Bang a Gong

Tom Schnabel's "Rhythm Planet" serves as an illuminating tribute to some of the most creative and influential musicians on the planet as well as an example of the growth of the world music genre in recent years. No longer the exclusive domain of academics and aesthetes, music from cultures not our own has developed an impressive following that has passed the fad stage to become a legitimate, and expanding, market. Schnabel's book reflects the maturity of world music, focusing on the personalities who create it rather than on the minutiae of its structure or its cultural significance. The book treats these artists as they are: popular figures who are developing unique and individual expressions based on, but rarely loyal to, tradition.

Schnabel is himself responsible for much of world music's growth, having introduced many people in the Los Angeles area to the exotic sounds of distant cultures through his popular programs on KCRW-FM (89.9), perhaps the most influential noncommercial radio station in the country. In fact, the cultures are not so distant, because the frequency covers one of the world's most diverse metropolises. In his introduction, Schnabel reflects on the emergence of "a new multicultural sensibility," arguing that the rise of world music's popularity merely indicates where the human race is and where it is going in the next millennium. "World Music," notes Schnabel, "is the music that reflects the world as it exists today. . . . Everywhere people seek fresh perspectives from traditions outside of their own, underscoring a shared humanity."

The factors that lead people to listen to music from other cultures are perhaps as diverse as the music itself. For some, world music represents a connection to a lost past, to a more fundamental, even primal form of cultural expression that has somehow eluded us in the modern age. Others, tired of repetitive and simplistic pop music have started to look elsewhere for refreshing and original sounds.

Mickey Hart, drummer for the Grateful Dead and one of the major figures to introduce other musical traditions to a North American audience, claims the popularity of world music today springs from the fact that it fulfills needs not being met by Western music. "People are realizing that the world's music is a very valuable and fertile ground," he commented in an interview last year. "It's valuable because it frees us from the old constrictions of verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge and it allows for trance, for meditation. It allows for ecstatic states, which are not built into Western music. It's more spiritually oriented. It's not out of a molded formula."