You might think that the popularity of world music is a recent development.
But a new collection of music from the original gramophone recordings tells a different story.
Deep in the bowels of EMIs music archive in Middlesex there are 150,000 old 78s, gramophone records played at 78 revolutions per minute.
The 78s come from the earliest days of recorded music, when adventurous sound engineers were dispatched to distant corners of the world to record local musicians.
From the Imperial Palace Band in Tokyo to the streets of 1920s Baghdad, the recordings brought world music to a mass international audience.
Everything recorded
In 1886 Emile Berliner, a German Jewish immigrant living in Washington DC, had an idea that would change the music industry forever.
Many recordings feature women in less respectable professions, such as actresses and courtesans
He invented the first flat-disc record, at first made of hard-rubber and later a mixture of tree resins known as shellac, and a new device to play them on - the motorized gramophone machine.
His company, the Berliner Gramophone Company, started mass producing gramophones, and sent out recording engineers to capture sounds around the world.
Frederick Gaisberg was the first sound engineer to take up the challenge. He set out with a 78 cutting machine and a supply of the wax used for making the recordings in 30 crates of equipment.
"He set out recording everything he could lay his hands on," says Mark Ainley, who has been researching the collection for Sprigs of Time, a new compilation of music from the archive.
"He wrote his will before he left and said good bye to everybody. It was very brave really," he says.
Gaisberg would set up his equipment in a hotel and pay for local musicians to come and record, often conducting recording sessions through the night.
Broken records
Although the collection is kept in good condition, the sound quality on the old 78 records needs a lot of work.
The musicians were chosen on the grounds of what locals thought would be popular
"Many were sent back from the territories around the world where they were recorded," says Andy Walter, who worked on the recordings at Abbey Road studios.
"There have been records that come out that are broken but even then we have tried to fix them and glue them together and try to see if we can get a good result from them."
Specialist computer software is used to clean up the audio in order to make it listenable by a modern audience.
"The archives have been very well looked after over the years, and it's a wealth of material down there," he says.
Actual peasant singers
One of the strangest sounds in the Sprigs of Time collection is a recording of laughter, by Vengopal Chari from Madras.
"These laughing records were popular all over the world, I think they make people laugh. I reckon he would have been a popular performer," says Mr Ainley.
Also in the collection are recordings of English songs "by actual peasant singers" featuring folk singer Joseph Taylor - although at the time the recording was made, Taylor was working as an estate agent.
Although little is known about many of the performers, the collection does include early songs from performers who went on to become music legends of the 20th century.
Cuban pianist Ruben Gonzalez features long before he was made famous when US guitarist Ry Cooder spread the music of the Buena Vista Social Club to the wider world.
And the West Indian musician Mighty Sparrow is recorded at the beginning of his career as the calypso king of the world.
Could you guess where they came from? The music in the medley was recorded in the following countries:
1) Vome Kaba by Jonuzi Me Shoket, Albania, 1930
2) Tembele by Jean Mpia, Belgian Congo, 1954
3) Khambaj by Benodini Dassi, India, 1905
4) Seigaiha by the Imperial Palace Band, Japan, 1903
5) Georgian instrumental (organ), Georgia, 1909
6) Fantaisie Maggiar by Noubar Bey and party, Iraq, 1929
7) The Queen's Canary by Mighty Sparrow, Trinidad, 1957
All tracks are from Sprigs of Time, 78s from the EMI Archive released by Honest Jon's Records
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