World music has long proved a fertile well-spring for idea-starved mainstream artists. Dimming stars such as Peter Gabriel, Paul Simon and former Talking Heads singer, David Byrne, have famously delved into African, Caribbean and Asian traditional forms, boosting their credibility and wresting moribund careers from the quicksand.
The attentions of big name acts have not left the oeuvre untarnished, however. For every songwriter genuinely passionate about non-Western music, there exists a dozen callow phoneys, lathering their records in bongo drums and South American tribal rhythms.
Such lip service, especially prevalent in the dance community, has fostered a glib, PC stereotype of world music, analagous to those soft-tinged cola commercials, in which shanty town kids dance beneath a monsoon of freshly liberated fizzy pop, ferally joyous under the condescending glare of first-world patronage.
Happily, "Sounds of Diversity", a night-long celebration of ethnic music, blew such lazy clichΘs out of the water.
Hosted by Dublin multi-cultural newspaper Metro ╔ireann, the event boasted a globe spanning line-up, interweaving traditional Indian, contemporary African and European folk disciplines.
The Adonis, an Irish collective specialising in Indian folk melodies, were an early highlight. Blending guitar, percussion and sitar, the group served up a fascinating mix of Celtic and sub-Continental harmonies.
Spanish trio, Vienta Y Fuego, raised the temperature several notches. Flitting between pulse quickening flamenco and blistering acoustic pop, the band recalled, to these uneducated ears at least, a cranked up take on the Gypsy Kings sound.
Lamentably, the constant murmur of conversation from the bar proved a wearying distraction. Why do people come to gigs merely to natter on the periphery all night?
The party acquired a libidinous strut with the arrival of African group De Jimbe, an ensemble with a neat line in sensual, semi-improvised rock.
Forget your tired preconceptions: world music doesn't require the blessing of declining major league musicians. It is we who, urgently, desperately, should crave its unembellished vibrancy.
