At the Record Store: Interrogating World Music

By Felix Thomson

When I, like many others, joined the vinyl resurgence in the early 2010’s, I migrated to the tightest corner of the store, housing reissues and compilations of forgotten gems: Sudanese jazz, Senegalese funk, the fury of Afro-Colombian vallenato. The sleeves were bold and colorful, promising buzzwords popping from the cover. 

A selection brightly colored records on a patterned rug.
Record store finds (except for album covers photographs are the author’s).

In the intervening decade, the convergence of a growing audiophile culture focused in Europe, Japan and North America, the explosion of online radio stations and the investigative potential of social media have brought record-digging culture into another realm. A new generation of listeners are hungry for novel sounds and more discerning about the origins behind the albums, as equally interested in the musicians’ backstory and placing the work in a broader musical history as the record itself. Like clockwork, a growing industry of established outlets in Europe such as Strut and Soul Jazz Records as well as independent labels like Matsuli Music have sprung forward to meet this demand. 

But most of these Western labels are firmly rooted outside the communities they mine for music; listeners, aficionados and the artists themselves are starting to question the neo-colonial tensions underpinning the production, marketing and consumption of these records. Who makes this music? Who listens to it? Who profits? 

‘World’ music?

Any understanding of the sale and consumption of ‘world music’ has to bear in mind the term itself was hastily thought up by a group of label bosses in a north London pub in 1987. In much the same trajectory as deftly traced by cinema scholar Micheal Chanan about the dubious origins of the term “world cinema,” world music emerged as a category purely fabricated by marketing executives. World cinema, Chanan tells us, grew as a response to the difficulty main film distributors were facing in placing, categorizing and selling ‘ethnic’ cinema. 

An image of records with divider labels. The first label reads, "World Music: Sorry about the title. This section spans international popular and folks musics as well as ethnographic field recordings.
An apologetic label

So too in music. Film scholars Stephanie Dennison and Hwee Lim Song have drawn parallels between world music and world literature in that they are “categories created in the Western world to refer to cultural products and practices that are mainly non-Western” to fit into physical, and now increasingly digital, genre sections of record stores. They are, in essence, marketing techniques that enable the easier consumption and distribution of non English language music for Western audiences. Record labels have limitless divisions within comfortable genres: I once went into a store in Amsterdam that certainly had more sub-categories of trance (Nitzhonot, Suomisaundi, Goa amongst others) than there exist species of bird. And whilst some record stores have begun breaking down these monoliths (usually broad geographical brushstrokes, e.g. Latin, African), it’s not uncommon to find reggae, ragas and rumba in the same pile. 

The Black Lives Matter demonstrations that spread across the world in 2020 in response to the murder of George Floyd brought new energy to rumbling conversations about ‘Othering’ and appropriation in the music industry. The diversity, or lack thereof, in the higher echelons of the music business came under increased scrutiny. People wavered with their use of ‘urban’ in awards ceremonies and album promos. If it is not publicly outlawed, critical race theory might prove useful in deconstructing the workings of some mainstream music labels (and labelling). Communication scholars Thomas K. Nakayama and Robert L. Krizek remind us that we must decenter whiteness in order to visibilize it. They attack the portrayal of whiteness as having a ‘normative essence’, that is to say the benchmark from which other experiences are measured. A similar critique can be made here of the binary drawn up through world music; that in many discourses around music, it is taken as given that we understand a common set of ideas as a benchmark from which we can make comparisons. And yet any attempt to define ‘music’ – here meaning European and North American – as opposed to its’ ‘global’ adjacent, shows us how silly a task this is. 

Consuming Compilations: A Critical Look at the Practices of Labels and Record Stores

The stories many labels want to tell are fundamentally Eurocentric. Europe is foregrounded as the motor for all progressive change, with the West originating pure and democratic norms. Famously mapped out in Edward Said’s Orientalism, Eurocentrism defines itself in opposition to a constructed ‘Other’ by ideological divisions in the world: Africa is belittled on world maps, the East is divided into ‘Near’, ‘Middle’ and ‘Far.’ Geography is not always a neutral divider between sections on your record shelves. 

If this seems a far-fetched analysis of your local music store (if you’re lucky enough to have one), think about the way that a lot of world music is marketed. Pull out some liner notes from a recently released compilation on a Western label. Chances are that at the centre of this story lies the white, Western protagonist: the intrepid label owner or highlife connoisseur whose brave journey brought you, dear listener, the obscure and distant sounds of Ghana, Egypt, or South Sudan.

In some cases, it’s not an exaggeration to say the way these albums are marketed falls into a white savior framework. African American and Diaspora Studies scholar Marzia Milazzo explains white savior narratives as stories centering a white messianic protagonist who “helps a person – or community of people – of color, where change is determinedly seen as the result of this external character rather than any local initiative.” The heroic ‘researcher,’ ‘gentleman explorer’ or ‘amateur anthropologist’ whose adventures in dusty basements unearthing scratched wax has led to a revival of someone’s work who may or may not see the profits. If they do include the musician or their relatives in the profits, their generosity is shown as all the more impressive for the lengths they had to go scouring phonebooks to track them down. Why should we celebrate simple due diligence? 

White saviorism is perpetuated, recreated and lived vicariously through culture. It relies on a voyeurism that white audiences can consume from the comfort of their own homes. As audiences, we are invited to become participant saviors through reading, watching and listening. The Western spectator is able to consume the ‘Other’ – be it a person, a culture or the environment – from a safe distance, without feeling implicated in the racialized capitalism that perpetuates this injustice (and you thought this was just about afrobeat).

I’ve read reviews of reissues that list the entire production team for thanks (the label owners, the sound-mixers, the photographers) – all worthy of praise – without any mention of the original musicians and team that put out the source material. Critics praise the ‘authenticity in the grooves,’ untouched by high quality recording equipment or instruments. Whilst I’m also partial to more analog, raw sounds, we must be wary of fetishizing some static, ‘original’ culture that is forbidden access to modern technologies. Non-Western musicians are essentialized and curtailed, whilst Western artists are allowed to be dynamic, innovative and groundbreaking. 

Labels are plagued with accusations from their artists of orchestrating sinister contracts and underpaying or ignoring royalties. Alan Bishop, co-founder of label Sublime Frequencies whose roster includes Omar Souleyman, quipped in an interview with the excellent journalist and critic Erik Davis of one re-issue that “when it starts selling like fucking Outkast I’ll fly to Medan and start handing out Benjamins to anyone who looks like these guys.” The power relations are startling, racialized and not uncommon: your art, our profit. Whilst some labels do go to extraordinary lengths to track down the source of an original recording, many undoubtedly harness the ‘rare’ factor to justify monopolising the profits. The highest currency in these musical circles is rareness, and the more obscure the artist, the more impenetrable the sound (within reason), the better. An ‘undiscovered’ artist, from 30 years ago, is a sitting cash cow for a shady label. 

The threat, which is not to be underestimated, is that world music then becomes valued based on its ability to provide western audiences a platform for exotic escapism. Thus records distributed as world music fall prey to being judged based on their perceived ‘authenticity’ of foreign societies, meaning in fact a reflection of Western expectations of ‘Othered’ cultures. Film studies scholar Andrea Gelardi makes clear that their very value as products becomes conditional on “their perceived authenticity as pure representations of local cultures within a globalized context.” 

Our language, therefore, requires precision: a move away from the boundaries reinforced by the terminology of world music, popular versus independent music, mainstream versus peripheral. Language which serves to reinforce difference and perpetuate a victimized ‘Other’ is, foundationally, constitutive of colonial discourse. World music, we must not hesitate to affirm, is a term firmly rooted in cultural imperialism. It is also therefore ripe for renewal. 

The New Curators

Alongside legacy music outlets, a burst of smaller, independent labels have sprouted to fill the diggers’ demands. These usually one-person operations often focus on a region or style, and many emerged from the founders’ travels and spontaneous efforts to archive and disseminate music they found along the way. As many begin without experience in the music industry, a common trajectory is slow, intensive research on a single project, building the necessary relationships and know-how to reissue older music. It is often a protracted process of locating the right contacts, fact-checking, and compiling music and notes. Indeed, many labels pride themselves on their historical output (the byline for label Analog Africa is “The Future of Music Happened Decades Ago”). With time, many expand into signing contemporary musicians as they integrate into the musical landscape. But unlike many of the established players, these outlets are much more versed in the colonial undertones that come with the territory, operating new and increasingly collaborative business models. 

Christopher Kirkley began Sahel Sounds, a project that spans films, writing and a label focused on the West African Sahel based in Portland, Oregon, after back-packing around the region. His releases have introduced scores of keen listeners to the works of female guitar band Les Filles de Illighadad, Tuareg guitarist Mdou Moctar and organist Mamman Sani.

Aside from a transparency and fairness that is still not the norm by industry standards – all profits are split 50/50 – Kirkley has avoided familiar tropes in cover imagery and artist representation: much album artwork features minimal text, giving more room for self-representation through the music. Indeed a more direct and sustained relationship is being pioneered by these new, indy labels. Social media has broken down communication barriers that may have once required in-person travel, removing their experiences from the storyline of the artwork. Where they do go in person, as is sometimes necessary to finalize deals, this is often the beginning – not the end – of a relationship. This was the case for Samy Ben Redjeb’s of Analog Africa, who built a relationship with Zexie Manatsa, the founder of Zimbabwean band the Green Arrows, over several years before compiling the band’s music. 

A collage shows three black men wearing pink and blue tagelmust, traditional Tuareg clothing. They are holding guitars and they are enwrapped in a colorful collage of flowers and prints. They are in the middle of a beige desert, with a mosque visible behind them.
Album artwork for the album Agadez by the band Etran de L’Aïr (2022), on Sahel Sounds. Original cover art by Dewey Saunders.

These increasingly transparent interactions have led to truly innovative releases, like Sahel Sounds’ 2020 release of a new series to support artists during the pandemic. Music from Saharan WhatsApp asked artists to record songs directly onto their phones, which Kirkley collated via Whatsapp. The tracks were then available for a month on Bandcamp at a pay-what-you-feel-basis, with all proceeds going directly to artists. Kirkley does not have a permanent presence or partner in Africa, and has scaled back the label to part-time. Projects like Music from Saharan WhatsApp hint at a digitized future without the need for mediators, with instant communication – and profits – directly from fans to bands.

The outline of a man, cast in shadow, playing guitar emerging from purple smoke. The header reads Mdou Moctar, the principal actor, and Akounak Tedalat Taha Tazoughai, the name of the film, in bright purple. Below him is the landscape of the country Niger, including houses and a mosque. At the bottom are the film credits.
Poster for the film Akounak Tedalat Taha Tazoughai starring Mdou Moctar, produced by Sahel Sounds. Artwork by Christopher Kirkley.

It’s not rare for these smaller labels to be multi-media in their output. As opposed to bigger labels who may hope to interview an artist or make a small promotional film to accompany the release, these labels have a more meticulous approach, driven by the archiver’s eye for posterity, the historian’s appreciation for context and place, and a deepening understanding and respect for the cultures and communities that birth this music. For Sahel Sounds this stretched to experimenting in participatory filmmaking, leading to the first ever Tuareg language fictional film, Akounak Tedalat Taha Tazoughai, co-written by the protagonist and real life musician Mdou Moctar in a rock-u-drama adaptation of Prince’s Purple Rain. 

Even the most well intentioned labels cannot completely re-write the traditional musician-label relationship. Analog Africa, run by Tunisia-born Samy Ben Redjeb now based in Frankfurt, Germany, releases music from across the African continent. His extensively researched liner notes hint at the curatorial role that even the most invested and self-aware label owner faces. For his compilation African Scream Contest: Raw & Psychedelic Sounds from Benin & Togo 70s, he recounts an exchange with Omar Shooli who disapproves of the inclusion of his song ‘Hab Isii’ on the album, saying that the spatial and reverberating sounds – obviously pleasant to Ben Redjeb’s ears – do not reflect his best output. Labels still serve a curatorial role based on understanding markets, licensing, and perhaps personal taste, as well as navigating linguistic barriers that may hinder audiences from discovering artists directly. Some smaller labels, like Matsuli Music who are based in the UK and South Africa and who reissue South African Jazz, try to minimize the curatorial role altogether by sticking to entire albums as the artists intended rather than compilations. But these may reach smaller audiences, and until musicians can sustainably monetize connecting with audiences directly, the label seems sure to stay. 

Language, therefore, remains paramount to revisiting this relationship. Jannis Stürtz runs Habibi Funk, focused on 1960’s – 1980’s funk and soul music from the Arab peninsula and based in Berlin, Germany. The label makes a point of remaining bilingual, and all their posts on social media are in both English and Arabic. Stürtz has spoken about this being a partly symbolic choice – he’s aware many fans will speak English – but feels the inclusivity is an important aspect of not dropping in, capturing, and shipping out. Labels like his do important work of protecting, repackaging and celebrating music that may not otherwise survive the digital world. Yet his and similar labels face a delicate balancing act of archiving without appropriating, championing without exploiting. As new payment systems and social media enable contemporary musicians to relate with audiences directly, the role of the label must reinvent itself. Those focusing on reissuing musicians who cannot advocate for themselves are not exempt from these conversations; true music fans will want to see musicians properly compensated for their work, with more of a say over how they are represented. It’s time record stores invested in more shelf dividers. 

The author seated on the floor at a record store, holding up a record.
The author, at the record store

Felix Thomson is a broadcaster and audio producer based in London, United Kingdom, whose work spans music and migration.