28 - Disseminating world music

Summary

The desire of comparative musicologists and ethnomusicologists for unmediated data led as well to their distrust of musics that seemed to be mixtures of otherwise 'pure' traditions as well as popular musics that reflected the influence of Tin Pan Alley popular song, jazz, rock, or other Western styles of music. The kind of world music that ethnomusicologists felt most comfortable researching, archiving, and disseminating, known variously as folk, ethnic and traditional, was decidedly noncommercial. Since the 1960s, the production and dissemination of world music seems to have escaped the near-exclusive curatorial grasp of scholars, collectors, and recording labels obsessed with liveness and authenticity. The work of Christopher Washburne and Travis A. Jackson has explored the differences between salsa and jazz musicians' particular approaches to recording and live performances. The archives created in the past and the vast array of field recordings made by folklorists, comparative musicologists, collectors, and ethnomusicologists alike remain valuable.