World Music

World music is, most generally, all the music in the world.^[1] More specifically, the term is currently used to classify the many genres of non-Western music which were previously described as "folk music" or "ethnic music". However, "world music" does not have to mean traditional folk music, it may refer to the indigenous classical forms of various regions of the world, and to modern, cutting edge pop music styles as well. Succinctly, it can be described as "local music from out there",^[2] or "someone else's local music".^[3]

Music from around the world exerts wide cross-cultural influence as styles naturally influence one another, and in recent years "world music" has also been marketed as a successful genre in itself. Academic study of world music, as well as the musical genres and individual artists with which it has been associated, can be found in such disciplines as anthropology, Folkloristics, Performance Studies and ethnomusicology.