Mainstream Western culture values the individual artist as creator. In world music, the emphasis is not on the individual composer or performer, but on the community. In classical, rock and pop music, new compositions made by individuals or small groups are released into the world as fully formed compositions. But in folk music, a new tune or song is just the beginning of a creative process — that might last for centuries and involve thousands of individual musicians — passed down through the oral tradition and evolving over time. Like a living creature, the birth of a new tune is just the start of a long process of growth.
The way that world music evolves is often called the folk process. As the music gets passed on, some bits fall off the tunes — passages that are too hard to play, notes that get forgotten, words that are considered inappropriate. At the same time other bits get added on — an inspired player might add a flourish, make a mistake that sounds really good and is worth repeating, or make up new words to fill in forgotten gaps.
Sometimes tunes even interbreed, one tune morphing into another that sounds similar. This process of evolution is too slow to observe directly. Like scientists studying evolution by looking at fossils, we have to understand the process by looking at the end results — the tunes that have emerged from the folk process.
The folk process also encourages survival of the fittest. The best tunes and songs spread far and wide and often improve as they travel, while the weaker material dies out.
There are still strongly creative individuals working within traditional music, musicians who are known for composing new tunes. But usually they compose within the tradition, building new tunes from the raw materials already available. New songs often borrow lines and lyrical structure from older songs, and new tunes make use of familiar shapes from old tunes.
In folk music there is no such thing as the definitive version of a song. The first version is no more authoritative than the hundredth version, which may be sung two centuries later on the other side of the world. Most musicians that compose within the tradition are aware of this, and understand that once their music is released into the tradition, they lose their authority and ownership of the work.
Most world music composers are happy to see their creative work taken up into the oral tradition — it is enough that their music lives on, even if their role as original creator is forgotten.
