shipslides
Music14 slides0 views

World Music

"World music" is a category invented by record-store managers in London in 1987 to file everything that wasn't classical, jazz, rock, or pop. The term is...

StandaloneDownload
Sandboxed deck
Open raw
Shared with ShipslidesCreate your own deck →

About this HTML presentation

This Shipslides page presents World Music as an interactive HTML presentation deck in the Music catalog with 14 slides. The share page keeps the uploaded deck sandboxed while exposing readable context, topics, and a slide outline for viewers and search engines.

"World music" is a category invented by record-store managers in London in 1987 to file everything that wasn't classical, jazz, rock, or pop. The term is awkward; the music is real. Key sections include: World Music; On the term, briefly; The Indian subcontinent; West Africa; Indonesia · the Gamelan; Latin America; The Middle East · Maqam; East Asia; The Caucasus and Steppe; The map.

Key sections

  • 01World Music
  • 02On the term, briefly
  • 03The Indian subcontinent
  • 04West Africa
  • 05Indonesia · the Gamelan
  • 06Latin America
  • 07The Middle East · Maqam
  • 08East Asia
  • 09The Caucasus and Steppe
  • 10The map
  • 11A starter shelf
  • 12Field instruments, illustrated
  • 13Concepts you will need
  • 14Watch this performance

Topics covered

musicworld

Related decks

Music15 slides

Afrobeats

Music30 slides

The Blues

Music12 slides

Classical

Music32 slides

Country Music

Slide outline
  1. 01World Music
  2. 02On the term, briefly
  3. 03The Indian subcontinent
  4. 04West Africa
  5. 05Indonesia · the Gamelan
  6. 06Latin America
  7. 07The Middle East · Maqam
  8. 08East Asia
  9. 09The Caucasus and Steppe
  10. 10The map
  11. 11A starter shelf
  12. 12Field instruments, illustrated
  13. 13Concepts you will need
  14. 14Watch this performance
Page data
Canonical
https://shipslides.com/d/music-world-music
Category
Music
Size
455.1 KB
Updated
2026-05-17
LLM text
https://shipslides.com/d/music-world-music/llms.txt

Presentation Transcript

Detailed slide-by-slide text content extracted from this presentation.

Slide 01

On the term, briefly

  • Plate I
  • "World music" is a category invented by record-store managers in London in 1987 to file everything that wasn't classical, jazz, rock, or pop. The term is awkward; the music is real.
  • Music exists in every documented human society, organized in vastly different ways. Pitch is not always continuous (it is bent in Hindustani raga but quantized in Javanese gamelan). Meter is not always periodic (Bulgarian folk's 7/8 and 11/8; West African polyrhythm interlocking three- and two-against-four). Tone is not always equal-tempered (Turkish makam uses 53 commas to the octave; the gamelan's pélog and slendro tunings differ between every individual ensemble).
  • A fair approach: know one or two traditions deeply, and know that there are dozens more equally deep.
Slide 02

The Indian subcontinent

  • Plate II
  • Two related but distinct classical systems — Hindustani in the north, Carnatic in the south — built on raga (melodic mode) and tala (metric cycle).
  • A raga is more than a scale: it is a melodic personality with characteristic phrases, ornaments, ascending and descending forms, a time of day or season, and an emotional register. Hindustani classical music descends from temple and court traditions of the Mughal era; Carnatic from the temples of South India and the trinity of 18th-century composers Tyagaraja, Muttuswami Dikshitar, and Syama Sastri.
  • The North's instruments: sitar (Ravi Shankar, Vilayat Khan, Nikhil Banerjee), sarod (Ali Akbar Khan), tabla (Zakir Hussain), bansuri (Hariprasad Chaurasia), vocals (Bhimsen Joshi, Kishori Amonkar). The South: veena, mridangam, violin held downward like a cello (L. Subramaniam, Lalgudi Jayaraman), and a uniquely sophisticated vocal tradition (M. S. Subbulakshmi).
  • Listen
  • Ravi Shankar — Three Ragas (1956). Ali Akbar Khan — Morning & Evening Ragas (1955). Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan — Shahen-Shah (Real World, 1989). T. M. Krishna — any concert recording. Ravi Shankar · Raga Jog →
Slide 03

West Africa

  • Plate III
  • From the Mande empires came the griot — hereditary poet, musician, oral historian.
  • The kora (21-string harp-lute) is the griot's signature instrument. Toumani Diabaté is the contemporary master; his father Sidiki Diabaté made the first kora LP in 1971. The balafon — a wooden xylophone of which the Sosso-Bala in Niagassola, Guinea is said to date to 1235 — is the same instrument American slaves carried west and built into the marimba and, eventually, the vibraphone.
  • Modern West African popular music: Salif Keita (Mali, descendant of the Sundiata Keita dynasty, partially albino, voice of his generation); Fela Kuti (Nigeria, inventor of Afrobeat 1971); Youssou N'Dour (Senegal, mbalax); Ali Farka Touré (Mali, the desert blues); Tinariwen (Tuareg, refugee camp roots). Mali's Festival au Désert, Bamako's clubs, Lagos's afrobeat scene.
Slide 04

Indonesia · the Gamelan

  • Plate IV
  • Bronze percussion ensembles of Java and Bali. A gamelan is built and tuned as one instrument; you cannot move pieces between them.
  • A typical Central Javanese gamelan has roughly 20 to 80 players on bronze gongs, metallophones (saron, gendér), drums (kendang), bamboo flutes (suling), and bowed strings (rebab). Two tuning systems coexist within one orchestra: pentatonic slendro and seven-note pélog. The music interlocks at multiple stratified rates — slow gong cycles below, fast figuration above. Debussy heard a Javanese gamelan at the 1889 Paris Exposition; it changed his harmonic thinking permanently.
  • Balinese gamelan is faster, more percussive — gamelan gong kebyar emerged in the early 20th century with sudden tempo shifts and dazzling unison passages. Composers like Lou Harrison, Steve Reich, and Evan Ziporyn have absorbed gamelan techniques into Western new music.
Slide 05

Latin America

  • Plate V
  • The Afro-Cuban son tradition — guajira, danzón, son, mambo, salsa — synthesizes Spanish guitar music with Yoruba and Kongo rhythmic principles. The clave (3-2 or 2-3) is its central five-stroke rhythmic figure. Beny Moré, Arsenio Rodríguez, the Buena Vista Social Club, Celia Cruz, Eddie Palmieri, Rubén Blades.
  • Brazil: samba (Rio, Carnival, the schools of Mangueira and Portela; Cartola, Beth Carvalho, Martinho da Vila), bossa nova (João Gilberto, Antônio Carlos Jobim, Vinicius de Moraes, 1958–62), tropicália (Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Os Mutantes, 1968), MPB (Chico Buarque, Elis Regina). Argentina: tango (Carlos Gardel, Astor Piazzolla's nuevo tango). Colombia: cumbia. Peru: chicha, huayno.
Slide 06

The Middle East · Maqam

  • Plate VI
  • The maqam system — Arabic, Turkish, Persian, with regional variants — uses microtonal intervals smaller than the Western half-step. A maqam is built from joined trichord/tetrachord modules (jins) with prescribed melodic behavior at each pitch.
  • Egyptian classical: Umm Kulthum (1898–1975), the most famous singer in the Arab world; her monthly Thursday-night concerts emptied Cairo's streets. Mohammed Abdel Wahab, composer. The oud (fretless lute, Munir Bashir, Anouar Brahem) and qanun (plucked zither). Persian classical: radif tradition, setar, tar, tombak, kamancheh. Turkish: Tanbur, the Mevlevi Sufi tradition (whirling dervishes). Lebanese: Fairuz and the Rahbani brothers.
Slide 07

East Asia

  • Plate VII
  • Each East Asian classical tradition rests on a different aesthetic. The Japanese shakuhachi (end-blown bamboo flute, Zen-influenced honkyoku repertoire), shamisen (three-stringed lute), koto (13-string zither, Yatsuhashi Kengyō, Sawai Tadao). The Chinese guqin (seven-string zither, 3,000-year-old repertoire, ritual silence between notes), pipa, erhu. The Korean gayageum, haegeum, the pansori dramatic narrative tradition (one singer + drummer, eight-hour performances).
Slide 08

The Caucasus and Steppe

  • Plate VIII
  • Georgian polyphony (recognized by UNESCO 2001): three-voice male singing in chordal harmony built on harshly dissonant intervals that resolve. Listen to ensemble Rustavi or the Chakrulo sent on the Voyager Golden Record. Tuvan throat-singing (khoomei): one voice producing two or more pitches simultaneously, the upper a whistled overtone above a low fundamental. Mongolian long-song (urtiin duu) and the morin khuur (horsehead fiddle).
Slide 09

The map

  • Plate IX
  • A schematic of the regions surveyed.
Slide 10

A starter shelf

  • Plate X
  • India · 1956
  • Ravi Shankar — Three Ragas
  • The album that introduced North Indian classical to the West.
  • Hindustani · sitar
  • Pakistan · 1989
  • Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan — Shahen-Shah
  • Qawwali with full party. Real World Records.
  • Sufi devotional
  • Mali · 1994
  • Ali Farka Touré & Ry Cooder — Talking Timbuktu
  • The desert-blues meeting that won a Grammy.
  • Sahel
  • Cuba · 1997
  • Buena Vista Social Club
  • Ry Cooder reassembles the Havana son scene of the 1950s.
  • Son cubano
  • Brazil · 1959
  • João Gilberto — Chega de Saudade
  • The first bossa nova LP.
  • Bossa nova
  • Egypt · 1967
  • Umm Kulthum — Inta Omri
  • An hour-long song that stops Cairo.
  • Maqam · vocal
  • Argentina · 1974
  • Astor Piazzolla — Libertango
  • Tango plugged into modernism.
  • Nuevo tango
  • Senegal · 1989
  • Youssou N'Dour — The Lion
  • Mbalax pop synthesis.
  • West Africa
  • Tuva · 1990s
  • Huun-Huur-Tu — 60 Horses in My Herd
  • Throat-singing for the international concert circuit.
  • Tuvan
  • Bali · 1972
  • Music from the Morning of the World
  • David Lewiston's Nonesuch Explorer recording — kebyar gamelan.
Slide 11

Field instruments, illustrated

  • Plate VIII-bis
  • A representative sample. Each is a world.
Slide 12

Concepts you will need

  • Plate X-bis
  • Five terms that come up across traditions and don't translate cleanly.
  • India
  • Raga · रागा
  • A melodic personality — scale, characteristic phrases, ornaments, time of day, emotional register. Not a "key."
  • Hindustani / Carnatic
  • India
  • Tala · ताल
  • A metric cycle of fixed length, divided into uneven groupings of beats marked by claps, waves, and finger counts.
  • Hindustani / Carnatic
  • Mid-East
  • Maqam · مقام
  • Modal system using microtonal intervals built from joined tetrachordal modules (jins). Each maqam has prescribed melodic behavior.
  • Arabic / Turkish / Persian
  • Indonesia
  • Slendro / Pélog
  • The two tuning systems of a Javanese gamelan. Slendro: roughly equidistant pentatonic. Pélog: seven-note, asymmetric. No two gamelans tune identically.
  • Java / Bali
  • Cuba
  • Clave · "key"
  • The five-stroke rhythmic figure (3-2 or 2-3) that organizes Afro-Cuban music. Salsa is "in clave" or it is wrong.
  • Cuban / Latin
  • Portugal
  • Saudade
  • Untranslatable: a longing for what is lost, present, or has never been. The emotional center of fado.
  • Portuguese
Slide 13

Watch this performance

  • Plate XI
  • Illustrative placeholder market image (picsum.photos).
  • Featured
  • Buena Vista Social Club · "Chan Chan"
  • From Wim Wenders' 1999 documentary; the song is by Compay Segundo, recorded in Havana for the 1997 Buena Vista LP that sold eight million copies and revived the careers of Ibrahim Ferrer, Rubén González, and Omara Portuondo.
  • Ravi Shankar · Concert for Bangladesh →
  • Tinariwen · Festival au Désert →
Remove this deck