World Music: Historical files & updates

As I did last year for the Early Music FAQ, I believe that it is time to make some trends in this space explicit, and to declare that the earlier writeups are now historical documents, and will no longer be updated.

Consequently, I am adding a separate page for recent CDs, where new recordings I want to feature (from July 2015 on) will be listed.

[ Read more.... ]

The previous index appears unchanged below.


Traditional World Music Recordings

Index Page

This page serves as a table of contents for a variety of lists & documents which describe some world traditional music, conditioned by my critical preferences.

To quick menu, for those who don't want to read the introductory comments (again).

I prefer the most rigorous classicism, so if you're looking for something else, this isn't the place. These lists represent varying degrees of depth, with regard to the number of examples given and the distinctions made. The level will become clear from the texts themselves.


Here are the topics, some contain sub-lists, others don't:

To appendix on how to buy the recordings mentioned in this list.

To list of recently modified files.


When I first wrote these lists as purely text documents in 1991, with the exception of some Indian music, there were precisely zero other resources available. That had a definite impact on the level of detail I chose, and while there is some incentive to add material of a more technical nature in subsidiary documents, I have not done so yet. Experts are not likely to find my discussions informative, except perhaps with regard to the existence of particular recordings. My goal was and is to attempt to convey some sense of what I personally enjoy about the music, and ultimately to entice people to make their own judgements from live or recorded music rather than getting too deeply involved in text.

Unless otherwise stated, this and all subsidiary material was written by me and is copyrighted by me. Do not duplicate or redistribute in any form.

Todd M. McComb
<mccomb@medieval.org>