Is world music a country fit only for old men?

[Nigel w]

Charlie wrote:

I'll hang in for a bit longer, encouraged by the emails from listeners that come every week, always from somebody who never got in touch before, who is thrilled to hear stuff they never knew existed.

Please do hang in there, Charlie. I'm not sure what got Garth going - I didn't quite understand where he was coming from or why.

But there is something that arises out of the exchange above that has concerned me for some time - in fact, ever since I clocked up my personal half century some four years ago. And it's this. An astonishing number of those at the 1987 'birth of world music' meeting to which Garth alludes are still the main movers and shakers in world music. We desperately need some renewal. But where are the impatient, thrusting 20-somethings and why aren't they rudely trying to push us all out of the way?

I hope this doesn't offend anyone because at 54 I am of exactly the same generation : but consider the facts. Our two main world music broadcasters, Charlie and Lucy Duran, are in their 60s and 50s respectively. Both our world music magazines are edited by men in their fifties. The most influential British world music writers, reviewers and critics - the likes of Robin Denselow, Mark Hudson, Sue Steward, Peter Culshaw, Garth Cartwright, Howard Male (and apologies to anyone I've missed and if I have misjudged anyone's age!) - are I think all in their 50s or, at best, advanced 40s. Even that emblem of how cool and hip and youthful world music can be known as Damon Albarn turned 40 last month!

Where is the next generation which embaraces and loves this music - and why aren't they making us all obsolete and redundant? Once I passed 50, I became increasingly uneasy about my own role as a (minor) musical tastemaker : who am I at this advanced age to be telling people half my age what gigs they should go to and what records they should buy? That's why over the past four years I've concentrated more on writing books, where I can speak with the voice of experience from an historical perspective rather than pretending I'm the man with my finger on the pulse of what is hip and happening now.

Last year I lost my gig as The Times' world music reviewer to someone who endlessly goes on about what the 'kids on the street' are listening to right now. But in fact, he's in his mid-forties and has no more idea than me about what turns on these 'kids' (and, by the way, what a horrible, crass and patronising term only ever used by people who are past it!)

But despite my distatse for the term, I have to ask, where are these "kids on the street" - and why aren't they writing and broadcasting about this music and muscling all of us geriatrics out of the road? The truth is that world music is currently being 'run' by a bunch of people whose average age is greater than that of Brown's cabinet or Cameron's shadow cabinet. I think that should concern all of us working in world music on a professional level. Shouldn't it?

[Charlie]

Where is the next generation which embraces and loves this music - and why aren't they making us all obsolete and redundant?

Two of them are part of the rota on Radio 3's World on 3 - Mary Ann Kennedy and Lopa Kothari. Hard to tell exactly, and impolite to guess in public, but it's possible that if you added their ages together, they might collectively be younger than me. A good sign, surely.

I started having the worries that you are expressing a long time ago, but can point to a few positive signs of youthful shoots, not necessarily among journalists, but in other fields:

Wallee McDonald, promoting regular gigs at St Ethelburger's in the City, brings a fresh approach to the role, being a very engaging host on the night. Hard to guess, but in his thirties I assume.

Nasim Masoud, Songlines backroom gal who is about to start a series of six programmes playing Arabic pop music at Resonance, which could lead to more. In her mid-twenties, I'm pretty sure.

It doesn't seem so long since Jamie Renton was a fresh-faced young thing joining the ranks at fRoots, and although those late nights at Chilli Fried may have put bags under his eyes, I'm sure he's still closer to 40 than to any larger number with a zero at the end.

Damian Rafferty at www.fly.co.uk still has all the exuberance of youth, and I do believe he can still be called young.

When it comes to record labels, there are young guys digging up stuff in Africa (Miles Cleret at Soundway), Brazil (Joe Young at Far Out, and Dave Buttle at Mr Bongo) and .... and... surely, there must be more?

Kevin LeGendre, editor at Echoes, has always seemed like a young guy to me, but I suppose he doesn't think of himself that way anymore.

This is one of those thread-creeps that might need to be moved elsewhere, but I'll leave it here a bit longer.

[Con Murphy]

...where are the impatient, thrusting 20-somethings and why aren't they rudely trying to push us all out of the way?

Watch out, Nigel, I’m sure it’ll be a bloodless, velvet revolution when it happens! I can’t imagine a relatively mature area like World Music ever having (or even requiring) the youthful churn or violent trend-upheaval of more ephemeral parts of the music world. I'm not sure it would be particularly well served if it did.

After all, the odd exception apart, has the "World Music" scene ever had impatient, thrusting 20-somethings wanting to push their way in? My mental arithmetic tells me that you, Charlie, Ian, Lucy etc were already in your mid-30s to early-40s when you planted your flags at the media summit of this particular genre (even Kershaw must have been breathing down the neck of his 30th birthday), and I suspect that’s no coincidence.

So by that precedent, many of the names Charlie mentions are the ones at the prime age to make up the next generation, and maybe they are already pushing at the door, only doing so in the orderly manner that befits this satisfyingly unfashionable little niche of the music world.


(Can I add Chris Walsh (still in your 20s, Chris?) and Ilka Shlockerman to Charlie’s list?)

[Nigel w]

(Can I add Chris Walsh (still in your 20s, Chris?) and Ilka Shlockerman to Charlie’s list?)

Chris is indeed still in his 20s and in a way he partly provoked my train of thought in the above thread. We shared a table at the announcement of the R3 world music awards winners two weeks ago, and at one point Chris lent across to me and pointed out that he and my son Adam were the only two people in the room under 30. I had to correct him : even my son is now 31 !!!!

[Charlie]

[ at one point Chris lent across to me and pointed out that he and my son Adam were the only two people in the room under 30.

Significantly, at least two winners were in their twenties, Mayra Andrade and Sa Ding Ding. Could they begin to draw in a younger audience?

But in another way, this is all a red herring, wild goose chase, false trail.

World music is where pop fans go when they get too old to be pop fans. Of course we are all over 40. And yes, Nigel, you are correct, I moved over at the age of 41, it's a natural thing.

[Gordon Neill]

I was starting to get upset there. When I saw Charlie talking about ‘thread-creep’, I thought he was talking about me. But here’s my tuppence worth.

When it comes to individuals, I wouldn’t get too het up about chronological age. I’m a great believer in the old adage that if your good enough you’re young enough. For example, Jerry Wexler was in his late 40s when he was unleashing the Aretha on an unsuspecting world. And you don’t get any more influential than Jerry Wexler.

But Nigel makes a fair point about the overall age-profile of the main movers and shakers in the world music scene. Unlike our policemen, they’re not getting any younger.

I think there’s a few factors at play here. One is simply the fact that people tend to find a musical niche and cling to it, limpet-like, for the rest of their career. Think of a non-young and non-thrusting John Peel growing old and playing disgracefully young music. There’s nothing particularly wrong with that, so long as they stay young in attitude and remember to put their teeth in the right way in the morning. And, after all, they are well-placed to bring a bit of perspective to matters.

A second thought is that an appreciation of ’foreign stuff’ tends to come after the first flush of youth. Even if you dismiss all the current rock and pop stuff as rubbish (and being old, you lot probably do!), there is an enormous back catalogue of great Anglo-American music to digest. If I was in my twenties, I’d be doing exactly what I actually did when I was in my twenties: listening to great stuff that had long disappeared from the pop charts. Unless you’re a peculiar nerd, the chances are you will make a bee-line for the songs that are sung in your native language. For most people, it’s only when they’ve got to the stage of buying the latest remix of the live version of the previously unissued version of the b-side of a favourite song that they start to think that there must be something better to do with their ears. If they’re lucky, they find world music.

And that leads me on to the third factor. You still need to be lucky to stumble on the wonderful sounds hidden within the world music ghetto. I don’t have a problem with the term ‘world music’. I think it’s a brilliantly simple marketing label which has at least put the world on the map. But I do have a problem with the way that the music is then handled by broadcasters - or at least by the BBC. It’s treated as something ‘different’ and ‘special’ (as in ‘my social worker says that I’m special’). There’s a peculiar reluctance to see it simply as music and lob it into the stew. There’s very little radio time given over to world music, and when it does appear it’s tucked away safely in some obscure ghetto to minimise the chances of any normal people actually hearing the stuff. And remember, this is from the BBC, a publicly-funded organisation with a mission to educate. Charlie’s BBC London show is the only one that I’ve stumbled across that demonstrated a genuine breadth of vision. Everywhere else, the music is tidily packaged and confined in little safe boxes.

And, related to this, a fourth rant … er point. For some reason, world music seems to be treated as a middle-class thing and not for the great unwashed. It tends to be tucked away on Radio 3, the posh people’s publicly-funded radio channel. Whenever I tune in to hear Charlie’s show, I’m immediately alienated by the plummy accents of the announcer or the broadcasters in the preceding show. I’m effctively being told that I’m trespassing, that I really ought to be somewhere else listening to my pop songs. And I even get a similar feel from Songlines. I’m a subscriber, I like lots about the magazine. But it speaks with a Home Counties voice. It reads like a holiday brochure for the middle classes, providing a travel guide to obscure and exotic sounds that the proles on their package tours haven’t trampled over yet.

But I remain an optimist. An embittered, twisted and cynical optimist. Eventually, the cream does rise to the top. World music is winning over a wider audience, but it’s a gradual process. It has made great strides over the past 20 years or so and increasingly pops up in the most unexpected places, such as the soundtracks to adverts. I think of the Premiership. There was a time when it was a bit of a novelty to see a foreign footballer. Now there’s more of them than you could shake a stick at. In due course, the people in the music mainstream will reach the coast and realise that there‘s a whole world to explore.

[Gordon Neill]

Charlie said:

World music is where pop fans go when they get too old to be pop fans.

That's it! That's one of the things I was trying to say, but in my usual long-winded way. Some of these old geezers do have a way with words.

[Quintin]

I think Con has got this absolutely right. I just don't think that World Music or whatever you chose to call it generally (of course there are exceptions) attracts the younger crowd. Take me as an example; I'm the same age as Nigel and when I was a kid I listened to what everyone else did. So it was Cream, Led Zeppelin and a lot of American bands like the Grateful Dead Hendrix etc. However I was also interested in rather more esoteric and complex stuff like Terry Riley and german psychedelia which none of my mates could get into (especially the electronic music that I adored). I've often wondered about this and eventually came to the conclusion that I had a musical curiosity that my mates didn't. I'm not saying that my interests were superior to theirs; it's just that theirs were less satisfying to me.

The result of all this was that I got bored with mainstream rock/pop music and simply stopped listening or buying LPs etc from about 1974 or 5. In fact I doubt I bought more than 10 records in the next 12 to 15 years and this was at a time when I spent some time working in the periphery of the industry so I knew what was going on. Then in the early to mid '90s I happened upon Andy Kershaw's progamme on Radio 1 and the flame was rekindled and in particular by the very early Khaled and other Rai stuff he used then to play. For the first time in decades here was music that interested and challenged me. Shades of Gordon's "bulbous polyrythms"! But the point is, interested though I always was in rather more unusual music, I very much doubt that when younger I would have enjoyed or celebrated Rai, Malian or other African music like I now do. I just don't think I was old or sophisticated enough to appreciate it.

[Gordon Neill]

I think QUINTIN is correct. Normal people don't necessarily have the curiosity to kill their taste in mainstream music. I have very early memories of being at mates' houses and listening to music. Invariably, they'd be playing some album by Yes, Genesis or Bowie. When it was my turn, I'd invariably play some John Lee Hooker stuff. Partly to be irritating, partly because I was already bored with the mainstream. With hindsight, it was only a matter of time before my tastes disappeared over the horizon.

But nowadays I think that 'world music' is slowly becoming part of the mainstream. Slowly. And there's surely plenty of young non-conformists out there, disatisfied with sheepishly following the latest rock rebels or retreads of the stuff their mums and dads and grandparents listened to. If only they got the chance to hear world music in its proper context, alongside soul, R&B, reggae, rock'n'roll and all the other great music, rather than confined to its box.

PS I hope Howard is reading this thread and will now acknowledge that the phrase 'bulbous polyrhythms' now belongs to me! He may now use it only with my permission.

[Ian M]

My (utopian) hope would be that the term world music would wither and die as music from all around the globe becomes accepted as part and parcel of the musical soundscape we encounter in radio, TV, films and concerts. In other words it wouldn't be necessary to distinguish and compartmentalise music which has nothing in common except its 'foreign-ness'. But i think Gordon is right - radio and the music industry is built around formats, despite the bonkers juxtapositions nearly everybody has in their music collections. Peel never saw any contradiction in playing African music alongside punk and electronic or even folk music. That was his great strength, and Charlie is the only one who gets close to that. Curious how most people's lives aren't so rigidly compartmentalised, yet magazines, radio etc insist on treating us like we are.

[Jamie Renton]

The Movimientos & Kalabash nights that take place here in London combine Latin American & African films, live music & DJs. They're run by a group of 20 somethings & attract a mixed but youthful crowd.

Callum, one of the organisers / DJs, told me he discovered global sounds via the World Stage at Glastonbury.

They're an inclusive bunch who have even allowed an older codger like me on the decks a few times & didn't refer to me as 'Grandad' or make jokes about zimmer frames (well, not to my face anyway).

Cheers

Jamie

[Ian A.]

at one point Chris lent across to me and pointed out that he and my son Adam were the only two people in the room under 30. I had to correct him : even my son is now 31 !!!!

My daughter Cathia Randrianarivo was there as a sometimes fRoots staffer and music fan and she's 20, and not unusual among her circle of friends.

In that list of people in their 30s contributing to the world music scene I can add our Elizabeth Kinder (a.f.a.i.k), our assistant editor Sofi Mogensen, news editor Sarah Coxson, Helene Rammant who writes for us and organises the Awards, and among other current fRoots writers Katharina Lobeck (right now off in Guinea working on an Amazones piece), Elisavet Sotiriadou, Rose Skelton. None of them grumpy middle aged to elderly blokes the last time I looked.

Outside our office, Katerina Pavlakis immediately springs to mind.

I don't think there would be any problem filling broadcaster slots if the sitting tenants vacated them.

If you're looking for the people in their 20s then you have to head for the English folk scene for the new generation of movers and shakers like Laurel Swift, Sam Lee etc. Luckily they're a broad minded bunch and so far have not been turned off an interest in world music in spite of the best efforts of the w.m. scene to alienate them.

[Charlie]

I don't think there would be any problem filling broadcaster slots if the sitting tenants vacated them.

Isn't that what Radio 3 has done, by bringing in Mary Ann Kennedy and Lopa Kothari to fill the slot vacated by Andy K?

By the way, as you will see I've brought this interesting thread away from the World Service header, as it seems of a wider interest.

[Dayna]

I don't think my age has anything to do with what I'm interested in right now, as far as music goes. I just never knew anything like World Music existed till a couple years ago.
I was tired of Pop music by the end of the 80s. I am absolutely sure I would have known about World Music I would have been drawn to it way before that. My mind was constantly searching for other more interesting music.
I will do what I can to get others around me interested in this, if I can. This is way too good to not share it with others.

[Dominic]

the likes of Robin Denselow, Mark Hudson, Sue Steward, Peter Culshaw, Garth Cartwright, Howard Male (and apologies to anyone I've missed and if I have misjudged anyone's age!) - are I think all in their 50s or, at best, advanced 40s.

You can see Howard's age on his MySpace page (still not 50!) but surely Garth is still a teenager???

This photo is from http://www.garthcartwright.com which I hadn't come across before, but will surely make interesting reading.

One more youngster in our midst - Chetna, Bassekou Kouyate's manager.

Me? Just turned 47.