World Music

This idea that no matter what race a person may be—if you can see him, hear him, reach out and touch him, then you won’t be afraid.

—music producer Dawn Elder

Today I went to download Sting’s “The Book of My Life,” which features Anoushka Shankar playing sitar. Anoushak Shankar is sitar-player Ravi Shankar’s daughter and Norah Jones’ half-sister. That lead to downloading “Desert Rose” which featured Algerian singer Cheb Mami with Sting. With that I was off looking for music that might satisfy my growing and suddenly fierce appetite for music with Indian or Middle Eastern influences. Along the way, I learned about Raï music in Algeria. I learned about the fusion of American popular music, global electronica-dance and regional ethnic sounds. One of the leaders of of this phenomenon is Dawn Elder, a Lebanese-American music producer. You can read more about her on the LA Times web site in an article called “West-East.” I had actually written a much longer blog entry about my new fondness for ‘World Music.’ How understanding the music of other cultures and mixing the music together into new fusions would go a long way to countering the propagandized fear of anything not American. But Dawn Elder gets it, and is doing something about it, and we all get amazing music that brings us together in one big World Dance Party. I’m seeing in my mind’s eye a massive club, music informed by traditions all over the world, people of all colors and shades dancing and sweating and enjoying the familiar and the foreign. I’m seeing my friend’s southern-rock garage band jammin’ with Anoushka. When this happens — and it is happening — none of the terrorizing propaganda of narrow-minded, power-hungry world leaders can stop people from coming together. Of course I’m not so naive as to say that music will save the world, but young people are arguably more interested in music than politics. And if the music gets them first, builds bridges between cultures, then when they finally do get interested in politics, their opinions will be colored by previous positive interactions. Then the divisive leaders will begin to loose their grip, and a hope for a little more peace in the world will blossom.