Is World Music Racist? Classification and Os Mutantes: An Ethical Dilemma

ABSTRACT

In this article, the concept of World music has been explored, as both a positive general concept to popularise a diversity of previously neglected musics, but also as a disempowering negative influence in encouraging stereotyping and by subjugating individual creativity to politicized perceptions of culture. How these considerations influenced the approach to constructing a classification model has been demonstrated and why that model was replaced by a different system reflecting essentially opposing considerations.

The reference to the band “Os Mutantes” in the article title reflects the authors own practical issues (as a consumer rather than a cataloguer) with the discoverability of CDs by the band at the time, and how this frustration with the commercial categorisation of what was both a popular psychedelic pop band (file under “rock”) and a group in the Brazilian Tropicalia movement (file under “World music”) influenced classification decisions regarding the collection in question. Also discussed are uncertainties regarding continuing collection development issues and how they informed decisions regarding original classification system, subsequent reclassification policy and ultimate fate of the collections.

KEYWORDS:

• Music classification
• world music
• classification and ethics
• social aspects of classification
• ethnomusicology
• local classification schemes

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

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