A Journey Into World Fusion on Echoes
On the next Echoes, the Return of World Fusion. World music is generally considered sounds from around the globe that aren’t American or Western European. But since the world became more of a global village, music of the world has merged with sounds of the west. It’s made its way into western music with jazz in the 1960s, and some psychedelic folk artists like The Incredible String Band and Kaleidoscope and less successfully Raga Rock. But it started to become codified with The Paul Winter Consort, John McLaughlin’s Shakti and Oregon. The Indian influence of Shakti in particular was very inspirational to so many artists, as you’ll hear today. World fusion really took off with Peter Gabriel and his Real World label which introduced artists like Pakistan’s Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Armenia’s Djivan Gasparyan, Geoffrey Oreyama from Uganda and more. We did a world fusion show in 2023 and it’s only increased since then. So have your passport ready we’re about to travel the globe. John Diliberto takes us on a journey into World Fusion on Echoes from PRX.