(editor\u2019s note) Challenged for its ethnocentrism and the legacy of colonialism and global capitalism, the term \u201cworld music\u201d raises questions. Should we update our words, that carry, summon and shape our imaginations and our sensibilities ? Words that have consequences for the material conditions of creation, distribution and reception of the works produced.<\/p>\n
Four articles open this reflection:<\/p>\n
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Is the term \u201cworld music\u201d useless or even awkward ? Four artists from the sector, of different ages and backgrounds - producer Martin Meissonnier, Congolese-born pianist Ray Lema, electro-Maloya artist Dilo and Moroccan singer Oum - question the term\u2026 And sometimes grit their teeth.<\/strong><\/p>\n 1987, in a discreet pub in the heart of London, a handful of representatives of the British musical elite, including Peter Gabriel, founder of the Realworld label (Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Papa Wemba\u2026) and of the Womad festival, meet and try to \u201cmarket\u201d these sounds from non-Western countries, which the public is becoming increasingly fond of. According to legend, after some discussion, the team agreed on the term \u201cworld music\u201d, which would encompass all these disparate musics under its banner. The label soon arrived in France, soon to be translated as \u201cmusiques du monde<\/em>\u201d (in French, the term music is used in its plural form<\/em>). Among the pioneers of these sounds from elsewhere, the reactions were not long in coming: \u201cI thought it was rubbish, straightforward<\/em>\u201d, Martin Meissonnier recalls with enthusiasm, almost 40 years later. The journalist, director, DJ<\/span> and producer of Fela Kuti, King Sunny Ade, Ray Lema and Manu Dibango - among others - does not mince his words. He, who has been an ardent defender of this music from other horizons since the 1970s, does not see the slightest use for this fabricated term. \u201cBefore 1987, people looked for Fela Kuti by name in record shops. That\u2019s it,<\/em>\u201d he says, \u201cI started to get interested in these artists through jazzmen. Just as Debussy, for example, had a passion for the Javanese gamelan (see the Focus on Traditional music, a new lease of life for classical music), Coltrane had a passion for African music. Or Don Cherry, whom I produced, integrated Tibetan influences into his creations. Their quest? Pushing the harmonic limits, playing complex rhythms, rethinking tonality\u2026 I myself have always wanted to find excellent artists, just excellent artists, whether they are from here or elsewhere: Okay Temiz, Trilok Gurtu\u2026<\/em>\u201d. And Meissonnier recalls the teeming musical diversity that made Paris quiver in the 1970s and early 1980s: \u201cThe Wagram Venue, packed to the rafters, trembled under the onslaught of the Haitian compass of Shleu-Shleu\u2026 The Malian homes of Montreuil were alive with breathtaking Mandingo songs. And then, in 1978, in a packed Bataclan, without a single white person, I attended Franco\u2019s concert, dumbfounded by this crazy show, which my compatriots knew nothing about. Not to mention what was going on in the Asian communities. Or the Kabyle caf\u00e9s\u2026<\/em>\u201d. Basically, these sounds, long before the appearance of \u201cworld music\u201d, were played there, full of vitality, under the very nose of Western audiences, who were largely unaware of them\u2026<\/p>\n A vast \u201ccatch-all\u201d with colonial overtones<\/strong><\/p>\n So perhaps we can assume that the label - World Music - has been able to highlight a few mega-stars, such as Johnny Clegg, Youssou N\u2019dour, or Mory Kant\u00e9, sometimes at the risk of distorting their music to adapt it to Western ears\u2026 But even today, Martin Meissonnier, who in the 1970\u2019s worked for the prestigious Ocora Radio France label and at the Rennes Festival of Traditional Arts, remains perplexed. For beyond questioning its usefulness, he raises the question of the pernicious side of this term, which he considers to be borderline \u201ccolonialist\u201d: \u201cIt encloses, in a vast catch-all, the \u2018music of others\u2019, as we say \u2018diversity\u2019, \u2018blacks\u2019, \u2018Arabs\u2019, \u2018handicapped\u2019\u2026 Of course, those who invented this term did not do it on purpose\u2026 Hell is paved with good intentions!\u201d <\/em>His old friend, the Congolese-born pianist Ray Lema, who arrived in France in 1982, joins him in his analysis, with contained anger: \u201cThis term is still a reduction to designate, roughly speaking, all non-western music. The West always reduces what is not itself. It puts the rest of the world in boxes in order to monetise it better\u2026<\/em>\u201d. However, the distinguished pianist, a prot\u00e9g\u00e9 of Jean-Fran\u00e7ois Bizot, founder of Radio Nova and creator of the term \u201cworld sound\u201d, does not pay much attention to it, and during our telephone interview, we even sense a palpable shrug of the shoulders: \u201cThis term is only due to the appearance of commercial behemoths, such as Fnac, where arrows and bins had to be invented to orientate the customer\u2026<\/em>\u201d. Moreover, he himself was a trans-bin musician, moving cheerfully from the \u201cworld music\u201d to \u201cjazz\u201d boxes. One of the managers of the famous store called his publisher to warn him of this move, on the grounds that \u201cRay Lema was not \u2018simple\u2019 enough for \u2018world music\u2019 <\/em>\u201c.<\/p>\n Ray Lema - Live concert Green Light<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n