If it’s “Labor Day” in America, Andrea and I must be in Miami, Florida, where we’re starting a third promotional swing across the US for And the Roots of Rhythm Remain (with the added bonus of a week in Mexico). Labor Day, for those unfamiliar with it, was once America’s answer to May 1st, a celebration of the country’s workers and their unions, which Trump seems determined to turn into a quaint relic of a bygone era, designed primarily for gas-guzzling beach or lake jaunts and grilling giant burgers. Signs of resistance are few and far between.
We start and finish this trip in two of the South’s best bookstores: September 2nd at Miami’s Books & Books, and September 17th at New Orleans’Octavia Books, in conversation with Jay Mazza.
In between, we’ll take part in the Hay Festival Querétaro, Mexico where I will be in conversation with journalist Mariana H before heading to the West Coast where we’ll reprise the show we put on in March at the Big Ears Festival in Knoxville.
Photo: Polly Thomas
These ‘audio-visual’ cinema events combine a wonderful collection of rare film clips – Taj Mahal with Toumani Diabaté, Kate Bush with the Trio Bulgarka, Dizzy Gillespie and Chano Pozo, Ivo Papasov and David Sanborn, Ravi Shankar with George Harrison, Paul Simon with Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelly etc – interspersed with narration and readings by yours truly. This show’s first ventures outside the confines of Big Ears will take place in:
San Francisco, CA at Roxie Cinema in partnership with Book Passage, 6pm Thursday, September 11th
Ojai, CA at the Ojai Playhouse in partnership with Hotel El Roblar and Bart’s Books, 4pm Saturday, September 13th
Kulanjan recording sessions with Taj Mahal and Toumani Diabaté in 1999, Athens, Georgia / Photo: Banning Eyre
If all goes well, we may turn up with it one day in a city near you…
Meanwhile, don’t forget our two 100-song playlists, and if that’s not enough Roots Remain music for you, I’ve been doing all manner of broadcasts and podcasts. One that worked particularly well (with plenty of music) is Johnny Fewings’ Jazz, Blues and Beyond. Another one brings us full circle to the film clips, which include one from NBC-TV’s Night Music, where first-season host Jools Holland gives one of his dry-as-the-Sahara intros to the Trio Bulgarka. NBC didn’t like his attitude or accent and sent him packing back to Britain where he pitched a similar show to BBC television; Later with Jools Holland became an institution now in its 35th year. He’s recently branched out into radio with a show on BBC’s Classical Radio 3, and I had a great time being his guest on a music-filled edition of Earlier… with Jools Holland. My book is full of links between classical and traditional music and Jools and I had a fine old time showing connections that may have startled a swathe of Radio 3’s listenership. You can hear it here. (Those outside the UK may have to be inventive, but we know you can do it…)
Until the next one, as we used to sing at Harvard football games, illegitimi non carborundum!
Let’s start this newsletter with some music. Our first playlist for my new book And the Roots of Rhythm Remain seemed to go down well, so Andrea and I have put together another 100-track selection of artists, songs and styles described in the book. You can find them both here. The long promised website full of clips, tracks and rabbit-holes will appear one day, but it is taking (surprise!) longer than expected.
The main event here is a return to those extended epistles of yore that longer-serving readers may recall, inspired in this case by our spring tour of North America. News about upcoming events can be found at the foot of the newsletter, as can links to some new podcasts and interviews. More book travels – including a September return to the US – are in the works and will be announced soon.
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One of the book’s subtexts is my affection for the producers, promoters and enthusiasts who helped bring great music to audiences both domestic and foreign: Senegal’s Ibrahima Sylla and Ibrahim Kassé; Ravi Shankar’s American producer, Dick Bock; those tireless promoters of Cuban music, Alejo Carpentier, Fernando Ortiz and Ned Sublette; the great A&R man and music publisher, Ralph Peer; Bulgarian Radio’s Rumyana Tzintzarska; kora champion Lucy Durán; Mario Pacheco and Ricardo Pachón from Spain; André Midani in Brazil… the list is long.
Our recent North American tour re-connected me with many of today’s equivalents, men and women who have made curating, presenting, celebrating, collecting and preserving our musical heritage their life’s work. For example: in an 18th-century barnyard near Hyde Park on the Hudson River we saw an awe-inspiring monument to the analogue era: Bob George’s ARChive of Contemporary Music. Three immense (and strangely beautiful) wooden structures hold over three million vinyl discs, of which half a million have been catalogued and many of them digitized. Bob has been tireless in persuading collectors to donate or bequeath their vinyl and memorabilia; sub sections such as ‘Keith Richards’ Blues Collection’ are wonders to behold. He’s raised funds for a move to a modern facility in Poughkeepsie, NY, but always needs more support to keep ARC growing and providing a home for America’s – and the world’s – musical history.
Joining us on that visit, after a tasty Rhinecliff lunch, was Lucy Sante. One of the first post-research books I plucked from my library and devoured was Kill All Your Darlings, a wonderful collection of essays written under Lucy’s pre-transition moniker, Luc Sante. (Andrea hugely enjoyed her wonderfully-titled account of that life change, I Heard Her Call My Name.) I got ahold of Lucy’s email and offered to send a copy of my book. She turned out to have been a teenage Incredible String Band fan – believe it or not, there were many such way back in the 1960s – and possessor of a well-thumbed copy of White Bicycles, so a Hudson Valley rendezvous was arranged.
The Hudson Valley seems to be where New Yorkers who moved to Brooklyn in order to escape Manhattan are now moving to escape Brooklyn. Danny Melnick and Isabel Soffer are the perfect pair to provide entertainment for these riverine migrants, as both vaguely fit that description and have long histories of promoting jazz, ‘world’ and roots music in both the big city and upstream. For six months each year, they rent a church hall in Saugerties, call it The Local and bring concerts, talks and workshops to the region’s music-hungry denizens. The audience at my event there included more than a few laborers in our ever-more-arid cultural orchard, including New Yorker critic Amanda Petrusich, the aforementioned Lucy S and WKCR’s David Ellenbogen, who unnerved me in our interview by seeming to know more about my subject than I do. Singers with history in their vocal cords were there, too: our hostess, Jenni Muldaur, who has released a wonderfully anachronistic album of country duets with Teddy Thompson, and Natalie Merchant, with whom I worked on the 10,000 Maniacs’ Wishing Chair. Natalie once suspended her burgeoning career for a few years to teach music in the New York public school system, continues to be a high-profile activist, serving on the Board of Trustees of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress while developing a project for young audiences with the Chicago Symphony.
The night before my talk, Upstate Films invited me to introduce a rare screening of my 1973 film Jimi Hendrix, which has long been unavailable both in movie houses and online. I recounted the curious story of how it came to be made and everyone seemed to like it a lot; getting Jimi back onto streaming platforms is on my list of tasks for the summer.
I’ve spoken before at Chicago’s Old Town School of Folk Music, but a visit always inspires. As we strolled around with events programmer Troy Hansbrough and checked out the PA system for the evening talk, troops of students, their ages increasing as the day went on, passed us in the hallways on their way to lessons in banjo picking, blues guitar, jazz saxophone, vocal harmony and improvisation – just like a high-tone conservatory only devoted entirely to folk and other non-classical traditions. It was great to see Troy, three decades after we worked together at Rykodisc/Hannibal, as it was to be interviewed again by Mark Caro, a multi-faceted Chicago journalist and podcaster channelling the Studs Terkel spirit.
Recording studio boss Julia Miller helped organize a pre-show get-together with Chicago sound engineers and record producers. I was delighted to discover that Julia is now co-owner of Delmark Records, a Chicago label whose late founder, Bob Koester, was a key figure in the start of my career as a producer. Whenever we were in Chicago, my brother and I would visit his Jazz Record Mart to buy the latest blues reissues, and Bob was so charmed by these teenage nerds that he would serenade – and educate – us with his rare 78s. When I came through town on my way to California at the start of a semester off from Harvard, it was Bob who gave me an introduction to Contemporary Records, opening the door to my first job in the music business. Once back at Harvard, Bob sent me a box of lps on credit and recommended my fledgling distribution company to other indie labels. Discovering that Delmark lives on was a highlight of my visit to the Windy City.
The Cedar Cultural Center in Minneapolis is a bit like an older sibling to The Local. It’s been going since 1989 and was run for many years by my former Ryko/Hannibal colleague Rob Simonds; he and his wife Karen continue to support the centre by sponsoring events. The Cedar has a wonderful lived-in atmosphere and I’ve always had a soft spot for Minneapolis and those weird pedestrian bridges connecting downtown blocks for when the snowdrifts get too high. Favourite son Prince gave mystical explanations for calling his most famous song ‘Purple Rain’ but I suspect it was, consciously or unconsciously, an homage to the Minnesota Vikings football team. Musical footnotes abound there by the headwaters of the Mississippi: for many years, ‘Spider John’ Koerner both sang and tended bar at a joint down the street from the Cedar and we stayed with ECM’s favourite hard-to-classify guitarist Steve Tibbets and his wife Joanie. Steve has spent a lot of time in Nepal, where he recorded Chô with Tibetan nun Choyang Drolma, one of Hannibal’s most successful ‘world’ albums.
Ashley Capps fits right in with this august gallery of presenters, chroniclers and preservers, but he operates on a whole other level. Having built up a number of music venues in his home town of Knoxville, he started the Bonnaroo Festival in 2002, turning it into one of the country’s top events. Since selling Bonnaroo to Live Nation, he’s focused his substantial energies on a unique Knoxville event, the Big Ears festival. Every year at the end of March, in twenty or so venues scattered within walking distance around the downtown area, Ashley and his team present a four-day smorgasbord of live music: jazz, experimental, acoustic, electronic, retro, avant-garde, country, funk… There are no giant outdoor stages, just human-scale venues where audiences listen carefully; there’s nothing quite like it. Three of my personal highlights show the breadth: Swamp Dogg and his great R&B outfit, an hour-long free improvisation featuring Wadada Leo Smith, Vijay Iyer and Yosvany Terry, and Arooj Aftab backed by an extraordinary group of virtuosi. A frail but moving performance at Big Ears was Michael Hurley’s last show before his death a fortnight later.
My contribution was the result of an invitation from Big Ears’ film curator Lily Keber (whose own Bayou Maharajah about James Booker is a classic) to be ‘in residence’ at the Riviera Cinema. I presented a series of films, including my own co-productions – Jimi Hendrix and Aretha Franklin’s Amazing Grace – and three from the book’s filmography: an exquisite black and white 1962 documentary on music in Havana called Nosotros, la música, Tony Gatlif’s Gadjo Dilo, a true ish story set in a community of Roma musicians, and the Jamaican classic The Harder They Come. These were topped off with a two-hour-long audio-visual tour through the book that Andrea and I put together, including footage of Taj Mahal with Toumani Diabaté, Kate Bush with the Trio Bulgarka, Dizzy Gillespie and Chano Pozo, Ivo Papasov and David Sanborn, Ravi Shankar and George Harrison and Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelly (before running out of time for Tito Puente and Celia Cruz). The films were elegantly introduced by by writer Josh Jelly-Shapiro and film-maker Mirissa Neff, and, thanks to Lily and her cohort Tim Watson, we now have a DCP with all those clips. Any mailing list members who happen to run a cinema and fancy hosting a narrated evening of rare and wonderful musical footage – or perhaps a curated season of music dramas and documentaries, please get in touch. Lily also asked NPR’s astute chronicler of popular music, Ann Powers, if she would be up for doing an on-stage interview with me and I’m pleased she was, as I’ve long admired her take on the American music scene. Our conversation can be heard as a Big Ears podcast here.
In my book’s conclusion, I praise the great Dust-to-Digital label’s Instagram feed as a resource for anyone looking for home-grown virtuosos, spontaneous musical joy and spectacular rhythmic moments. I’d exchanged emails with that label’s founders, Lance and April Ledbetter, but never met them. We spent two days getting to know their Atlanta, including an evening playing musical ping pong with Lance at a cool ‘listening bar’ called Commune, and recording an interview with April and Lance for their new podcast. The main event was Lance and my on-stage conversation at Manuel’s Tavern, a Democratic Party landmark where Jimmy Carter launched his political career, Barack Obama played darts and Stacey Abrams rallied voters threatened with disenfranchisement. Our audience included Matt Hinton, a leading figure in the Sacred Harp movement. This is one of the most exciting – and curious – phenomena of America’s desire to connect with its past while partaking of the joys of communal singing. All across the country, groups large and small meet regularly to sing this complex, multi-part form of religious music that evolved during the Great Awakening of the early 19th century. Today, its adherents are made up of a surreal combination of devout Christians (mostly in the South) and God-ignoring urbanites (mostly in the Northeast), all drawn by the glorious sounds emerging from the Sacred Harp hymnal, a new edition of which is to be published this year, the first since 1991.
I sometimes feel a twinge of guilt pulling into 30th Street Station in Philadelphia. I grew up exactly halfway between Philly and New York but visited the latter at least 20 times more often than I did the former. This was despite the fact that watching Bob Horne’s Bandstand live from North Philadelphia every afternoon after school provided my early education in R&B and doo-wop, and that it was in Rittenhouse Square that my brother Warwick, Geoff Muldaur and I arranged to meet the great Lonnie Johnson in September 1960, bringing him to a friend’s living room in Princeton for his first paid gig in eight years (and my first venture into music presenting). The city still boasts a robust community of music buffs, including my on-stage interlocutor Tom Moon (author of the impeccable 1000 Recordings To Hear Before You Die), while in the Barnes & Noble audience were Amy Shalit, long-time producer and driving force behind NPR’s Fresh Air with Terri Gross, and the inimitable Aaron Levinson. We visited Aaron’s loft the next day, a space crammed with evidence of his status as a premiere collector of Latin music and its related ephemera. In a corner by the door stands a large wooden figure with nails protruding in all directions. You’ve probably seen African carvings studded with spikes in museums but, like me (and most museum curators), you didn’t know their significance. Thanks to Aaron, now I do: each nail represents a binding contract between two parties. Pounding a spike into the wood seals the deal before witnesses and deities and cannot be broken. Wrestling with contracts’ endless sub-clauses and the ensuing legal bills can make one envy cultures with such a straightforward custom.
It is a little-known fact that during the pre-WW2 78rpm era, many of the greatest recordings of traditional music from Europe and the Middle East were made in New York City or Chicago; newly arrived musicians had a ready-made audience of fellow-immigrants, eager to purchase sounds that reminded them of home. The leading chronicler of this phenomenon is Ian Nagoski, who lives a short Amtrak ride south of Philadelphia in Baltimore and who, along with Essential Tremors podcasters Matt Byars and Lee Gardner, helped set up my event there. In London a few years back we had the good fortune to attend one of Ian’s tour de force performances, in which he tells tales of displaced divas and virtuosos and plays their beautifully restored shellacs.
The event at Politics and Prose in Washington DC drew a good crowd, thanks in no small part to the work Andras Goldinger has done over many years building up a wide selection of music books and bringing illuminating speakers to the store. The audience included my old friend Bob Boilen, visionary creator of NPR’s All Songs Considered and Tiny Desk Concerts. Rarely has something with so modest a beginning turned into such a cultural behemoth. Seated nearby were Maureen Laughran and John Smith from Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, for whom Andrea and I produced Damir Imamović’s album of Bosnian sevdah and Sephardic songs, The World and All That It Holds. We joined them for supper afterwards and got a fascinating tour of the hq the next day, seeing how they preserve the archives and catalogues of so many important labels: Folkways, Arhoolie, Cook Labs, Folk Legacy, Monitor, UNESCO and more. Let’s hope this invaluable work can stay out of MAGA’s gunsights. (And provide a shaming example to corporations who own vast catalogues and keep huge swathes of them hidden from potential listeners.)
Last autumn’s publication party with David Byrne at New York’s Villa Albertine would always be a hard act to follow, but the paperback launch at Powerhouse Arena and Bookstore in Dumbo turned out really well. It’s a terrific space and Chris Molnar, who runs it, was a genial and supportive host, while I was pleased that the audience included fellow music writer and old friend Brian Cullman. Brian’s musical palate has what I might presume to call a Boydian width: he wrote an ice-breaking appreciation of Nick Drake a few years after Nick’s death, and a half century later provided my new book with an eloquent description of Morocco’s Master Musicians of Joujouka (“like the four horsemen of the apocalypse auditioning for a gig as eternity’s house band”). His writing appears regularly in the Paris Review and a collection is planned for publication next year.
While in New York, we delivered a copy of the book to a revered critic whom I quote a number of times in its pages. Robert Christgau and his wife, the writer Carola Dibbell, served us tea in their East Village apartment, which looks exactly as a Christgau apartment ought to: crammed with records, books, photos and memorabilia, a time capsule of a golden era of music and the eloquent criticism it inspired. The next day, I visited the studios of WFUV on the Bronx campus of Fordham University for an interview with Paul Cavalconte on his long-running cult show, ‘Cavalcade’. When I was running my label, we always craved getting our records onto FUV playlists, so it was gratifying to hear Paul and his colleagues assure me that Hannibal and Witchseason discs still get regular spins.
The brotherhood of music hounds contains more than its fair share of grey hairs and bald pates, but we’re all in the bloom of youth compared to Toronto’s nonagenarian Richard Flohil. Richard has been promoting and publicizing music in Canada since time immemorial including the Hannibal Records catalogue and White Bicycles. We reminisced about the time in 1964 when I was squiring Muddy Waters and Sister Rosetta Tharpe around Britain and Richard hitched a ride on the tour bus. He and Derek Andrews, eminent founder of Toronto’s Harbourfront and Luminato festivals and key figure in touring global artists, brought me together with a room full of critics, musicians, producers and music buffs at the Rivoli, a venerable institution whose wooden sign, I learned, was designed by Mary Margaret O’Hara. The Q&A inevitably veered into my stories about working as the second of three producers on O’Hara’s Miss America album, which was eventually released in 1989, five years after I recorded many of the tracks.
My publisher, Ze Books, and publicist, Shore Fire Media, deserve more than the usual thanks for supporting such a tour. Shore Fire have for many years done great work supporting Smithsonian/Folkways and other roots music labels and artists, while Ze Books has a passionate commitment to music, art and culture writing that goes far beyond the calculation of a balance sheet. A shout-out must also go to the booksellers who either hosted me or shlepped books to the venue: Inquiring Minds in Saugerties, Book Cellar in Chicago, Moon Palace in Minneapolis, UnionStreet in Knoxville, A Capella in Atlanta, Barnes & Noble in Philadelphia, Atomic Books in Baltimore, Politics and Prose in Washington, Powerhouse in New York and Another Story in Toronto. It’s become a bad habit of many readers to prowl their local store, thumbing through books and taking notes, then ordering online for a few bucks less. I encourage everyone to do the obverse: research books and check them out on line, then order from your local shop.
I ended my previous newsletter with the generalization that music brings out the best in people and how inspired I was by those who work to make it happen. Do they belong in the same paragraph as the ones protecting our environment, our civil rights, our health, our freedom of thought and of study? That might be a stretch, but I left New York in mid-April feeling energized by all the great work being done by the people mentioned above along with all their colleagues and co-workers and by the audiences who turned out to listen.
Hoping to see some of you at a future event.
As ever, Joe
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AUDIO BOOK
A reminder for those daunted by the width of And the Roots of Rhythm Remain – the quality can also be had by listening to me read the audio book – available from Audible, Amazon or Apple and, in Europe, those three plus Spotify, XigXag and other platforms.
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NEW MEDIA
Deutschlandradio, Radiokunst: Neue Autorenproduktionen, Kurzstrecke 154 „Meeting Joe Boyd“ by Francis Gay
Special note: this 20-minute piece for German radio by Francis Gay takes a very original approach to creating an audio piece from our interview. Highly recommended!
WFUV 90.7 Cavalcade by Paul Cavalconte Joe Boyd: Cavalcade Q&A (without all the great music he played in the show)
Ze Books weren’t fooling anyone on April 1st when they released the American paperback of And the Roots of Rhythm Remain. The hardcover was selling so fast (11,000 in the UK and US combined) that they had to move the paperback release forward.
For those of you residing in or around either the Big Apple or ‘the 6ix’, the final week of my months long North American tour kicks off at 7pm Wednesday April 9th with the American paperback party at the Powerhouse in Dumbo and winds up at 2pm Sunday April 13th with a Canadian launch at Toronto’s Rivoli Theater.
The past month has been a great adventure, about which I will report more fully when I settle back into my London vinyl cathedral. We’ve travelled from the Hudson Valley to Chicago to Minneapolis, spent six wonderful days at the Big Ears Festival in Knoxville, then carried on to Atlanta, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington. We’ve had great presenters, booksellers and interlocutors, met wonderful people, renewed friendships and heard some great music. All shall be revealed in the next newsletter.
I can also belatedly announce the release of the audiobook. Recording it took many months, countless throat lozenges and cups of Throat Coat tea, but all 42 hours of it were finally uploaded just before Christmas. (It’s available on amazon, audible, apple and, in Europe, on Spotify.)
Getting our flights to Toronto wasn’t easy since, for some reason, Canadians seem to be rushing home in great numbers. Booking the return to NY, though, was a breeze. Funny that. Last autumn, we travelled the US in a MAGA-free bubble; the upcoming election was barely discussed. Now, it’s ‘back in the USSA’, with anxiety and oppression palpable everywhere. I can, however, make the rash generalization that music seems to bring out the best in people and I continue to be inspired by those who have dedicated their lives to it, performing, collecting, chronicling and avidly listening.
Five years without setting foot in the US came to an end last month when Andrea and I landed in New York to start a five-week promotional tour. I was on the lookout for seismic cultural shifts, but the only difference I detected was the aroma of legal marijuana wafting through the windows of our friend’s Greenwich Village apartment, morning, noon and night.
The tour took us hopping and skipping across the country, sometimes sharing the stage with luminaries such as Yosvany Terry, David Byrne, Buddy Miller, Jerry Harrison or Joe Nick Patoski and sometimes doing it on my own (with timely interjections from Andrea and her expertly honed playlists). One event took place at the Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma; it and the Woody Guthrie Center next door were among our tourist highlights – astonishingly good and definitely worth adding to any travel plans for the American West…
Back in Britain, I’ve got another burst which started yesterday, Saturday October 12 at the Llais Festival in Cardiff. Going on from there Monday to Manchester (Literature Festival), Tuesday to Liverpool (Waterstones) and October 25 th to Lancaster (Litfest):
Tell your Lancashire friends!
Events in November include ‘A Drink with the Idler’ (online), a Nick Drake event (Southbank, TBA) and a trip to Abergavenny.
It’s been nice finding that passages I wrote a decade ago sound pretty much as I imagined they would when I wrote them back then. I try not to repeat myself at readings, though inevitably when something works well, it gets another airing. Being interviewed brings out different aspects of the book; some that might be of interest include:
Print highlights include Vanity Fair running an excerpt from the Jamaica chapter, a Washington Post interview and a wonderful review from Offbeat, the great New Orleans music magazine:
Ze Books and our US publicists Shore Fire did themselves proud (as have Faber in the UK, of course). For those who might be interested, we’ve been posting regularly about our travels on the ‘joeboydofficial’ Instagram page.
British friends have asked about the pre-election American mood. Music, at least the kind I write about, creates its own bubble, so no Maga caps were spotted in the audiences. Homes we visited all had Harris/Walz signs out front; the closest we came to a glance across the divide was a huge billboard in Texas reading “Angry? Vote Republican”. Cars coming the other way saw “Tired of being angry? Vote Democrat”. Here’s hoping.
First things first: a plug for my new Instagram (@joeboydofficial) and old Facebook accounts, with news about the book, my touring, radio and press as well as intros to characters, moments and pieces of music from And the Roots of Rhythm Remain.
Which is not to underplay the fact that And the Roots of Rhythm Remain is out now in the UK since 29 August, where it’s in the shops and available from the Faber website, and imminent in the US on September 24 and available for pre-order from Ze’s Website. Copies will be sold, though, in those bookshops and venues where I am doing events. I’ve been so fortunate with Faber and Ze as my publishers; great to work with, full of enthusiasm, patient, supportive and committed to making my costly behemoth of a book an essential purchase for bookshops and readers.
I am writing this newsletter from New York, slightly dazed after flying here from London yesterday for the first time in 5 years. I used to hop back and forth as if it were the 18 London bus… Andrea and I have come for a 5-week promotional jaunt across the US that will take me to places I haven’t visited in many years; I’m really excited about it. See below for full list of cities and events.
We start this afternoon in Brooklyn then head Monday morning to Boston and Porter Square Books in Cambridge, MA. That bookstore is just down the street from my Harvard alma mater and I’m really looking forward to sharing the stage with Yosvany Terry. Yosvany is a great Cuban musician who was a key part of ¡Cubanismo! 25 years ago and who now teaches at Harvard, as well as playing sax with Eddie Palmieri while touring the world with his own band. I will never forget the first day in Egrem Studios in Havana in 1996; when the rest of the musicians went out for a beer, I found a dreadlocked sax player seated in the control room on the only chair, leaning against the wall reading a book by Michel Foucault. We’ve been friends ever since.
Wednesday September 11th is the New York launch with David Byrne, which makes for a nice symmetry since the London launch last Wednesday was with Brian Eno, the other half of this pair of musical giants who have done as much as any to alter the course of Anglo-American popular music over the past half century and have always done so with their ears open to sounds from across the globe. The London event with Brian Eno was hugely enjoyable; Brian is one of the great original thinkers and an activist who doesn’t just talk but engages tirelessly with the world. He’s also an early enthusiast about And the Roots of Rhythm Remain (see quote below) and his support has been invaluable.
The meetings with remarkable men in resonant places continue as the tour progresses: Bob Boilen (who invented the Tiny Desk Concert) in Washington DC on Sept 14, Chicago’s Old Town School of Folk Music Sept 16, the great guitarist and raconteur Buddy Miller in Nashville at the Americana Fest on Sept 20, then the Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma on Sept 22, before we head west to New Mexico, the Bay Area, LA, Houston and Austin.
Back in the UK I’ve had many great exchanges and interviews over the past few intense weeks – Cerys Matthews on her Sunday BBC Radio 6 show, Laura Barton at Green Man festival, Julian Mash at End of the Road festival, Gareth Evans at First Light festival, Max Reinhardt on Soho Radio, Gary O’Donoghue on the BBC World Service, Kathryn Tickell on BBC Radio 3’s Music Planet and Barney Hoskyns and his panel of experts at Rock’s Backpages. Some of the radio and podcasts available 4 weeks and some longer.
The response to the book has been very encouraging, including the highlights from critics and early readers listed below.
I hope many of you will come to one of these events. If you do, please make yourselves known. I really enjoy meeting with you all and spreading the word about the book.
All the best Joe
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Critical acclaim for And the Roots of Rhythm Remain
“What an amazing book! Joe Boyd has distilled decades of experience and observation of how musical ideas interbreed, and how culture is formed, into a tumultuous, gripping and dramatic story. I doubt I’ll ever read a better account of the history and sociology of popular music than this one. It has me saying ‘Wow’ on every page.” Brian Eno
“The producer’s epic account of global music’s cross-pollination is an inspiring tale of seduction, expression and freedom from oppression . . . every paragraph packed with information and inspiration – but written with a refreshingly light touch [. . .] Boyd’s book is, accordingly, the Proust of music history – à la recherche of much music lost, here regained and affirmed in our present.” The Observer, Ed Vulliamy – link
“Masterly [. . .] deeply scholarly but grippingly readable – and with the best soundtrack in the world.” Spectator, David Honigmann – link
“Sometimes it feels as if the whole world is squeezed into these 900-odd pages [. . .] Epic [. . .] His enthusiasm proves infectious; he is teacher, storyteller and, sometimes, provocateur.” The Times, Clive Davis – link
“A dazzling and magesterial history [. . .] I rank it amongst the three best books about music I have ever read.” Hi-Fi Choice, Nigel Williamson
“Profound . . . and beyond.” Robert Plant
“[A] brilliant tapestry of sounds from outside the anglophone world.” Mojo 5*****, David Hutcheon
“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.” Caught By The River, Andy Childs – link
“One only hopes this can be taught in schools.” Ry Cooder
“Joe Boyd has written an encyclopedic cornerstone for future writings. More than that though, he’s proved himself a master storyteller.” Louder Than War, Trev Eales – link
“The War and Peace of world music.” Mojo Magazine, Jim Irvin
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And the Roots of Rhythm Remain – US & UK Tour 2024
After the blare of trumpets in the last newsletter about the imminent arrival of the Big Book, the publication date of And the Roots of Rhythm Remain has now been moved to the end of August. There will be launches and events on both sides of the ocean and I’ll be sure to keep you posted.
A few things that had been planned for June have now been pushed back, but I will still be appearing at the Lyse Netter Festival in Moss, Norway on June 8 and the First Light Festival in Lowestoft on June 22. The first place where I’ll turn up with books to sell and sign will be in the UK at the Cropredy Festival on August 9, then at the Ropetackle Arts Centre in Shoreham on August 27, and End of the Road on August 30. More events to follow as the schedule firms up.
Over the past few months, I’ve had a few occasions to talk into a microphone on non-book subjects and all are now available on line. I had a great time with John Wood, my old friend and engineer of so many classic Witchseason recordings, at an event in London hosted by Matthew Bannister. A recording of our conversation about how we made records once upon a time is available on Matthew’s ‘Folk on Foot’ podcast.
I had a slightly more raucous good time with Dan Pratt and Gary Kemp talking about the old days of Pink Floyd, UFO and other tangential subjects. Their show is called ‘Rockonteurs’ and my episode is available here on Apple Music or Spotify and other platforms.
To cap a triad of audio ventures into my record-producing past, BBC producer Toby Field paid me a visit to hear my recollections of producing Nick Drake’s ‘Northern Sky’ for an episode of Radio 4’s Soul Music series. Each show combines listeners’ experiences of being moved by a certain track with the memories of some of those involved in making them. Click here to listen.
That’s all for now. Back to my padded cell to keep recording more pages for the audio book of And the Roots of Rhythm Remain.
Remember me? You may recall that I used to send out newsletters fairly regularly. A few of you even sent messages saying you missed them.
My excuse has been that I’ve been consumed by trying to finish the book I’ve been writing for so many years. Well, I’ve finally done it! And the Roots of Rhythm Remain: a journey through global music will be published on July 4 in the UK by Faber and on Sept 3 in the US by Ze Books.
It’s a bit of a door-stop. Sherpas will be provided to purchasers to help them carry it home. Faber is promoting it as the ‘global music’ equivalent of Alex Ross’s The Rest is Noise, which I take as a great compliment. Mine may be slightly longer, but I’ve done my best to make it a non-academic page-turner, full of anecdote and personalities and backstories. Did you know, for example, that promoter Bill Graham was a champion mambo dancer? That Charles Dickens wrote a scathing review of a Zulu choir’s performance in London in 1853? That Frank Sinatra owed his career to a tango singer from Buenos Aires? That Desi Arnaz’s father banned his son’s future meal-ticket, the conga drum, when he was mayor of Santiago de Cuba? That the Soviets hated Bulgarian women’s choirs? That George Harrison fell for Indian music while lying in ZsaZsa Gabor’s bathtub?
I’m about to embark on the process of reciting it into a microphone for the audio book, so when the time comes, you’ll be able to either read it on the page or listen to my dulcet tones through your headphones. Or both! I also plan to assemble playlists on YouTube, Spotify and Apple so readers will be able to experience the music as they read or listen.
In recent years, some of you have kindly invited me to festivals and readings and I’ve turned you down in order to focus on finishing the book. Now that I’m done, my date-book is open and I’m available. Just shoot me an email.
Now that I’ve climbed down from the garret, I hope to see many of your smiling faces in the coming year as I travel the world plugging the book. Be sure to say hello!
Back in the forgotten mists of time, I used to send out regular newsletters… some of you older folk may remember them… But since I’ve put on the blinkers and have caught a whiff of the stables, I’m racing to the finishing line of my book and haven’t got time for such frivolities.
I was startled out of that single-minded pursuit the other day when my wife, Andrea Goertler, summoned me to the kitchen. ‘You have to listen to this’, she said. It was Cerys Matthews on BBC 6Music Radio and she was giving me a shout-out for my birthday. I have, I confess (or possibly brag, depending on the mood) just turned 80.
What I thought was a nice radio moment turned into an extraordinary experience, with my musical life flashing before my ears. Cerys proceeded to play Boyd-related track after Boyd-related track for the next 3 hours, interspersed with some nice messages from friends and colleagues – Mike Heron, Maria Muldaur, Robyn Hitchcock among them – all organized by Andrea, Cerys and her producers behind my back. What a remarkable surprise present!
Here’s a link to the show – it will expire in two weeks, on Sept 5.
Health/endurance warning: it’s 3 hours long and it’s not all Boyd all the time, there’s other great stuff as well. And for those of you who haven’t experienced the unique brilliance of Radio Cerys, it’s a good introduction.
More radio: I’ll be at the ‘Aretha Franklin Proms’ this evening (Monday Aug 22) at the Albert Hall and discussing her career during the interval. It’s broadcast live on Radio 3. I think this link should work, even outside the UK.
George Wein: October 3, 1925 to September 13, 2021
On a cold January day in 1964, I walked into George Wein’s office on Central Park West. He was looking for a tour manager for the Blues and Gospel Caravan featuring Muddy Waters, Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Rev Gary Davis that was booked for a UK tour that April. I was about to complete my undergraduate credits at Harvard and was itching to go to Europe where people seemed to appreciate the music I loved far more than in America. When I asked Boston promoter Manny Greenhill if he had any suggestions about what I could do over there to earn some money, he made a phone call, then told me to be at Wein’s office in New York the next morning.
George listened to me talk about blues for perhaps fifteen minutes, then motioned to a desk with a telephone and told me to get started finding a bass player for the tour. That moment was the beginning of my life in the music business; he made a quick decision, handed me responsibility for the tour and let me get on with it. George repeated that process again and again; an astonishing number of America’s best promoters, presenters and festival programmers have learned their trade working for him or with him. His influence goes far beyond the graduates of the George Wein school of concert promotion; Coachella, Glastonbury, Hardly-Strictly Bluegrass, WOMAD, Bonnaroo, before COVID hit us, music festivals seemed close to becoming the defining events in our musical culture. George invented the form.
The year and half I spent working for George on tours and at Newport was one of the most intense and enjoyable periods of my life. I talked about those adventures on a recent radio show; it’s more fun to hear those stories with a great musical soundtrack, so I won’t repeat them here, but you can click on this link to Johnny Fewings’ Jazz Blues and Beyond and have a listen.
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George Wein was a doctor’s son from Newton, Massachusetts who started taking piano lessons at 8; by the time he reached high-school in the late 1930s, he was jazz crazy. After military service in WW2, he attended Boston University, then started a jazz club called Storyville in nearby Kenmore Square. One of the regulars was Elaine Lorillard, a tobacco heiress with a mansion in Newport, Rhode Island; a casual conversation one night at the club led to her backing the Jazz Festival there in 1954.
The Newport Festivals had a huge effect on the music of 1950s America, showing, for one thing, that there was a far broader audience for jazz than anyone had previously imagined. George was criticized sometimes for his mainstream tastes, but during those staid years, Ray Charles, Muddy Waters, Mahalia Jackson, Chuck Berry and Pete Seeger all appeared at Newport alongside the greatest jazz artists of the era. Charles’s set is immortalized on the great ‘Ray Charles at Newport’ lp and Mahalia’s is the centrepiece of the film ‘Jazz on a Summer’s Day’. (Stream them both if you haven’t already!) Newport had a powerful influence in the jazz world; Miles Davis got his deal with Columbia Records after a storming set at the 1955 event and the following year Duke Ellington emerged from his decade-long decline with an extraordinary performance of ‘Diminuendo and Crescendo’ in which saxophonist Paul Gonzalvez took a 27-chorus solo as the crowd roared him on. (Hear it on YouTube.) One can probably identify the Gonzalvez moment and Ray Charles’ set as key hinges that helped jazz turn funkier and more blues-inflected following the death of Charlie Parker in 1955.
Wein was balding and round and looked (and sometimes talked) as if he should be smoking a cynical, tough-guy cigar. But not only was he a sweet and open-hearted man, but for his entire life he remained supportive of music that he may not have always enjoyed and which may not have commanded a large following, but which he believed should be heard. When folk music surged in the late ‘50s, he added a folk festival to the Newport summer but soon realized the folk world was politically complicated and he wasn’t the one to create a great festival single-handed. Following a 3-year hiatus, the Newport Folk Festival returned as a non-profit event, run by Pete Seeger’s committee. George’s company provided the infrastructure, but the profits went to a foundation that supported traditional music, while creative decisions were in the hands of Seeger’s board. I attended the 1963 event and seeing Mississippi John Hurt and Doc Watson for the first time with the fog rolling in off Narragansett Bay remains an indelible memory. To say that the Folk Festival had an even greater effect on popular culture in the ‘60s than the Jazz Festival had in the ‘50s would be an understatement. (Events at the notorious ’65 festival, where I was production manager, are addressed in the radio show…)
In the early ‘70s, as changing conditions (in both the American cultural landscape and in ever-more-touristy Newport) were making it impossible for the Folk Festival to continue, George turned his attention to New Orleans. The background to the Jazz and Heritage Fair (now, as you know, an immense annual event) is instructive about George. He was approached in the early ‘60s by the mayor, who wanted to bring a jazz festival to the city. When it became clear that such an event could not be fully integrated – onstage, backstage and in the audience – George walked away and turned down repeated efforts by the city fathers to engage with him. When, in 1968, New Orleans finally felt ready to have a racially mixed event, George agreed, only to have the deal cancelled when the city discovered that Joyce, George’s wife (and invaluable cohort), was African-American. They went ahead with another promoter and for two years had money-losing, unimpressive festivals.
These failures drove the city back once again to George in 1971, with no caveats this time, and giving him full control. (Culture seemed to shift a lot faster then than it does now…) George took the Folk Foundation approach, forming a non-profit organization with local presenters Quint Davis and Alison Miner and blurring the boundaries between jazz, r&b, cajun and the unique cultural traditions of New Orleans. In the most recent pre-Covid Festival, half a million people attended over two April weekends. An endless list of great artists, obscure and famous, from James Booker to Wynton Marsalis to Aretha Franklin and the Rolling Stones have played the festival, while the Foundation continues to support cultural initiatives across the region including the great local radio station, WWOZ (which you can get online). The New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Fair is one of the great commercial and philosophical success stories of American culture.
Over the years, George launched many festivals around the world in collaboration with local promoters. Many artists came to rely on him to fill their dwindling datebooks during jazz’s lean years. Though he loved doing the occasional turn at the keyboard as part of a band, his comfort zone was behind the scenes, doing what he loved – producing. There has never been anyone better.
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My favourite personal memory is from Paris, in August, 1964. I had stayed on in London after the ‘Blues and Gospel Caravan’ that spring and was broke and eager to go back on the payroll, helping George get ready for the autumn ‘Newport in Europe’ tour. I crossed the channel by motorcycle and ferry while George arrived straight from a gastronomic trip up the Rhône. On the agenda that first day was lunch at Fouquet’s on the Champs Elysees with the editor of Jazz Hot magazine and George insisted I come along. As I ordered ‘bifsteak bien cuit avec pommes frites’, I noticed a frown out of the corner of my eye. When the lunch was over and we were walking back to the hotel, he put an avuncular arm on my shoulder and said, gruffly, ‘listen, kid, if you’re going to work for me, you gotta learn how to eat!’ Over the next three evenings, he took me to some of the best restaurants in Paris, ordering instructive and delicious courses and wine. I never ate a well-done steak again.
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Phil Schaap: April 8, 1951 – September 7, 2021
Jazz lost another great champion this autumn. Whenever I spent time in New York in recent years, I made a point of eating breakfast to the sound of Phil Schaap’s Bird Flight on WKCR-FM. For those who never experienced this unique show, it may be difficult to convince you how compelling it was. The episodes consisted of Charlie Parker’s full discography (including out-takes) in chronological order, with Schaap’s vivid, thorough and ever-changing introductions. When he got to the end, which usually took about ten months, he’d start again at the beginning. On weekends, he celebrated jazz birthdays with marathons devoted to individual discographies (in chronological order, of course). This makes him sound like the ultimate ‘trainspotter’ (if you’re British) or ‘music nerd’ (American), but he was so much more than that. His passion, enthusiasm and deep knowledge allowed him to spin fascinating tales, to evoke long-past times and cultural twists and turns that have disappeared beneath the waves of history. I remember being entranced one morning by his introduction to a mid-February Parker session from, I think, 1946 or thereabouts. Schaap veered into a 10-minute monologue about Lincoln’s Birthday (Feb 12) and how it was celebrated in Harlem during those years with all-night parties, school assemblies, speeches and parades, an urban culture galvanized to celebrate Emancipation in a way that has completely disappeared.
Schaap was a connoisseur of shellac and vinyl, pointing out how vivid the original 78s sound compared to a reissue LP or – horror of horrors! – a cd or digital download. Schaap toiled in the shadows for years, but his gifts became more recognized in the new century. He taught jazz at Columbia and Julliard and gave adult education courses at Lincoln Center. If you want to experience the man’s unique brilliance, dip into the archives at: http://www.philschaapjazz.com/index.php?l=page_view&p=radio
Though jazz was at the centre of my youthful listening (and still is) I never got to work much in the field after leaving George. It seems to be surviving pretty well into the 21st century. I hope today’s virtuosi and their champions spare a thought for those who helped ensure its continuity and its future – George Wein and Phil Schaap.
As ever
Joe
PS – My friend Johnny Fewings host of the radio show linked above, is worth a newsletter all on his own; he was the man behind Virgin Megastores and has guided many of your favourite music documentaries from vague idea to the big screen. And before the lockdown, in his spare time from doing million-dollar movie deals, he and his wife Anna built up a wonderful acoustic concert series in their home town of Whitstable. George would approve.
As we stagger into 2021, I can suggest a couple of comforting musical crumbs.
For those of you in the UK, BBC2 is screening Aretha Franklin’s Amazing Grace this coming Saturday, January 2 at 2030 (https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000qzvh). For Brits, this is, of course, free. For everyone else, the film is available on various digital platforms for a small charge. I wrote a newsletter last year about my walk-on part in getting this extraordinary performance filmed and released; your memory can be refreshed here: http://www.joeboyd.co.uk/amazing-grace.
There are no geographical restrictions on a new release from the Dust-to-Digital label. I have collected a number of their great box-set reissues over the years, enjoyed the rare and wonderful clips they send out regularly on Instagram and recently became e-friendly with the label’s proprietors, Lance and April Ledbetter. Hearing about the subject of my (as-yet-untitled) book, they kindly sent me a wonderful 100-track global compilation called Excavated Shellac, assembled by their colleague, and collector extraordinaire, Jonathan Ward: https://dust-digital.com/shop/excavated-shellac. I reciprocated with a review/essay which they have posted on their blog and which I am herein sharing with you.
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78 rpm records conjure up a scratchy, lo-fi image for many, something for scholars and archivists to study, rather than for listeners to enjoy. Not for me; from the age of 12, 78s represented a romantic connection to the past, and besides, they sounded great! I first heard them on players designed for the purpose, with heavy tone-arms and graphite styli that sank deep into the grooves, delivering a vivid, punchy sound even as they wore out the disc. My brother Warwick once had a Wurlitzer 78rpm jukebox that produced audio as powerfully satisfying as anything today’s digital technology can manage.
A century ago, shellac 78s acted as both mirror and telescope, magically bestowing a glamorous modern iteration of different peoples’ own musical cultures while opening a window onto sounds from thousands of miles away. New discs often drew crowds, like the amazed gathering at a Harlem barbershop that listened over and over to Louis Armstrong’s scat singing on ‘Heebie Jeebies’ the day it was released in 1926, a scene echoed in 1940s Leopoldville when the first Afro-Cuban 78s arrived and people recognized their own Kongo rhythms transformed by time, distance and genius. Other styles from across the globe fascinated listeners: Hawaiian slide guitars on Jimmie Rodgers records, tango rhythms from Buenos Aires, Arabic singers from Cairo and Baghdad, Jewish and gypsy violinists from Eastern Europe. The allure of such sounds subtly (and not-so-subtly) re-set musical compasses across the globe.
Jonathan Ward and his Excavated Shellac project, in collaboration with Dust-to-Digital, have produced a collection by that name that transports us to every continent during the formative years of recorded music, before science got the upper hand, when music and technology could still meet on equal terms. Arguments have been made that field recordings by ethnomusicologists are somehow truer, more authentic, than commercial discs. I disagree; I always found music on commercial 78s had a different intensity than that recorded by academics. Perhaps the lure of fame and wealth, or at least recognition, brings out the best in a musician. Plus, as Excavated Shellac’s accompanying booklet demonstrates, they had far more beautiful labels.
The set’s running order isn’t academic at all. Is it disorienting to listen to a track from Kenya followed by one from Japan, then Colombia, then Norway? For me, this allows each to stand out and be considered on its own, to keep the attention from wandering. And the stories! Extraordinarily detailed research plus exquisite photos and reproductions make each track an adventure.
Like all Dust-to-Digital releases, it is impeccably mastered and produced. That such great work originates with Lance and April Ledbetter in Atlanta, Georgia constitutes poetic justice for me. A Boyd family trauma was suffered when my brother and I were in our early teens. While visiting an Atlanta-based cousin, we mentioned that we were interested in collecting blues and jazz 78s and he told us about a Salvation Army collection drive he had helped organize; among many other things, it had produced stacks and stacks of 78s donated from the African-American part of town. We rushed straight over to the SA’s huge downtown store only to find that the 78s had all been sold. Imagining we might have been beaten to the punch by one of those legendary blues collectors who loomed large in our teenage imaginations, we asked the manager who bought them. He told us the entire lot was sold to a man with a county-fair concession, one of those stalls where you got a prize for how many records you can break by throwing a baseball. Thankfully, Jonathan Ward and the other passionate and diligent collectors mentioned in the credits weren’t as easily deflated as we were; Excavated Shellac goes a long way towards assuaging a 60-year old wound.
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For further audio-visual stimulation and satisfaction, we can highly recommend The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend A Broken Heart, A Great Day In Harlem, a documentary about the famous photograph of New York’s jazz community and Lovers Rock, the musical segment of Steve McQueen’s wonderful Small Axe series of films set in Afro-Caribbean London. If you want an entertaining peek into the world of the obsessive 78 collector, you can’t do better than to rent Ghost World with Steve Buscemi and Scarlett Johansson.
Wishing everyone a New Year that brings good health, better politics and live gigs!
