In 1965, Joe Boyd was stage manager at the Newport Folk Festival when Bob Dylan plugged in and went electric, shocking the conservative folk world. And having navigated that seismic shock, he went on to produce Pink Floyd, Nick Drake and Fairport Convention in the 1960s and 1970s.
Boyd covered much of this production work in his 2006 memoir of those days White Bicycles. His new book, And The Roots Of Rhythm Remain: A Journey Through Global Music, covers his life-long quest for music from all corners of the planet. The result is a 929 page monumental tome that is detailed but not academic, as Boyd is an excellent writer whose style is very readable.
I suspect that some readers may approach the book as a history of world music, a personal version of the Rough Guide To World Music, but it is not. Boyd ran the world music record label Hannibal, until he sold it to Rykodisc, and on that fascinating label he produced new flamenco (Ketama), Bulgarian choral and soukous from the Congo. You might think that Boyd would further cover his production work, but no, the new book is much more ambitious than that.
The theme of the book is how music has travelled around the globe -- the Middle Passage and how slavery affected cultural flows between different societies.
How, for instance, "rhythms, scales, and melodies flowed across the globe, constantly altering what the world danced and listened to". Think of how African rhythms made it to the Americas, and in the case of the US and Nigeria, the interchange between jazz and Africa, first outward, then returning in the form of Afrobeat.
Or in the chapter on Cuba, how African culture settled there and then returned via rumba records to West and Central Africa, providing a bedrock of rhythms which were localised (in the Congo, rumba was first sung in Spanish, then Lingala, and led to Congolese rumba).
The title chosen for the book comes from a line of lyrics on the album Graceland by Paul Simon.
The book begins with a detailed chapter on South African music, and an important theme emerges -- how governments have suppressed music for political reasons. I remember South African music legends Mahlathini and The Mahotella Queens telling me how they had to hold quick street concerts and sprint off with the arrival of the police. Other examples include Cuba, the Soviet folklorification of folk music and the jailing of tropicalia musicians in Brazil during the military dictatorship of the 1960s.
The discussion of these issues and how they fit into the complex narratives that surround music is illustrated with examples and testimony. Boyd has worked with many of these musicians but blows his own horn on how he created a cross-culture in the studio or on tours (for instance, listen to his work with kora player Toumani Diabate on new flamenco with Ketama, and Toumani's wonderful work with Taj Mahal, all released on Hannibal).
Chapters on Cuba, Jamaica, Brazil, East Europe (Hannibal's Balkan jazz master Ivo Papazov and Trio Bulgarka are worth checking out here) and Central and West Africa complete Boyd's monumental survey.
In the final chapter of this seminal book, Boyd talks passionately about retaining the human element in music making and performance. He notes that when hip-hop musicians began to sample James Brown in the late 1970s, they were digitising a live performance.
As he argues: "New technologies may divert our attention, but music created in the moment can still be found where it has always been, in the feet, fingers, voices and spirits of musicians in every corner of the world. Like the song says, that's where the roots of rhythm remain."
If you only read one book this year, I highly recommend you choose this one. And then go and seek out some of the music mentioned between its covers.
John Clewley can be contacted at clewley.john@gmail.com.
