In the late 1960s, the Explorer Series made Nonesuch a pioneer in the field of world music before the term had even been coined. The series, which Nonesuch released from 1967 to 1984, consisted of field recordings made primarily in Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, Central and South America, and Eastern Europe.

For American non-travelers, it was the first exposure to musical idioms such as music produced by a gamelan. In 1977, a few of the recordings were chosen for the Voyager Golden Record, and sent into outer space aboard the Voyager spacecraft. In 2008, one of the first Explorer Series albums, Music from the Morning of the World (1967), comprising early field recordings English musicologist David Lewiston had made in Bali in 1966, was added to the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress.

The analog original recordings of the Nonesuch Explorer Series albums have been digitized, and the series, remastered and with new packaging, is currently being re-released in CD format. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.