Sunday's NYTimes included some music reviews by Ben Ratliff, and one line of his really struck a chord with me. Talking about a collection by Western Saharan guitarist Doueh (just out from Sublime Frequencies), he says: "the question arises whether some Western assumptions about rustic authenticity are being served." This is a problem I have with a lot of wrrld music, particularly Sublime Frequencies. I get the feeling that they're overselling the exotic and rustic qualities because that's what's currently considered authentic in the world of wrrld music. And, yes, I'm aware that this recapitulates a similar discussion around blues which has been going on since the 1960s. One of the things that's always nagged at me about SubFreq is that so many of their CD releases don't credit the musicians on the songs. I give them somewhat of a pass on that, since they're releasing stuff we'd probably never get to hear otherwise, even if they haven't been able to get full documentation. Plus they do seem to credit when they can (see: Doueh, Omar Souleyman).

Still, moving away from SubFreq, I've always had a problem with the way some wrrld music is marketed -- as if moving further away from "here" (wherever "here" is) somehow equals moving back in time; as if all wrrld music is, by definition, rustic and authentic and played on traditional, acoustic, folk instruments; as if, by definition, an acoustic guitar (or oud or tres or kora) is more "authentic" in 2007 than an electric guitar or a digital sampler or sound system made of salvaged car parts. Rather than thinking of wrrld music as alien and other, I'm much more down with the Six Degrees motto: everywhere is closer than you think.

The downside of that approach is when everything turns into a generic, globalized mush. But that, I'd argue, is no worse than the fake authenticity of too much wrrld music, a Potemkin Village fantasy of acoustic "realness" that never existed. I remember when I had my interview with the XDU board, when I was applying to be wrrld music director. One of the first questions I was asked was to define "wrrld music." I declined. I felt like I was being baited and that there was some kind of XDU history to the question that I didn't know anything about. But, more to the point, I don't think it's a terribly relevant question. How is it the job of a genre music director at a small college radio station to determine what wrrld music is (or isn't)? Is it the job of the overall music director to determine what rock music is? If I'd been compelled to answer the question, though, I'd have taken the descriptivist argument and not the prescriptive. I have no interest in manning the barricades to keep outside influences from corrupting some non-existent purity. My vision of wrrld music is expansive and open. And, frankly, pretty laidback. I don't think that, as a music consumer (as opposed to a music creator) genre means much except as a way to file CDs so that they're easier to find.