World music can be endlessly inventive. “The debate throughout the polity in recent weeks has centred on issues of multiculturalism and tolerance. The world’s problems are not going to be solved by people playing crazy rhythms, and meaning it, but it is a small indicator that we are travelling in the right direction. There is another imperative at work here, however – that of selling records. Music is an industry, as well as an art form and a cultural tradition; and it happens to be an industry that is finely honed in its marketing and promotional techniques. And, wouldn’t you know it, the requirements of commerce and artistic integrity occasionally fail to gel.”