Enter the Fourth World. The Revolutionising Genre by Jon Hassell

What is Fourth World Music?

Coined by the late trumpeter, composer and music legend Jon Hassell, Fourth World Music is "a term to describe the possibility of music in global terms – beyond First World, beyond Third World, beyond classical, beyond pop." It depicts a coalescence of traditional, indigenous music, and Western, modern electronics. This in turn produced new contemporary folk music from "unknown and imaginary regions".

"A unified primitive/futuristic sound combining features of world ethnic styles with advanced electronic techniques".

What initially pushed Hassell and his work into the limelight was a New York Times article that featured his 1977 performance: “His synthesis [opened] up new vistas rather than simply rearranging the components of old ones".

Brian Eno whom Hassell collaborated with also wrote an essay in 2007, The Debt I Owe to Hassell, where he described the trumpeter’s incredible work ethic, “[if] I had to name one overriding principle in Jon’s work, it would be that of respect: he looks at the world in all its momentary and evanescent moods with respect, and this shows in his music.”

Hassell & The Fourth World Aesthetic

In further exploration into the Fourth World genre, Hassell collaborated with Brian Eno in 1980 on an album titled Fourth World, Vol 1: Possible Musics. The album kicks off with the sounds of tablas and the plucking of the bass in Chemistry. What is especially unique about the song is his reinterpretation of traditional instruments and their sounds. Throughout the song, the tablas is filtered with a phaser-like effect; flute sounds are harmonised in an eerie diminished-like scale, coming in in stabs and reverberating out in the distance. This quality is evident throughout the album, with each track creating at atmosphere of its own.

Since then, Hassell has been toying around with the concept of sound, morphing them together, re-imagining song-writing techniques and music theory altogether to create an otherworldly experience. Hassell stays true to his aesthetic, focusing on only creating music that fascinates him rather than what the public wanted of him. Over the years, despite the evolution in his sound, a solid centre remains as a result of his retained discipline.

40 years since its creation, Fourth World music "remain a powerful influence on modern electronic music". Prolific electronic music producers today still reference the late artist's works with the aesthetic appearing in productions by the likes of Call Super, Oneohtrix Point Never, Arca and Jan Jelinek. Reissue labels such as Music From Memory and Palto Flats have also explored into the realms of electronic and ethnographic sounds, reissuing the works of "forgotten" artists like Roberto Music, Gigi Masin and more. Labels like Optimo released a compilation titled Miracle Steps: Music From The Fourth World 1983-2017, featuring the works of artists like O Yuki Conjugate and Iona Fortune. Fourth World music has penetrated the realms of modern electronic music and will continue to live on. Quoted from DJ and Fourth World enthusiast Fergus Clark in an article by Resident Advisor: "The timeless nature of it and the fact it is quite hard to pin a lot of the music to the particular time it was made is a factor. It's primal, but also often hi-tech and evocative of an imaginary other. I think it is also partly due to the completely messed up times we live in and a need to mentally escape from time to time into musical dreamworlds."

All that being said, what did Hassell aim to achieve with his rendition of ethnic electronic music? At the Manca fest, Hassell raised that "world music" was becoming a mass-market form for big music labels. He speaks on what he calls the "banalisation of the exotic" which talks about the corporate search for new forms of music to supply its audiences with and a reduction of other musical forms. To exemplify, a Western record label bringing in non-western musicians to record with generic session musicians, watering down their esoteric styles to adapt to a relatively consumable form of Western music.

Hassle aimed to glorify and retain these traditional sounds, re-presenting them in a format that puts it centre stage juxtaposed with modern electronic sounds. Through Fourth World music, there is no form of criticism of ethnic music. Instead, a celebration of tradition and culture, represented in a modern context that transcends beyond time and soundscapes. This refreshing genre of music paved way for traditional music at that time. With more modern producers and DJs incorporating the sounds of Hassle's works into their musics, Fourth World music lives on and is likely to stay for a long time to come.

Back to Read