World music is a term that covers all music that is not part of mainstream pop music or classical music and has some kind of "ethnic" component. The connotation of the term is pop music from the third world, European pop music that uses influences from the third world, and traditional music especially but not only from the third world. The term is used primarily as a marketing/classificatory device, sometimes referring to any kind of foreign music, especially in a foreign language. Obviously, the various kinds of ethnic music that are included under the rubric "world music" do not have anything in common genetically or musically in virtue of which they are called "world music."
... give it an official place among their
"exercises." John Wesley and John Newton put
it among the works that influenced them at their
conversion. General Gordon carried it ...