Pop Takes a Global Spin
German Rockers DISSIDENTEN- An outpouring of bizarre hybrids
By Jim Miller
From Bulgaria to Boston, Zaire to Martinique, New York to Paris, pop muic is going global. Exotic imports and weird hybrids are flourishing: African reggae, Moroccan flamenco, Cambodian heavy metal. The trend has spawned some surprising stars and led dance-happy listeners to learn the ins and outs of strange new rythms.
At Tower Records in downtown New York City, internationel buyer Melvin Gibbs report that his Worldmusic department has more than tripled in the last three years.
"World Beat, Ethno Pop," an imprint just launched by the American Shanachie Label, documents the full range of global pop today-from the sublime to the ridiculus. Besides some South African jive, the series includes an oddball album of-no kidding- Saharan heavy metal, an improbable collaboration between a droning German rock band called "DISSIDENTEN" and a group of Moroccan singers.
DJ Thomas (Alien) Uebel, the host of "Aliens' Corner," a pioneering pan-african music show on WMBR in Cambridge. "the music is extremly infectious; it's got unique beats-and since rock is totally dead, it's where the sound is moving."
" This music fulfills the promise of everything I grew up with," says Robert Hurwitz, 38, a vice president at Nonesuch. " I was trained as a classical musician, but in the late '60s I listened to free-form rock radio stations that would play a John Coltrane record and then Ravi Shankar. Now that kind of freedom is happening in the music itself.
Newsweek June 13, 1988
