What comes to mind when you hear the term "world music"?

Paul Simon has ripped off taken advantage of paid homage to a number of different cultures in music.

As a proud biracial, bicultural mutt, I love fusion music. My two favorite world fusion groups are:

Afro Celt Sound System!

and

Tabla Beat Science!

Exotic. Weird. Twangy. Following this question and will check out all links later. : )

Ladysmith Black Mambazo and Ravi Shankar. If you just mean what are my first thoughts.

Two fantastic Algerian musicians in the world music movement:

Rachid Taha

DJ Cheb i Sabbah

Uranus trumpets?

What comes to mind? A cornucopia of sounds, words, and rhythms. I’ve been lucky to have to learn songs from many parts of the world and have enjoyed most of them. Some of the sounds are difficult to reproduce, like the African back of the throat clicks and Hebrew ch sounds. Each language seems to have sounds that are more easily learned as one grows up so that the difficult sounds become part of ones palette early.

Music from alternative cultures and communities. Music from outside the realm of the mass produced and commercially driven dross we are normally subjected to.

That it’s a very simplistic and Western-centric term.

@janbb : I’ve got to agree with you; it is often very Western-centric in the way it is used. When I hear ‘world music’ I automatically think of world fusion, which is a combination of different genres from different cultures, or traditional and modern musical styles, but it certainly is often used to mean just “music that’s not from the Anglophone world.” Just like how Americans say “ethnic food” to generalize anything that’s not… I don’t know… biscuits and gravy. Shudders I HATE THAT PHRASE!

I listen to music from all over the world, and the music is so different. I listen to Nigerian music, South African music, Turkish music, Moroccan music, Iranian music, Japanese music, Tibetan music, Indonesian Gamelon music, Cambodian music, Tuvan throat singers, Chilean music, Native American flutes, Australian dijeridu, and on and on.

I’m American, yet I play Australian instruments, several kinds of African drums, Native American fluts styles, and the way I play my trumpets is probably a mix of very many influences I’ve had in my life. My music is most like world music in that it is a catchall of many styles, most based on improvisation.

I think the idea of world music is kind of silly. I think it just means that there are so many different styles, and it is too hard to remember the names of all of them. I find the same to be true of various rock styles. I really have no clue when it comes to all these new genres of rock. No idea what they sound like at all. Like most people probably don’t know what a Gamelon sounds like. Or what Babatunde Olatunje’s music sounds like. How many people know what Tuvan throat singing is like? Three wildly different styles, all part of world music, simply because they don’t come from America or Europe.

Thievery Corporation.