Music like Outsider

Outsider music (from "outsider art") is music created by self-taught or naïve musicians. The term is usually applied to musicians outside the music establishment or who exhibit childlike qualities, and especially those who suffer from intellectual disabilities or mental illnesses. The term was popularized in the 1990s by journalist and WFMU DJ Irwin Chusid.

Outsider musicians often overlap with lo-fi artists, since their work is rarely captured in professional recording studios. Examples include Daniel Johnston, Wesley Willis, and Jandek, who each became the subjects of documentary films in the first decade of the 21st century.

The term "outsider music" is traced to the definitions of "outsider art" and "naïve art". "Outsider art" is rooted in the 1920s French concept of "L'Art Brut" ("raw art"). In 1972, academic Roger Cardinal introduced "outsider art" as the American counterpart of "L'Art Brut", which originally referred to work created exclusively by children or the mentally ill. The word "outsider" began to be applied to music cultures as early as 1959, with respect to jazz, and to rock as early as 1979. In the 1970s, "outsider music" was also a "favorite epithet" in music criticism in Europe. By the 1980s and 1990s, "outsider" was common in the cultural lexicon and was synonymous with "self-taught", "untrained", and "primitive".