World Is Not Enough

My biggest project of the last couple of months has just been published. It's called State Of The World, and it examines what the term 'world music' and means in 2009. In short: world music not a meaningless term, it still represents a coherent way of classifying music, and the world music network of venues and people plays a significant role in articulating cultural issues within music.

I interviewed ethnomusicologist Wayne Marshall ,
Harbourfront booker Alok Sharma, Rolf Klausener of the Acorn, Alan Bishop of Sublime Frequencies, and Tinariwen's manager Andy Morgan.

As with pretty much all my writing in Exclaim, I'm writing for a Canadian audience, and wanted to focus this unwieldy topic to the readership at hand.

This article brings together a lot of ideas I've had about global sounds in the last few years. It's no rehash, but it certainly expands on some ideas from last summer's "Toronto Soul: One City Under A Groove".

One more thing - I forgot to post about my profile of pianist Marilyn Lerner in Eye Weekly last week.