Cultural fusion in traditional musics

Musical tastes are certainly diversifying. Even in the record stores of Hull there has been an explosion in the different genres of music that are available to the consumer. Once it was referred to as ‘ethnic music’ and anyone who took an interest in it was termed an ‘ethnomusicologist’. Now, a whole host of labels are applied to musics of the world : World beat, dub reggae, rai, roots, cajun, zouk, are among the plethora of types of music we can term ‘world music’.

The bringing together of musical traditions began even before the romantic era. Mozart’s Alla Turka and Entfuhrung Aus dem Serail opera attempted to bring unfamiliar forms of music closer to us. Romantic composers tried to explore the folk music of their own country and used traditional folk rhythms and melodies within their own compositions. Although this was a Western music trait, folk music by its very nature has strong Eastern links, especially that of Eastern Europe and Russia. Unfamiliar scales and unusual harmonic colouring were common in the music of the Russian romantic composers such as Borodin, Mussorgsky and Rimsky Korsakoff. Although this music can hardly be termed ‘world music’, it introduced the western world to an alternative musical vocabulary and whetted the appetite for non western musical influences. The arrival of a Javanese Gamelan orchestra at the Paris exhibition of 1889 had a profound effect on Debussy. The use of the pentatonic and whole tone scales was exploited to its full by Debussy, as were the sparkling sonorities, multi -layered textures with ostinato patterns, sustained open 5ths and the hitherto forbidden consecutive chords that created so much fuss during Debussy’s lifetime, but made his music utterly unmistakable. Since Debussy, many composers such as Varese, Stravinsky, Stockhausen and Britten have used traditional musics from around the world for their own purposes. David Fanshaw took the process into another dimension by including field recordings he made in Egypt, Sudan, Uganda and Kenya within his African Sanctus.

During the 1960’s, the hippy movement and pop groups, notably the Beatles looked to the East for spiritual and musical inspiration. The sitar (played by Ravi Shankar) was popularised by the Beatles and became something of a cultural icon for the hippies. Back in 1986, on ‘Graceland’, Paul Simon sang about globalization and cultural fusion "These are the days of lasers in the jungle… This is the long-distance call". The effect of cultural fusion is more evident in the pop music outside Europe. Today’s Asia-pop is not that different to songs from the Eurovision Song Contest, containing ‘doo-bop’ cliché vocals and primary chord progressions within a very western 8 beat drum rhythm. Modern composers such as Japan’s Takemitsu and Korea’s Tan Dung have willingly marketed themselves as both Asian and Western, signalling an end to cultural exclusivity. Paul Simon’s ‘Graceland’ album did indeed open Western recording contracts for the great African popular musicians Ladysmith Black Mambazo and Miriam Makeba. Since then, other cult African musicians have broken into the western circuit such as the great Salif Keita from Mali and Youssou N’Dour, a Senegalian who had the hit ‘seven seconds’ with Ninah Cherry. France has been the gateway where Africa meets the West. It’s colonial ties with North Africa have doubtless been a contributory factor to the rise in popularity of African music in large cities such as Paris and Bordeaux where the low paid African workers often supplement their earnings by busking on the streets, exposing the public to cultural diversity in music.

We must never think that Western styles are the only ones to lay claim to popularity : one recent album by the Dominican merengue inspired Juan Luis Guerra sold over five million copies, and Asha Bhosle, an Indian movie singer is the world’s most recorded artist. In Spain, since the death of the dictator Franco, popular music has undergone an explosion of growth. Flamenco rock bands have based their music on the traditional flamenco music of Andalucia. Flamenco itself has strong ties with North African music, a feature of which is long vocal melismas and the use of the North African mode, featuring a semitone between the 1^st and 2^nd notes of the scale.

It would seem, therefore, that the term ‘World Music’ is meaningless if it is applied not only to the traditional, indigenous musics of different cultures, but also to the melange of styles where the different cultures meet. It is difficult to think of much music that does not contain influences from around the world, so, is all music World music?

Rob Jones 1998