We’re people. We like crazy music? So what. People like Slayer. People like Slipknot. What’s the honest difference? And if you’re the kind of person that says, 'Well they’re good at music.' So what? So let somebody like music that you don’t think is good. How is it affecting you? How is it bothering you? | | | | Oumar Toure and Aliou Toure of Songhoy Blues in Brighton, England, May 19, 2016.
(Tabatha Fireman/Redferns/Getty Images) | | | | | | “We’re people. We like crazy music? So what. People like Slayer. People like Slipknot. What’s the honest difference? And if you’re the kind of person that says, 'Well they’re good at music.' So what? So let somebody like music that you don’t think is good. How is it affecting you? How is it bothering you?”
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| | rantnrave:// As a way to label and classify music, "world" has all sorts of problems, from the AMERICAN-centric conceit of the name to the strange notion that the music of countless cultures around the globe can be colonized with a single word. But as a way to find and discover the latest Afrobeats or desert blues tracks, it's a useful shorthand, in the same way "pop" is a useful shorthand for talking about everything on the radio and the charts from LA to LAGOS. Which is my roundabout way of asking: Why is there no world music genre in SPOTIFY? If you don't like the word, use another word, or 30 other words, each with its button on the Spotify genre page. Or however you want to organize it; the internet is a flexible thing. APPLE MUSIC has one, with a helpfully curated selection of new music and a small collection of radio stations (AFRIKAANS pop, FRENCH pop, TURKISH pop, a few others) and playlists, which could be bigger but at least it's something. Ditto TIDAL, whose brief lineup of playlists includes guides to Bollywood and to equatorial beats. Could there be more? Surely. Could there be less? Yes, as Spotify is proving. But a company that has pushed aside most of the competition and laid claim to a cultural center as large as "music" has an obligation to protect, preserve and sustain that culture. In short, to curate it. Taking over the culture and neglecting it is not an option. You can put the MALIAN and INDIAN music on the third floor, in the back, behind the comedy section if you must, but put it somewhere, please, and then install some signs to let your users know where to find it. Also, it would be nice to staff it. Staff it creatively enough and you may find that some of your most diehard pop users will want to go there. They may even discover they've been going there all along... This is no longer the highest-charting phone number in pop history. This is... PHARRELL WILLIAMS delivered a powerful warning about white nationalism at VH1's HIP HOP HONORS. "I know it kinda sounds like I'm hijacking the moment and on my JON SNOW s***," he said. "And I might be, 'cause they keep talking about a wall"... And MISSY ELLIOTT was like this... At this point (and by "this point," I mean now and a good chunk of time before now), if you are working with R. KELLY, booking R. Kelly or doing anything with R. Kelly that doesn't involve law enforcement or therapy, you are part of the problem... RIP MARCUS FJELLSTRÖM. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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