Austin is a city known for live music, especially the alt-rock and alt-country variety. But perhaps partly due to having a large, world-renowned university and a hi-tech industry that attract students and employees from all over the world, Austin also has a healthy World Music scene as well that is often over-shadowed by the larger, more familiar genres of music.
Now the term World Music is a somewhat inadequate description for a wide variety of music (isn’t all music World Music?) but for our purposes let’s just say that World Music is music that originates in other countries other than this one and is played not only by musicians from the originating countries but also by musicians from here and other countries as well.
In Austin, Texas it’s pretty hard to put together an all-Brazilian band but with all the talent and interest in international music, it’s pretty easy to put together a band that plays Brazilian music. For those of you living in Austin or visiting Austin who like to hear music from abroad what follows is a look at the current Austin World Music scene – the bands, the venues, and other musical sources like radio programs, media, etc.