World music is a musical category encompassing many different styles of music from around the globe, which includes many
genres of non-Western music including
folk music,
ethnic music,
traditional music,
indigenous music, neotraditional music, and music where more than one cultural tradition, such as when ethnic music and Western
popular music intermingle. World music's inclusive nature and elasticity as a musical category pose obstacles to a universal definition, but its ethic of interest in the culturally exotic is encapsulated in
Roots magazine's description of the genre as "local music from out there". The term was popularized in the 1980s as a marketing category for non-Western traditional music.
Globalization has facilitated the expansion of world music's audiences and scope. It has grown to include
hybrid subgenres such as world fusion, global fusion, ethnic fusion and
worldbeat.