I just can't understand why people bring up this thing about race when we discuss World Music

I did because the OP made insulting and inappropriate remarks about 'Bollywood racket" and the sitar being "just as bad", and later compounded his ignorance by lumping all African music together as though it were a homogenous whole.

World Music (as any fule kno) is a marketing term coined at a series of meetings exactly 20 years ago of representatives of the main independent record labels dealing with international/roots music to help retailers stock and display it.

It was agreed that the term World Music would be used by all labels present to offer a new and unifying category for shop racking, press releases, publicity handouts and 'file under...' suggestions so that shops no longer had to worry about where to put those new Yemenite pop, Bulgarian choir, Zairean soukous or Gambian kora records.