The BBC Singer of the World competition (formerly the Cardiff Singer of the World competition) is a singing competition held every two years. It is considered the one of the most prestigious competitions in the opera world.
The competition was started by BBC Wales in 1983 to celebrate the opening of St David's Hall in Cardiff, Wales, home of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales.
In 1987, a Lieder Prize was introduced. The 1989 was particularly noteworthy with Welsh baritoneBryn Terfel winning the Lieder prize and Russian baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky taking the overall title. Both singers went on to enjoy extremely successful careers with international acclaim.
For the 2003 competition, 951 singers from 56 nations applied, of which 483 were shortlisted for audition. They were heard in forty locations across thirty countries around the world. The shortlist was finally narrowed down to twenty-five singers, with two reserves.
In musical terms, "world music" can be roughly defined as music which uses distinctive ethnic scales, modes and musical inflections, and which is usually (though not always) performed on or accompanied by distinctive traditional ethnic instruments, such as the kora (African lute), the steel drum, the sitar or the digeridoo.
World music is generally agreed to be traditional, folk or roots musics of any culture that is created and played by indigenous musicians or that is "closely informed or guided by indigenous music of the regions of their origin"
World music as a cultural-economic phenomenon is inextricably linked with the invention of sound recording and the development of the international recording industry, but the background to its emergence covers the whole span of modern Western musical history, and what some analysts have deemed the digital revolution.
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