The discourse of diversity and world music seems to experience a tension between the encouragement and control of difference: on one hand, plurality is cultivated, given the interest in ethnicities and cultural specificities that apparently cannot be reduced to a single term; on the other hand, singularity is encouraged, as there is an effort to gather the entire cornucopia of contingencies and idiosyncrasies within a single frame of rigid borders. In the case of the discourse of diversity, there is an attempt to reconcile the universal discourse with the particular discourse. As for “world music”, there is a quest for a variety of sounds, as well as a need to shelter this myriad of immiscible styles under the aegis of a single type of music. In the face of this balance between centripetal and centrifugal forces, I ask: how can the discourse of diversity and world music, simultaneously, stimulate and restrain difference?