world music

This term functions as a marketing and archival category rather than a strict musicological genre. It often carries a connotation of exoticism, as it groups vastly different cultural traditions under a single umbrella for the benefit of Western listeners and commercial distribution.

Because it describes a general category of sound or a conceptual field, it is treated as an uncountable noun. You would not refer to "three world musics" when discussing different styles; instead, you would use partitive phrases such as "types of world music" or "genres of world music."