● Prologue: A World Reunited with World Music

Part 1: Breaking Free from Familiar Frames: Music Trapped in Western-Centric East-West Distinctions

Chapter 1 Greek Music
# Is Greece Western?
# Rebetiko, the roots of modern Greek music

Chapter 2: Turkish Music
# Why did Mozart compose the Turkish March?
# Arabesque, popular music of Islamic Turkey

Chapter 3: Arabic Music
# Why is African Egyptian music considered 'Oriental' music?
# Arab Idol and Arab popular music

Part 2: The Other Within Europe, Music of the Diaspora

Chapter 4 Jewish Music
# Is the music of Western European Jews 'Western' music?
# Klezmer, the American Jewish Music Renaissance

Chapter 5 Gypsy Music
# No gypsies, but gypsy music is OK?
# Flamenco, the cry of the Andalusian gypsy

Part 3: The Music of Latin America, Conquered by Europe

Chapter 6: Brazilian Music
# Samba, from slum black music to folk music
# Samba's groundbreaking transformation, bossa nova

Chapter 7: Argentine Music
# Tango, from slum porteno culture to national culture
# A new transformation of tango, Nuevo Tango

●Playlist

The music of history
History as seen through music

The quickest way to understand an unfamiliar world (country, people, or culture) that you have not experienced firsthand is to learn its language, know its history, and enjoy its cultural content.
Aside from language study, which requires considerable effort and talent, the most enjoyable and easiest route to becoming familiar with an unfamiliar world is through immersing yourself in its historical and cultural content.
History is a 'story' about the memories and characters that bind people together.
Cultural content that appropriately incorporates such stories into music, movies, dramas, literature, comics, and sports is not only a popular product, but also a shortcut to understanding that world.

While the East-West dichotomy instilled by the past 500 years of Westernization and the dominance of global platforms like YouTube and Netflix have led to the convergence of content across the globe, there are still sectors that preserve common memories and characters while creating their own unique stories.
Argentine tango, Brazilian bossa nova, gypsy flamenco, Jewish klezmer, Arab rai, Turkish arabesque, Greek rebetiko… this is so-called world music.
The Western-centric mainstream music history, which has developed from classical to pop, has disparaged this music as 'music from the periphery' or 'music from the rest.'
However, today's world music is folk music that has been successfully modernized and popularized without being disconnected, and it is cultural content in which the stories of the region are densely condensed and reconstructed.

Guided by world music docent Yoo Young-min
The History of Seven Colors of Sound

『World Music Docent』 looks at music through history, and then gains insight into history through music.
Having majored in musicology at Seoul National University and UCLA, and having drawn a world map of music from a non-Western perspective in LA, the melting pot of world music, the author gives world music, which has been underappreciated in music history and the market, its rightful place.
Furthermore, based on such positioning, we attempt a three-dimensional reinterpretation of local and global history.
Although unfamiliar names of people and songs often appear, the characters and song selections that contain a 'story' and the over 150 illustrations and materials make the seven world music docent tours across four continents a time of endless culture and insight.

Part 1, “Breaking from the Familiar Frame,” corrects the status of Greek, Turkish, and Arabic music, which is trapped in the Western-centric “East-West distinction.”
Ancient music is enshrined at the top of the genealogy of Western music history, but the lineage of Greek music, which had been left blank since then (because it belonged to the Byzantine-Ottoman Empire), was restored, while Turkic (Ottoman Empire) music, which had been evaluated as 'outside Europe', was reborn (〈Turkish March〉) in the hands of the two giants, Mozart and Beethoven, or the process of the percussion-wind instrument composition of the Turkish military band being incorporated into European orchestras.
Through this, it points out that the worldview that fixates Greece as the West, Turkey, which shares geographical and cultural territory with Greece, as the non-West, and the Arab world, which is clearly located in Southern Europe and North Africa, as the East is the product of a 'constructed frame'.

Part 2 follows the rise and fall of klezmer (Jewish) and flamenco (Gypsy) music, both of which were internal European diaspora musics.
Part 3 is a documentary full of affection about the music of the other conquered by Europe, tango and bossa nova, which produced the inimitable artists Astor Piazzolla and Tom Jobim.


World music is not necessarily 'all the music in the world'.
As the book points out, the origin of this term is a commercial ploy to sell 'the rest of the music outside the West' by following the traditional East-West framework.
The fact that most of the early winners of the Grammy World Music category were Western musicians who sampled or featured world music rather than local musicians reminds us of the bitter repetition of history: just as the American continent was incorporated into the Western world as a "discovered land," world music also entered the global market as "discovered music."
The Grammys' decision to change the name of the awards from 'World Music' to 'Global Music' may have been conscious of such views.
However, while acknowledging all these criticisms, the author notes the universality that world music has acquired as a term that refers to a vast range of non-Western musics, and the tolerance with which it has embraced even the music of those rejected by the West, such as Gypsies, Jews, and Blacks.
Just as the periphery expands and the center disappears, I hope that world music, which started from 'discovered music' and 'the rest of the music,' will become a vessel that contains 'all the stories of the world.'