Dissatisfaction might seem like an unlikely reaction to a Grammy Award win. The awards are among the highest profile in the music world.

But for Beninese songstress and three-time Grammy winner Angelique Kidjo, two words get in the way of her unalloyed enjoyment: "world music".

"I'm trying to push [the musical establishment] to realise that any category, in any genre, is limiting," Kidjo told The Music Show at Womadelaide in 2016.

"We don't live in a world limited to our doorstep or by our frontiers — so why should we do that with our music?"

What even is 'world music'?

It's a pertinent question, especially as Womadelaide, Australia's biggest and best-known world music festival, celebrates its 25th anniversary this coming weekend.

When geography and language are no longer barriers to sharing and experiencing art, what role do generic categories like world music play?

"It is a very difficult thing to define," says Iain Shedden, music critic for The Australian. "And I think it's even harder to do so today than when it was first used.

"[The term] goes back as far as the 60s, but came into prominence later, used by record companies mostly.

" It was used, primarily, to market music that would otherwise have been a hard sell."

Shedden is unabashed about what he sees as the purely mercantile roots of the term.



"Giving all this music a unifying category helped to shift product, basically," he says.

"But today, it's impossible to define the genre even that broadly. The only way you can go about it is by a process of exclusion."

A brief history of Womadelaide

It was during the early days of the term "world music" that the WOMAD (World of Music, Art and Dance) Festival first appeared in the United Kingdom.

Colourful flags flutter in the autumn breeze at Womadelaide in 2016. ( ABC News: Malcolm Sutton )

A group of musicians and promoters headed by prog rock legend Peter Gabriel saw a gap in the market, and started a festival to completely immerse revellers in cultures other than their own.

Twelve years later, the WOMAD team partnered with the Adelaide Festival, in what was intended to be a one-off. Womadelaide was born.

Festival director Ian Scobie laughs when the words "world music" are introduced to the conversation.

"At the time, they needed a phrase for the record racks — where do we put this stuff? — and that's all it was," he says.

Mr Scobie is keen to delineate where the genre ends and his festival starts.

"We don't really see ourselves as a world music festival anymore. We see ourselves more as a festival for music from around the world.

"The difference is, admittedly, lost on most people."

A shift in how audiences find music

Mr Scobie concedes there have been changes to Australia's relationship with non-western music since 1992.

Womadelaide organisers see it as a "festival for music from around the world". ( ABC News: Malcolm Sutton )

"In the festival's first 10 years, we were constantly asked by the press, 'Who are these people? Who is Youssou N'Dour?' We never get those questions any more."

He puts this shift down to one thing: the internet.

"If you look back 25 years, the music we listened to was still controlled by the recording industry. Top 40 — that was how the broader public got their music," he says.

Shedden agrees. "We have more access [today]. As a result, the whole musical area has exploded."

"We now have some many sub-genres, and sub-sub-genres and cross-blends that you couldn't possibly list them all."

Given all this, is it time for the Grammys to rethink the world music category? Kidjo says it is.

"It's the only way to survive. If you don't move, don't change, don't adapt to the diversity that we live in, then you'll disappear."