music theory class we had to study some of Bartok's music. It's pretty interesting stuff.

Also, folk metal is pretty much the best music ever. Korpiklaani is awesome. Finntroll gets bonus points for combining ridiculously happy Humppa with black metal.

Bartok is off and on for me. It really varies from piece to piece. As a composer, I absolutely adore his style. However, some of his presentation choices bother me sometimes. I have one CD of Bartok's stuff lying about that I can't stand listening to, even as brilliant as I know it is, because of the tone of the stringed instruments.

Here are my examples of some world music artists. I of other cultures.

Abed Azrie: [

It's all the same in my mind, man.

I don't prefer vocal or instrumental world music. What I love about world music is how complete it is. It's not a clear cut line in the roles of the band. The percussionist uses as much melodics and color as the sitarist in most Indian music I listen to, and the Sitarist uses just as much rhythmic flare and variation. Even the vocalist are very keen rhtymically and also much more melodic instrumentally speaking.