Andy Childs reviews Joe Boyd’s gargantuan 929-page journey through global music — a formidably substantial, defiant, comprehensive and articulate stance, he writes, against modern technological encroachments on music-making.
When I first heard, quite a while ago now, that Joe Boyd was writing a ‘history of world music’ I remember thinking that there probably isn’t a more qualified person for the task, that the book would have to be enormous, and that it would have to be anecdotal and as informal as possbile to appeal to a wide audience. So now along comes And the Roots of Rhythm Remain and, happily, I’ve been proved right on all three counts. A caveat though — the book isn’t really a ‘history of world music’ — it doesn’t pretend to be and quite frankly to attempt such a project and condense it into one volume would be quite insane. No, this book is actually much more interesting than that. And that’s down to Boyd’s gift for telling a good story, his own personal experience and involvement in much of what is documented here, and his convincingly argued reservations about modern music-making.
Even though nothing can quite top his account of being caught ‘in the eye of a hurricane’ as stage manager at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965 trying to placate the folk music aristocracy of the time while Bob Dylan delivered his short but seminal electric set (see Boyd’s 60s memoir White Bicycles), Joe Boyd’s story of being seated next to Paul Simon at a party in London in the mid-80s while Simon plays him a tape of backing tracks and sings practically the whole of the Graceland album over it to him comes impressively close. And this is but one of numerous amusing and revealing anecdotes, featuring the author, that embellish and give focus to what is an unavoidably scholarly (but decidedly non-academic) and extremely impressive examination of key music from around the world that has cross-fertilised, impacted upon and influenced popular music almost everywhere.
The book is several musical adventures and an education spanning decades. Each chapter covers a particular traditional musical hotbed in the world — uncoincidentally nearly all socially and politically unstable countries — weaving often corrupt and repressive political and social history into the development of music in those countries; celebratory music of defiance and irrepressible vitality intrinsically wedded to the struggle for social justice. As all of the major players are portrayed and contextualised, the focus is sharpened to highlight the particular artists and records that have had the most impact on western, English-speaking culture.
So we begin with the music of South Africa — mbube, mbaqanga, isicathamiya — traditional Zulu music, the emergence of Miriam Makeba, Hugh Masakela, the Blue Notes (with Chris McGregor) who Boyd managed in the late-60s, and of course Paul Simon’s Graceland which in Boyd’s view ‘more than any other recording of the decade [the 80s], opened Western ears to music from far away’. From there we venture to Cuba which because of its many tangled cultural roots has perhaps the most interesting musical history. Boyd manages to shoehorn Afro-Cuban music, Latin jazz, the Spanish slave trade, mambo, son, Desi Arnaz (of I Love Lucy fame) plus everything else that’s relevant into a chapter that concludes with the phenomenal success of The Buena Vista Social Club, a record so omnipresent that it unfairly overshadowed other more-than-noteworthy Cuban records of the time, Boyd’s own Cubanismo project in particular.
Jamaican music is the subject of Boyd’s scrutiny next. An entertaining story involving Chris Blackwell (Whiteworst as Peter Tosh memorably called him) sets the scene for a comprehensive survey of Jamaican history and musical culture, the appearance of Desmond Dekker, Jimmy Cliff, Toots and The Maytals (who Boyd produced and of whom he says ‘no artist has spent more time on my turntable in the last 50 years’) and the trio of Bob Marley, Peter Tosh and Bunny Livingston all three of whom Chris Blackwell, somewhat reluctantly it appears, takes an inaugural meeting with having just ‘lost’ Jimmy Cliff. Serendipity at its most significant!
An interesting strain of British and American pop and rock music of the 60s came under the influence of Indian music, most notably that of The Beatles and The Byrds, but one of Boyd’s discoveries, The Incredible String Band were similarly enticed and this chapter is particularly wide-ranging, taking in the music of Ravi Shankar, John Coltrane, LaMonte Young, Terry Riley, and Nazakat & Salamat Ali (who Boyd produced).
The global peregrination continues via the music of Eastern Europe and Spain to Brazil and the music that evolved from African roots, was shaped by political and social oppression, influenced and was influenced by jazz, blues and folk music and has an inherent accessibility that makes it timeless and universal. Carmen Miranda, Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil and Astrud Gilberto take their place in the pantheon of heroes here, less so Herb Alpert & His Tijuana Brass and Sergio Mendes and Brasil 66. Boyd’s own significant involvement with Brazilian music centres on the wonderful Virginia Rodrigues whose albums on the Hannibal label remain among the very finest of its releases. A quick stop in Argentina for a rundown on tango and the music of Carlos Gardel and then back to Eastern Europe for perhaps the most unlikely music to make its mark on western culture. Bulgarian singing in general made a big impression on the likes of Joni Mitchell and David Crosby in the 60s but the music of the Trio Bulgarka is perhaps the most well-known to a latter-day audience. There’s a great story involving Boyd and Kate Bush going off to Sofia to record with them and theirs is a rare example of traditional music that has been coerced by western sensibilities and not compromised in the process.
The penultimate chapter takes us back to Africa for an extended survey of music from Nigeria, Mali, Zaire and beyond. Here, Boyd’s involvement has again been extensive but also innovative. The collaborative albums that the late Toumani Diabate made with Spanish group Ketama and Taj Mahal respectively and were released on Hannibal Records, are outstanding examples of what can be achieved when music of different cultures but shared values blends and interacts naturally.
Even though, remarkably, there’s no filler here, and, apart from the occasional hard-to-avoid trumpet blowing, no narcissistic gonzo ramblings so often found these days in overblown biographies, the massive 900-page size of this book and its dense, digressive style may well dissuade the uncommitted reader from investigating, which would be a great shame and a missed opportunity. But it really couldn’t have been any shorter without diminishing the importance of its subject matter and compromising its authoritative tone. The appellation ‘world music’ might not be to everyone’s taste, but it has Boyd’s fingerprints all over it.
I’ve been reading And The Roots Of Rhythm Remain (at my desk) for nigh on two months now and, apart from its undeniable scholarly merits and entertainment value, I’ve come to think of it, not facetiously I hope, as a sort of musical AI roadblock, a formidably substantial, defiant, comprehensive and articulate stance against every modern, artificial encroachment on music-making that seeks to duplicate or replace the vital, unique human element that has always given music its magic, its integrity, and its power to connect and change lives around the world for the better.
*
‘And the Roots of Rhythm Remain: A Journey Through Global Music’ by Joe Boyd is out now, published by Faber. Buy a copy here via the Heavenly Bandcamp page (£29).
Joe Boyd has compiled a preliminary 100-song playlist to enhance the reading of the book, available on Spotify and Apple Music.