Have been wanting to write about some observations about global music from this year, but always freeze up a bit for fear of overgeneralizing or revealing vast tracts of my own ignorance. But I want to take a few swings anyway so I don’t lose the thread.
I think one of the shifts in my own thinking about the world’s music right now is understanding simultaneous regionalization and globalization, and the way that these phenomena work together in a cyclical way. There are two interrelated ideas — (1) regional cultures spread globally and (2) specific regions annd countries export music with a vision for reaching—or creating—a global mass culture.
Thinking (reductively) in terms of insider/outsider, the first phenomenon is reaching a larger and larger group of insiders, especially through worldwide diaspora communities. The second is deliberately framing “insider” music for outsiders, which has historically been a role for US, UK, and Anglosphere broadcasters.
Anything that begins as a regional cultural phenomenon can become a global template, but at the same time there are always sounds of the moment that hew closer to already-established templates that you can draw on to reach larger audiences. Figuring out which is which can be tricky, because both things can be happening at the same time: a regional sound quickly becomes a global template, which can then be re-packaged by someone else for new listeners.
This spread of musical ideas isn’t new, and is probably foundational to all musical development ever. But it has gotten faster, I think, and lost some intermediary steps. One change I notice recently is that there are fewer “outsider” translators of regional sounds, because stars arise from their own scenes. When translators (of a sort) do appear, they tend not to be English-language US or Anglosphere pop stars.1 Instead, the network for translation and adaptation operates more through immigrant and diaspora communities. Distinctively regional music forms are united by language, culture, and genre (especially rhythmic genre) and spread via broad diasporic inspiration and iteration, with geographically distinct diaspora artists pushing and inspiring each other until at least one becomes a much bigger star.
It seems difficult for outsiders to comfortably inhabit or incorporate these sounds—at least at first. Eventually the sounds may shift the grammar of global pop more generally, until there is some breakthrough and the sound becomes more legible and accessible to more people who make music.
The place where this is the most front-of-mind for me this year is in various strains of Francophone pop based on Afro-Caribbean rhythmic genres. Caribbean dancehall genres like Guadeloupean bouyon and Marticinian shatta have gotten a lot of traction among French pop stars of Caribbean and African heritage—Theodora, LinLin, Fallon, (D)Juno, recent find Maylie (whose latest single is on an upcoming mix). There’s a related but smaller scene in Montreal pop. (Might talk more about this specific Francophone zeitgeist next week.)
Another way that global music spreads is when specific countries or regions develop self-consciously global sounds as a competitive export-minded pop industry. (Collin Smith wrote an interesting piece about the organic or strategic global spread music using the framing of reggaeton and K-pop in Trollz World Tour.) Right now, multiple popular music centers—including K-pop, J-pop, and Latin American urbano music—have a greater claim to global template-setting than most US or Anglosphere pop. So in countries like Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, and the Philippines, you get accelerated development of hyphens denoting a growing industry (V-, T-, P-, respecitively) that is indebted to but distinct from two major Asian pop industries in Japan and South Korea. (K-pop especially also taps into a diaspora to cultivate talent.) And you also get a combination of both diasporic connections and industry competition in Latin American pop, which has multiple geographic centers.
Jonathan Bogart shared and translated an interview with Don Omar about the rise of urbano music in the past 25 years that got me thinking about some of this:
Caption: Few things fill me with more pride than seeing how far urban music in Spanish has come. For years we celebrated every door that opened. Today the best reward is knowing that they remain open.
Don Omar: Music in Spanish today is the envy of the American music industry, and I believe it was very, very unlikely to think that this would happen 25 years ago. 25 years ago hip-hop was the role model for music that urbano artists listened to. Today [urbano] is the reference point for the American industry. It’s reversed: today it is hip-hop artists who are listening to and thinking about urbano music in Spanish in order to reinvent it and apply it in their industry.
Americans 25 years ago had no idea what was going on in Latin music or its industry, but today it is Latinos who are showing the American industry how it works. Because for Daddy Yankee, Don Omar, Tego Calderón, Ivy Queen and all the rest who did our work in our day, the only thing we can feel is pride. The only thing we can feel is pride for the work we did, for how it was received, and how it changed the industry, and how today the industry is totally open to urbano music. It’s an achievement that—I'm being completely honest with you—I never thought would ever happen. And today it is happening.
Omar’s interview in turn reminded me of an interesting documentary on tamborzão from an MTV Brazil producer interviewing Brazilian DJs Sany Pitbull and Mavi in 2006. They present something like an on-the-ground prediction of Omar’s observations from that time period. The DJs are describing the gradual evolution of Brazilian funk, which historically at that point had been based heavily on Miami bass—they single out the formative American record “Voltmix” by DJ Battery Brain— that set the template for the tamborzão rhythm that became globally popular in the 2000s.
Since then, Brazilian DJs continued to borrow or invent other sounds to build on tamborzão, and eventually changed or stripped out entirely the elements that had originally been imported, in many cases leaving only spare clave accents on an implied hard 4/4. And it’s now that sound, which I call “hard clave,” that is traveling more globally and shaping pop music in many different regions. Mavi predicts something like this in the documentary:
I believe very soon it will be 100% Brazilian. It’s 90% right now. DJs and producers are evolving, playing instruments like an MPC. If you look closer, Brazil funk is the only electronic scene where at each ten bailes, you’ll find at least seven DJs performing live. At the rest of the world, maybe one or two. We are always researching it to develop it one step ahead.
It used to be complicated to have a studio, and produce. Twenty years ago you couldn’t imagine recording at home a CD and playing it in your car. Now it’s very easy—access to technology has changed it all. We are making it our own way.
We had a strong international influence—now it’s more and more Brazilian. 10 years ago, all beats were 100% international. Portuguese lyrics started with 1989’s album Funk Brasil. But all the beats were gringo.
This feeling of emergence into a changed landscape really does feel like it’s happening almost everywhere in the world right now, with development so rapid that scenes that seem local and insular can become global lingua franca in the span of a few years or less, and the number of scenes this can happen to simultaneously keeps rising.
You also get representative megastars from many of these scenes and regions (what I call the “monsterverse”), who have largely replaced the need for outsider broadcasters. And there are still examples of scrappier underground scenes, and mid-level pop star strivers, and burgeoning near-megastars. It’s everywhere, all at once.
Whether global music comes from sophisticated (but historically siloed) regional music industries or ground-up street scenes or avant-garde scenes, the sense of a power reversal in the last decade-plus is the same. There’s been a radical de-centering of where globally recognized pop music is supposed to come from (that is: anywhere) or how it’s supposed to get where it’s going (that is: anyhow). Paying attention to this constant global ferment has become not just a high-minded critical goal, but an entry point to understanding pop music at a basic level.
1. no na: Honk!
Philippines
That’s all to say: beep beep—get on the angkot. 88Rising’s no na seem to have found the got it flaunt it rocket last seen propelling NewJeans through their incredible 2024 (before it incinerated), and they have created an admirable Indonesian Vengabus—causing further custody headaches for who in the world gets to be the “I” in I-pop. (I don’t think that particular letter is going to stick.)
2. SB19: Lawless
Philippines
Via a nudge from Jake at Glorious Noise, I have now caught up with P-pop boyband SB19 just in time to watch them shove cake in their faces— maybe not a have it and eat it too situation, but they want you to know they’re definitely eating it.
3. Nutdao, Swagwazz: The World Is Yours
Laos
Laos was the first country with zero representation across all of my newsletters that I decided to look at more intently for a few songs. As far as I can tell (which is not very far), Laos has not yet stepped up their hyphenate-sharpening and is somewhat stuck in the shadow of bigger pop scenes from nearby countries. But there were more keepers on a quick skim than I expected judging from some of my past country-specific searches, along with a few playlist leads to keep me lightly informed.
4. Sugar N’ Spice: Paligaw-Ligaw Tingin
Philippines
More P-pop, far more sugar than spice.
5. Reet Talwar, Badshah, Hiten: Tum Yun Mile Ho
India
The first release from Reet Talwar since she put out one of my favorite singles of the decade in 2023, “Meherbaan.” This would probably get on a mix regardless of how good it is. (It’s fine.)
6. Verito Asprilla: Quiero Ser Buena
Colombia
Mr. Bongo does some nice curatorial work via DJ and 6Music presenter Jamz Supernova, who includes one from an artist you could have found in the Jonathan Bogart best of 2025 (which has already outlasted a link-rotted Remezcla feature). (Did I mention I archive all of my songs and newsletters twice a year now?)
7. 143leti, Roxxee: Hombres de Papel
Argentina
A personal breakout from this year goes “recession pop,” which annoyingly seems to encompass things from any year in the late 00s and 10s you like. (I wrote about recession pop before the recession!!) Anyway, it sounds a little like Danity Kane.
8. Ferah Zeydan: Bu defa başka
Turkey
Charming and probably wholesome summer jam from a Turkish singer who broke through on Turkish X Factor in 2014 and offers plenty of ice cream for pitselehs.
9. Gayance, Waahli, Jarreau Vandal: Podjab
Canada-Portugal, Haiti-Canada, Netherlands
There’s more Francophone diaspora pop to come next week but this one was interesting for having a bit of an old-school zouk feel.
10. Kurena Ishikawa: Les Fleurs
Japan
Really liked Kurena Ishikawa’s covers EP from 2023, which I featured in an early newsletter. She has upped the cover difficult level considerably to Minnie Riperton’s “Les Fleurs” but finds a smooth route in, even has a meta take on incorporating Riperton’s higher register.
11. João Donato, Roberta Sá: Flor de Maracujá
Brazil
An album of contemporary covers of songs by Brazilian pianist and composer João Donato, who passed away in 2023.
12. Nu Fvnk: Uyu 1
Kenya
Really love the album on which this is the lead track, might write more about the project in my next monthly wrap-up. It’s a Kenyan producer who does sampledelica collage with traditional Kenyan music mixed with breakbeats, and is more frenetic than a lot of electronic takes on folk forms tend to be.
13. Ysa C: Zuzu
Colombia
I must be keeping light tabs on Ysa C because everything she releases shows up in my playlists. I’m not complaining! Some of the lightest logdrum incorporation I think I’ve heard yet—this is what I mean in the above essay by regional sounds becoming global templates; that bass sound in something this effervescent probably wouldn’t sound as natural even two or three years ago.
14. Koyo Sur La Prod, David Campana, Maky Lavender: Adam West
Canada
Quebecoise R&B, a bit plain but something drew me to it. Maybe it was the Bat Signal.
15. Dieyla Gueye: Wanéko
Senegal
Eagle-eyed Tidal and Deezer users among you might have already seen this mbalax song appear a few weeks ago. I forgot to write it up in that week’s mix and removed it from my other playlists but can’t go back and edit other playlists very easily. It’s as good now as it was then!
16. M. Rumbi, Ceke, Kamore: Baki Nami
Kenya
A sweet Kenyan duet with acoustic guitar and light percussion, almost light enough to drift away in the wind but I managed to hang on to it.
17. Raffaè: Prato
Italy
More light Latin sounds in kitchen-sink Italian pop.
18. Orquesta Akokán, Miriam Elhajli: Girassol
Cuba-US/Venezuela-Morocco-US
One from the mambo and salsa project I highlighted in the July roundup. Particularly like the slight brassiness that comes through in Miriam Elhajli’s voice, curious how they recorded her (they make it sound like a clean remaster of a 60s record).
19. Jussgigi, JayJayy f. Shoes Meister, Boips: Inxabano
South Africa
20. Djy Mow Sa, Vibekulture Sa, Jayy Scott f. Lethabile 012, Pop Diller: Busa
South Africa
Ending with two from South Africa. New fave vocalist JayJayy appears on a sprightlier- and funkier-than-average amapiano track from a producer I don’t know, then an all-new-to-me crop of producers do a remix of Mpumi Mzobe’s Afrohouse track “Busa” from 2015, paring things down to spotlight Mzobe (who isn’t credited) and then building back up.
That’s it! Until next time, feel free to share your own grand theories of global ferment.
—Dave Moore (the other one)
Title from no na: Honk!
Rihanna may have been the last superstar English-language translator of regional pop sounds. There don’t seem to be a lot of US-based or -aligned stars attempting this right now and the few who do, like Tyla, seem not to be very successful at it. Meanwhile there are plenty of stars from regional scenes getting huge on their own terms, and often not (entirely) in English.
to your mind, what influences when a regional scene starts eyeing their ability to reach/influence global mass culture?
"vast tracts of my own ignorance": that's a good one, Dave! But your own column illustrates that those are tracts that will soon be...trod?