On the way to my library there is a little shop named ‘World Music. The Oasis of Music from Asia, Africa’. One morning I stopped my bike and went in just curious to see what world music could be in my little town. In the racks even the smallest country from Asia or Africa was represented with one or two CDs, most of them produced in Paris or London. The other customers were half my age (around thirty to thirty-five, nobody over fifty or under twenty). The owner, an immigrant who has lived in Sweden for more than ten years, had this to say:

The youngsters do not come here, all my customers are between twenty-five and forty. There is a growing interest in world music: people with money are visiting foreign countries as tourists and when they come home they come to me, asking for artists or groups they have heard. Most of them have an academic background and speak English fluently.