Worldbeat

In popular music, worldbeat refers to any style of music which fuses folk music from non-traditional sources (essentially, outside the Appalachian folk and Celtic traditions) with Western-pop and rock influences.

Worldbeat is usually said to have begun in the mid-1980s when artists like David Byrne, Peter Gabriel and Paul Simon began incorporating influences from around the world, especially Africa. Within the next few years, worldbeat became a thriving subgenre of popular music that influenced many more mainstream musicians. Some of the most commonly incorporated types of folk music include rai, samba, flamenco, tango, qawwali, highlife and raga.