The Colonial Mindset of “World Music” Persists with Algorithms
Several summers ago, my sister and I were scouring the music section at our local library searching for the K-pop genre. We recently learned of the genre and thought it would be a perfect accompaniment to our drives in the heat. Shuffling through the various options, we saw Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish, Ed Sheeran, you know, the usual popular artists. We couldn’t find who we were looking for, but we knew they were somewhere around here. Finally, my eyes caught sight of the label “World Music.”
Even as a young teenager, this label didn’t make much sense to me. We did find BTS, EXO and other K-pop groups, but we also found other unrelated genres like Afrobeats, salsa and reggae. The only thing they had in common was they weren’t Western or in the English language.
Being Asian and from Kentucky, I was used to not seeing many people like me represented, which is why discovering Asian media greatly expanded my worldview –– suddenly, the music world wasn’t just the white pop stars I grew up idolizing. As I soon learned, music is a universal form of communication, despite the language differences, because of the collective and unifying experience it creates. Yet here we are, furthering the divide of “us” versus “them,” and confining entire genres –– and by extension, cultures –– to a single exoticized label.
The term world music is used to describe music with a strong cultural tie to a specific region or country and is rooted in that place’s folk traditions. It encompasses genres like Jamaican Reggae and Ghanaian Highlife, but genres that don’t have many traditional ties like K-pop and Mandopop also fall under this umbrella. Additionally, this term implies a sense of hierarchy, suggesting that the music genres thrown under the umbrella term of world music aren’t worth their own unique category and instead are classified as less important or alien –– but I suppose that’s exactly how the U.S. views them as history proves time and time again.
The distaste for the label of world music is not new. The New York Times published an op-ed about this issue in 1999. So why am I bringing this up now? Because the colonial mindset accompanying this label continues to persist and is being amplified with the rise of technology, streaming platforms and algorithms.
Streaming platforms –– namely Spotify –– have drastically changed the way in which we consume music and other forms of media, music has become increasingly accessible and discovering new songs is made easier through algorithms recommending tracks based on your listening. However, as great as this may seem, algorithmic listening in fact limits exposure to diverse music scenes because it is essentially based on popularity. Songs with more data are prioritized and considered “safer to recommend,” making it more difficult to discover diverse and international artists. This system’s inherent bias only furthers the harmful implications of the World Music label, even if we as a society are slowly distancing ourselves from this term.
Although there has been a growing popularity in non-Western genres, namely K-pop, majority of the songs from this genre that make it onto music charts and are played on American radio stations have either been in English or sound remarkably similar to other popular songs in the U.S. Rising girl group KATSEYE is proof of other countries trying to cater to Western standards of musical popularity. Even calling them a global girl group is a strategic move as it gives the impression that the music they make reflects other diverse cultures in the world when the reality is they still sound like an American girl group. HYBE Corp. Chairman Bang Si-hyuk said that he’s been wanting to “form an international group based on K-pop methodology” in order to connect with a global audience, and while I support this sentiment, have they actually done that? Or has it just fed into the colonial logic of prioritizing Western countries?
To clarify, I am not here to be a hater of anything other than the restrictive label of World Music and its harmful implications. KATSEYE is full of truly talented individuals who could honestly be showcasing their vocal skill in ways other than “gang, gang” and “eat zucchini.” But I guess that’s just what it takes to become a pop star in the U.S.
Now that I’m a college student, the primary artists I listen to and look up to have diversified. Music has allowed me to feel more connected to my culture and identity, and I love discovering new artists from across the globe. Listening to music from other parts of the world immerses us in that way of life, even if it’s just for a few minutes. It humanizes these cultures and these people, distinguishing them from a colonial category and making us realize there is no “us” versus “them” –– it’s us against ourselves. The next time you open your music app, try exploring the diverse options yourself instead of relying on algorithms.