Quote Of The Day

"'World music' has never been much more than a marketing term, and it's always implied a one-way transaction — after all, your favorite rock bands don't turn into 'world music' just because someone in Dakar [Senegal] is listening to them. And now that so much of the planet is hooked up to the same grid as America, it's a totally bankrupt concept. It's ridiculous to call African hip hop world music but not Western hip-hop, especially when artists like Missy Elliott, M.I.A., and even Fergie are borrowing sounds from abroad as liberally as the Africans do. The exchange of music ideas between the West and the rest of the world is evolving into a genuine conversation, and that can only be an improvement. The Internet may be giving the music industry all kinds of fits, but it's pretty great for the health of music itself." — Miles Raymer, Chicago Reader music writer