“Let’s get rid of that idea”: David Byrne wanted to outlaw the term ‘world music’ for all our sins

(Credits: Far Out / Shervin Lainez)

Mon 30 March 2026 23:00, UK

Fans, critics and artists are constantly coming up with questionable neologisms used to differentiate between styles that need to be separated, whether that’s classic rock, hyperpop or neo-soul. Sure, there are differences between these terms and their roots, but are they different enough to warrant a convoluted definition that makes them a separate entity altogether?

As daft as these might feel to you, they’re ultimately useful in narrowing down the differences between genres to the finer details. However, a far more regressive turn of phrase that is unfortunately just as prevalent is one that paints vastly different styles with the same brush, and there’s arguably nothing more ignorant and dismissive in genre categorisation than the use of the term ‘world music’.

Last time I checked, Liverpool wasn’t on the moon, and therefore by that metric, should The Beatles be considered as ‘world music’ owing to the fact that they’re from Earth? Obviously not, but what the term tends to be used for is a way of describing anything that sounds vaguely foreign to an English-speaking audience who have unwittingly picked up on it. To some degree, The Beatles were proponents of ‘world music’, having helped introduce elements of Indian classical music into their experimental psychedelic works.

A far more notable proponent of celebrating music from other corners of the world were Talking Heads, who were known for their celebration of African rhythms in their work, citing the likes of Fela Kuti as a major influence on Fear of Music and Remain in Light. However, frontman David Byrne has some passionate feelings about calling this, or anything else for that matter, ‘world music’, and went to great lengths to try and encourage listeners to wipe it from their vocabulary.

In 1999, Byrne published a controversially-named essay called ‘I Hate World Music’, and while the singer admits he was merely being flippant as a means of grabbing attention, the deeper purpose of the article was to illustrate just how narrow-minded and redundant the term is for describing music from other cultures.

As the founder of Luaka Bop, a record label that specialises in both reissuing and releasing new music from around the world, Byrne very obviously doesn’t hate ‘world music’, but certainly has strong feelings about those who unwittingly use the term. In a 2013 interview with Epiphany, he clarified exactly what he meant with this strongly-worded essay title, and argued that ‘world music’ was wrongly becoming a catch-all term for what he calls “exotic-sounding restaurant music”.

“I was kind of saying let’s get rid of that idea,” Byrne affirmed. “Let’s focus on the more positive aspects of what was happening at that time, and continues to happen. North American audiences in particular, who are in general pretty insular, aren’t very receptive to non-English language stuff, but there are a few artists from outside of that world who made some inroads and had been accepted as being artists.”

He continued by suggesting that this breaking down of barriers between cultures was a significant development, but that people needed to be more aware of the fact that these new discoveries deserved more than simply to be dismissed as ‘world music’: “To me, that’s major. They realise there’s certain artists in there that have made an emotional connection to them, and whose music they really like. There’s nuances, there’s artists out there, and there’s a world that’s as deep as the English language pop music world.”

He’s absolutely right to suggest that the music from, say, South America, is intrinsically different from the music from Africa, and that even within these continents there is room for distinctly different styles to emerge. ‘World music’ is an entirely redundant and culturally insensitive term that we need to eradicate from our musical vernacular, and if we start to recognise what all of these different styles we’ve begun to enjoy are, we’ll end up being more educated and informed about the world as a result.

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