Posts Tagged ‘chart’

The last issue of Songlines [#62], saw the first listing of the brand new Official UK World Music Album Chart, a chart compiled by the Official Charts Company (OCC) from sales information gathered across all key distribution (or entertainment) channels including all major high street retail chains, independent stores, supermarkets, mail order internet retailers and digital music service providers, representing 98 per cent of the total UK albums market.

It’s already causing controversy! Murmurs of disapproval (and approval) and even the old issue that has dogged world music since the term was coined – is English folk music world music? – have been appearing on internet forums and blogs.

Robin Denselow’s Guardian blog Why I welcome the new world music chart praises the attempt to raise the profile of world music artists, but questions the criteria for inclusion. Where, he asks, is all the folk music? Martin Simpson, whose new album was the biggest seller at Cambridge Folk Festival this summer, is strangely absent. The OCC’s Phil Matcham has said that while there are no set rules, the Official UK World Music Album Chart is ‘mostly non-British’. But that hasn’t excluded London klezmer band Oi Va Voi from the opening chart, begging the valid point made by a contributor to the fRoots online forum that to discriminate against folk music for being of Anglo-British origin is surely as wrong as to discriminate against folk music that is not.

All charts evolve, and at the same time all charts must decide on what they will cover. The beauty if music is that it will endlessly elude our categorisations but it will all continue to delight – whatever it’s called.

Let us know what you think by emailing letters@songlines.co.uk

Catch up with the new Official UK World Music Album Chart in the latest issue of Songlines

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Tags: chart, World Music.