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BEYOND CATEGORY

At a recent WOMEX World Music conference I met a highly regarded record label owner whose t-shirt read "What is World Music?" on the front and "f**k-off!" on the back. Rude you may say, but that t-shirt spoke volumes.

Defining world music is as futile an exercise as providing a tidy definition for jazz.

Let's face it, categorization is a function of marketing. Artists could care less about defining their art. Their business is creating it.

For the past fifteen years I have dedicated myself to breaking down the arbitrary boundaries that artificially separate music by exploring creative, heart-felt music on the San Francisco Bay Area radio program "Tangents". Tangents is a musical omnivore which defies categorization. I commonly describe the program as "genre-bending, cross-cultural, hybridized, music-between-the-cracks radio". (A jazzified version of Tangents can be found at www.jazzonline.com.)

I prefer to devise my own musical vernacular than rely on conventional terms that may encourage musical segregation and pre-judgment. Much of the music has a twist to it that I refer to as "Tangential".

A Tangents music recipe might read: "One cup of world music, a heaping tablespoon of cross-cultural jazz, one teaspoon of roots music, sprinkle with lots of music Duke Ellington would call "beyond category" and blend with a healthy dose of free-form vigor."

The most "Tangential" artists are the blenders -- musicians who break down the walls and build new bridges. Influential rockers like David Byrne, Peter Gabriel and Paul Simon have constructed paths to world music through their recordings. David Byrne's bridge traveled to Brazil while Paul Simon's crossed first to South Africa and then Brazil. Peter Gabriel's approach has been pan-cultural, using artists from India, Africa, and the Middle East.

We are in the midst of an era that has seen more genre-crossing collaborations than a music fan could have dreamed. The list is boundless: Ry Cooder's Buena Vista Social Club and his solo collaborations with Ali Farka Toure and V.M. Bhatt. Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder teaming up on "The Deadman Walking" soundtrack and Deep Forest hooking up with Marta Sebestyen and Cesaria Evora.

Deserving of special notice are the people who often conceptualize these projects and create the environment for cross-cultural experimentation. Two leading examples are producers Bill Laswell and Hector Zazou. Laswell's catalogue is vast as he seems to always be in the midst of multiple projects. Lately Laswell has delved into transformations of recorded performances and include his 'Deconstructing Cuba' project called "Imaginary Cuba" and 'Reconstructions of Irish Music' entitled "Emerald Aether: Shape Shifting". The French Algerian producer Hector Zazou has produced two striking tribute cd's. "Sahara Blue" is an evocative tribute to French symbolist poet Arthur Rimbaud featuring David Sylvian and John Cale, among others. He radically altered his geography with the austere " Songs from the Cold Seas", a tribute to the Arctic regions including Suzanne Vega, Bjork, and Lena Willemark.

The San Francisco Bay Area is one of the most fertile regions on earth for musical cross-pollination. The fusing takes all shapes and forms but one of the most pronounced hybrids is Indian. In fact outside of India, the Bay Area is home to the most abundant North Indian music scene. This is due in part to the presence of the Ali Akbar Khan College of Music. The local roster includes Marin-based Indian tabla master Zakir Hussain who pioneered east-west syntheses with John McLauglin in Shakti. His innovative collaborations with Berkeley saxophonist George Brooks have continued to break new ground in Indian-jazz. East Bay sitarist Habib Khan has experimented in this arena with sparkling results. And for many years Bay Area stalwart Jai Uttal has honed his own brand of Indian hybrid music while Matthew Montfort's Ancient Future utilize Indian, Chinese, and Gamelan influences in their pan cultural approach.

Recent Bay Area releases that exemplify the spirit of cross-cultural collaboration and genre-defying adventurousness include "Zindagi" from the Ali Khan Band and Tin Hat Trio's "Helium". "Zindagi" skillfully bridges (Pakistani) qawwali and rap (no easy trick). While "Helium" cultivates new musical environments for tango, classical, gypsy and the blues. Acoustic Guitar described their sound as if "an Albanian folk trio had listened to Robert Johnson, Thelonious Monk, and Stravinsky." Now that's Tangential!

These types of artists provide the foundation upon which Tangents is built. Cross-cultural interactions and the mixing of music styles often result in creative fusions that find and define new frontiers and trends. This has been borne out throughout music history. Jazz artists have played with musicians from other cultures and absorbed their traditions since the 1930's when Duke Ellington became interested in new Latin imports like the rumba. Some thirty years later Antonio Carlos Jobim and Joao Gilberto experimented with a Brazilian jazz hybrid, and bossa nova was born.

We are experiencing a burgeoning cross-over movement where hybrid styles and collaboration are in fashion. This creative process of grafting and fusing will continue. Artistic creativity along with new technology will be the drivers. Technology can be a double-edged sword but used intelligently it brings the world closer and facilitates this experimentation.

As long as cross-cultural pollination remains the life blood of music, we will be treated to the continuing evolution of the music of the world without any need to define it.

Dore Stein
Host & Producer, Tangents

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