World music is the traditional music from developing and/or non-English-speaking countries. From a research perspective, world music is studied in the field of ethnomusicology , which is the study of music within its contemporary cultural context. In recent years, the study of world music and usage of the term have drawn criticism from some music experts for its ethnocentrism and Western bias, as critics argue that music from traditional cultures around the world should not be evaluated based only on the preconceptions of Western culture. As Terry E. Miller and Andrew Shahriari explain in World Music Concise Edition: A Global Journey , one of the goals of ethnomusicology and the scholarly study of world music is to become more aware of this bias and gain a deeper understanding of each style and genre of music within its own culture, history, context, and standards. World music, both as a genre and a field of study, continues to grow as society becomes increasingly global, travel and international tourism continue to increase, and technological advances allow media to be shared more readily than ever before.
Brief History
As editors Bruno Nettl and Timothy Rommen remind readers in Excursions in World Music , a little more than a century ago, it was very unlikely that any ordinary person would be able to listen to music from a different part of the world. According to Miller and Shahriari, the first known formal study of world music, or ethnomusicology, was in the late 1800s when the field was called comparative musicology. Researchers from the European empire traveled to the colonies under their rule in Africa and India to collect recordings and other materials for the purpose of creating ethnographic museums, which were archives of the cultures, customs, and people from these colonies. The researchers would then attempt to develop their own classification systems from what they collected—examining and naming unfamiliar musical instruments, transcribing and notating music, and attempting to place the music within existing genres. It was not until the 1960s when anthropologist Alan Merriam published The Anthropology of Music that the study of world music was placed within the context of its culture—ethnomusicology—and, most importantly, treated as an important aspect of human behavior and expression, rather than studied as simply sounds free of cultural context. The study of world music continued in two fields: anthropology (the study of human societies and cultures) and musicology (the scholarly study of music).
Technological advances in the mid-twentieth century—specifically, recording technologies such as long-playing records and magnetic tapes—significantly contributed to the ease of studying world music, both in completing fieldwork and then analyzing and sharing the collected music with other researchers in archives around the world. With these advancements, the first issue of the Ethnomusicology Newsletter was published in 1953; its members later formed the Society for Ethnomusicology in 1955.
Some experts elucidate a major issue among ethnomusicology studies. Particularly in attempts to compare and contrast music from different cultures and develop theories or historical narratives based on this method of study that may or may not be accurate, the studies may be significantly Western biased or may be rejected as false by the culture that is being studied and analyzed. The "otherness" that formed the basis of world music study—that this music is different from traditional Western music, coming from a culture and a people that is "other"—is also the most significant source of criticism of early ethnomusicological studies. This "otherness" was often regarded as implicitly inferior to Western culture. Ethnomusicologists must remain aware of this potential for bias in the study of world music and work to ensure that the music is analyzed within its own unique cultural identity rather than only as it compares to American or European culture and history (Source: EBSCO, 2022).