World music is an English phrase for styles of music from non-Western countries, including quasi-traditional, intercultural, and traditional music.

World music’s inclusive nature and elasticity as a musical category pose obstacles to a universal definition, but its ethic of interest in the culturally exotic is encapsulated in Roots magazine’s description of the genre as “local music from out there”.

This music that does not follow “North American or British pop and folk traditions” was given the term “world music” by music industries in Europe and North America.

The term was popularized in the 1980s as a marketing category for non-Western traditional music and it has grown to include subgenres such as ethnic fusion and worldbeat.

Ian Newbery leads our World Music programming.