Bang a Gong

Tom Schnabel’s “Rhythm Planet” serves as an illuminating tribute to some of the most creative and influential musicians on the planet as well as an example of the growth of the world music genre in recent years. No longer the exclusive domain of academics and aesthetes, music from cultures not our own has developed an impressive following that has passed the fad stage to become a legitimate, and expanding, market. Schnabel’s book reflects the maturity of world music, focusing on the personalities who create it rather than on the minutiae of its structure or its cultural significance. The book treats these artists as they are: popular figures who are developing unique and individual expressions based on, but rarely loyal to, tradition.

Schnabel is himself responsible for much of world music’s growth, having introduced many people in the Los Angeles area to the exotic sounds of distant cultures through his popular programs on KCRW-FM (89.9), perhaps the most influential noncommercial radio station in the country. In fact, the cultures are not so distant, because the frequency covers one of the world’s most diverse metropolises. In his introduction, Schnabel reflects on the emergence of “a new multicultural sensibility,” arguing that the rise of world music’s popularity merely indicates where the human race is and where it is going in the next millennium. “World Music,” notes Schnabel, “is the music that reflects the world as it exists today. . . . Everywhere people seek fresh perspectives from traditions outside of their own, underscoring a shared humanity.”

The factors that lead people to listen to music from other cultures are perhaps as diverse as the music itself. For some, world music represents a connection to a lost past, to a more fundamental, even primal form of cultural expression that has somehow eluded us in the modern age. Others, tired of repetitive and simplistic pop music have started to look elsewhere for refreshing and original sounds.

Mickey Hart, drummer for the Grateful Dead and one of the major figures to introduce other musical traditions to a North American audience, claims the popularity of world music today springs from the fact that it fulfills needs not being met by Western music. “People are realizing that the world’s music is a very valuable and fertile ground,” he commented in an interview last year. “It’s valuable because it frees us from the old constrictions of verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge and it allows for trance, for meditation. It allows for ecstatic states, which are not built into Western music. It’s more spiritually oriented. It’s not out of a molded formula.”

World music is also for the explorer, the person who loves to discover new things and learn more about the world in which we live. Like the early ethnomusicologists who shuttled the globe with tape recorders in hand, world music allows us to be armchair travelers as we voyage to the exotic sound scapes of Tuva, Titicaca and Timbuktu.

The great majority of those who listen to world music do not seek it out but stumble upon it unexpectedly, curious about its difference and surprised by its familiarity. This was the case with Schnabel, who first heard Arabic and African music while studying in Paris in the 1970s. The mystery of the sound piqued his interest, and he soon became an avid seeker of music that struck a universal chord and transcended the limits of culture and language. His passion for what he discovered turned him into a musical missionary, and he dedicated himself to introducing others to the vast wealth of music that had yet to gain renown in the West.

Increasingly, world music is not about that which is far away but that which is all around us. The ever-shrinking global village has brought cultural interaction to a new level and made world music both more available and more of a necessity for navigating the cultural complexities of the next century.

In the last 20 years, world music sections in record stores have mushroomed from a small selection of stodgy field recordings intended more for preservation than pleasure to a daunting array of traditional and popular music from unpronounceable locales. The genre now merits its own Billboard chart as well as a Grammy category. Acts such as the Gipsy Kings, Cesaria Evora and Los Van Van regularly sell out large concert halls, and elaborate shows with strong world music influences such as “Riverdance” and “The Lion King” have struck mass-appeal gold. Even a group of aged Cuban retirees in the form of the Buena Vista Social Club can pack Carnegie Hall.

Not bad for a genre that didn’t even have an official name until recently. In the 1980s after outdated terms such as “ethnic music,” “traditional music” or “folk music” failed to adequately describe the cosmopolitan and complex forms of music from around the planet that were becoming more readily available in the Western world, a group of marketing intelligentsia decided it was time to give them an all-encompassing title to put at the top of the record bin. The term “world music” brought its own set of baggage, because it did not distinguish between traditional and popular styles and it implied that Western music was somehow not part of the rest of the world. Perhaps because of its simplicity, the term stuck, and it looks like it is here to stay.

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Recordings of music from other cultures have existed since the invention of the wax cylinder. Anthropologists documented esoteric indigenous music from Canada to Calcutta. Early ethnomusicologists such as Alan Lomax or Hungarian composer Bela Bartok traveled to rural enclaves and isolated outposts collecting sounds to serve as the basis for elaborate and often naive cultural theories. Nonesuch, Explorer, Folkways and other record labels introduced Western audiences to the wonders of the Indonesian gamelan or the complexities of African drumming. And though the recent success of the Spanish wedding dance favorite “The Macarena” and Puerto Rican heartthrob Ricky Martin may seem like isolated phenomena, there have been plenty of world music hits in the past. From the fruit basket headdress of Carmen Miranda to the banana boat song of Harry Belafonte, the hip-swinging conga line of Desi Arnaz to the groin-grinding lambada (a.k.a. “the forbidden dance”), music from other cultures has entered the mainstream on a regular basis.

It wasn’t until the late 1960s and early 1970s, however, that non-Western music began to earn some respect. First was the deserved reverence of Indian sitar master Ravi Shankar, whose association with the Beatles suddenly made Hindustani music hip. Second, the universal appeal of Jamaican superstar Bob Marley opened a door for millions to new musical worlds. These were not anthropological artifacts or cultural caricatures but gifted artists filled with deep expression and obvious talent that you didn’t need specialized knowledge to “get.”

“Rhythm Planet” is all about the artist, for it consists exclusively of profiles based largely on interviews conducted by Schnabel as part of his radio programs. Though it is a selective list, clearly not intended to be all-inclusive or definitive, it includes most of the people who have helped put global music on the map. There are some odd inclusions that don’t quite fit the theme, such as Brian Eno, Sun Ra and Tom Waits, but the selection is careful to include icons like Celia Cruz, Manu Dibango, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Tito Puente, Antonio Carlos Jobim and others, as well as an array of lesser-known but no less accomplished voices of younger generations.

Not all of the profiles are structured around interviews, as many of the artists Schnabel selected were either long-deceased or unavailable. Those in which the artist is allowed to express himself in his own voice are the most interesting, however, for they reveal insights into the minds that make the music as well as provide tidbits of information not available elsewhere. Most fascinating is Schnabel’s biography of Nigerian Afrobeat magician Fela Anikulapo Kuti, one of the more eccentric characters in music history. Schnabel manages to wrangle tales of Kuti’s childhood and his relationship with his parents, evasive defenses of his polygamist lifestyle (he was married to nearly 30 women, many of whom sang backup vocals on his recordings) and reminiscences of his seminal first visit to Los Angeles in 1969, when he was first introduced to the Black Power movement. Schnabel peppers the article with background on the man and his music, as well as well-researched excerpts from other published interviews and articles.

Though the book would have been well served by the inclusion of a glossary and more information on source material, Schnabel provides an ample discography that serves as a well-rounded guide for developing a world music library. The writing is accessible and informative and accompanied throughout by marvelous photographs. Also welcome are Schnabel’s occasional personal asides, which add to the readability of the book and remind us of the subjective nature of the selection process.

For Schnabel, world music is not a catchall phrase that encompasses everything from ethnomusicological field recordings to cheesy Italian pop. It refers specifically to international music produced with a global consciousness. It is not music based on pure, unadulterated tradition but on cross-pollination, cultural interaction and influence. It is an urban phenomenon, in Schnabel’s definition, which is “as much about evolving technology as about music.” It is popular or art music, not traditional music in its purest form. And individual and unique artists, not anonymous representatives of a culture, create it.*