worldbeat

Worldbeat is a music genre that blends pop music or rock music with world music or traditional music. Worldbeat is similar to other cross-pollination labels of contemporary and roots genres, and which suggest a rhythmic, harmonic or textural contrast and synthesis between its modern and ethnic elements.

==Definition== Worldbeat is akin to world fusion and global fusion, each of which primarily manifest as a blend of non-Western music tradition and Western, popular music. These particular music genres can also reflect in a cross-blend of more than one "traditional" flavor, producing innovative, hybrid expressions of world music. As with most "world"-laden genre categories, worldbeat is not clearly defined as are the many classic world music subgenres, such as gamelan, or calypso. In general, the expanding family of ethnic music subgenres under the world music umbrella represents an intrinsically nebulous terminology, which depending on how one interprets a particular hybrid of world music, can be interchangeable to a significant degree. Worldbeat defines a hybrid of what can be listed under the generalized world music term, even though it features a prominent interbreeding with elements of Western, pop music.