From the legendary producer of Pink Floyd, Nick Drake, REM, and Taj Mahal and author of White Bicycles: Making Music in the 1960s comes a riveting, world-spanning tour of the artists, histories, controversies, and collaborations that shaped global music.
When Paul Simon first heard the Zulu accordion flourish that would open his multi-platinum album Graceland, he told Joe Boyd that it seemed to proclaim, “You haven’t heard this before!” Yet the “world music” boom of the 1980s that Simon’s album helped to usher in had roots that extended back through the decades and across continents: tango on the eve of World War I, Latin dance across the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s, reggae in the ’70s, pre-War samba and pre-Beatles bossa nova, Eastern European ensembles filling capitalist concert halls during the Cold War, Indian ragas changing rock and roll in the 1960s, gypsy music inspiring classical composers of the 19th and 20th centuries. As far back as 1853, the music that had intrigued Simon had captivated London during a Zulu choir’s extended run there. (Only Charles Dickens dissented.) Like that of other far-flung musical traditions sweeping the globe, the story of Zulu music and its relationship to neighbors, invaders, appropriators, and admirers—from brutal 19th century massacres to “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”—is more controversial, colorful, and complex than many imagine.
Joe Boyd was part of a small group of label heads and journalists who chose “world music” as their marketing slogan in the 1980s. Already the legendary producer of artists including Pink Floyd, The Incredible String Band, Soft Machine, Fairport Convention, Nick Drake, Toots and the Maytals, and many others, Boyd had little idea how fast and how wide those simple words would spread, or how far back the history went. He would soon learn, producing pathbreaking music in Cuba, Brazil, Bulgaria, Mali, Hungary, Spain, and India under his label Hannibal Records.
Following the success of his book White Bicycles: Making Music in the 1960s, a self-published smash hit, Boyd now sets out to explore the stories behind the world music he had helped to popularize. He has traveled across continents and interviewed dozens of musicians, producers, and academics, and spent years reading, listening, and writing. The one-of-a-kind result is And the Roots of Rhythm Remain: a riveting, symphonic, globetrotting tour of the music that shapes our world.
Über den Autor
Joe Boyd is a record producer and writer known for his memoir, White Bicycles: Making Music in the 1960s. Artists he has produced include Nick Drake, Pink Floyd, REM, Taj Mahal, Fairport Convention, Richard & Linda Thompson, Kate & Anna Mc Garrigle, Toots and the Maytals, Sandy Denny, 10, 000 Maniacs, and many others across a nearly sixty-year career. After graduating from Harvard in 1964, Boyd tour-managed Muddy Waters, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Sonny Rollins, Stan Getz and Astrud Gilberto, and then served as production manager for the historic 1965 Newport Folk and Jazz Festivals. He moved to London to open the UK office of Elektra Records and started the famous UFO Club, original home to Pink Floyd and Soft Machine and center of London’s psychedelic revolution. His production company, Witchseason, set the course for folk and folk-rock music in Britain. Boyd moved to Los Angeles in 1971 to work for Warner Brothers Films, supervising scores for Deliverance and A Clockwork Orange, and co-creating the documentary Jimi Hendrix. In 1979 he launched Hannibal Records, which led the way for bringing global artists to western audiences, including Cuban, Malian, Brazilian, Bulgarian, Hungarian, and Spanish artists. A gifted raconteur, he appears frequently on the BBC and other radio outlets. His music podcast, Joe Boyd’s A-Z has received over a quarter of a million visits.
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