2. The West and the world

‘The West and the world’ investigates the unequal balance of power in the transcription, recording, and history of world music. World music may have been forged in the ‘Middle Passage’ from Africa to slavery elsewhere, but its musicians were nameless. Their music-making was documented by those with power. Collectors of world music have an anthological impulse, bringing together songs from different cultures. Johann Gottfried Herder’s collection of Volkslieder or ‘Folk Songs’ and two of the first anthologies on record—the Demonstration Collection and Music of the Orient—show that the products of the overarching anthological impulse can be very different.