Few can claim a lifelong pedigree in the world of music that compares with Joe Boyd.
As a young American living in 60s London, he brought many legendary blues artists over to play in the UK, before becoming a producer and record label boss key to the careers of Pink Floyd, Nick Drake, Fairport Convention and more. He later diversified into the film business, right through from Deliverance (1972) to the Aretha Franklin concert movie Amazing Grace (2018) – plus, his 80s-era record label Hannibal was crucial in popularising what’s become known as ‘world’ music.
You might reasonably expect Boyd‘s massive new tome, just shy of 1,000 pages long, to be him telling his own story. In fact, he’s already done that, or at least the 60s part, in 2006’s fine White Bicycles (a straight follow-up volume didn’t appeal to him because, he says, he “didn’t have much fun” during the 70s). Nearly 20 years later, then, he’s launching And the Roots of Rhythm Remain: A Journey Through Global Music – as the title suggests, an odyssey through the kind of music that fired his Hannibal label.
Photo by Andy Murray
Ably chaired by DJ and broadcaster Deb Grant, this Manchester Literature Festival event at Central Library gives Boyd the opportunity to explain some of the whys and wherefores involved in the epic task of writing the book. He’s by no means a loud, overbearing speaker – indeed, there are a few requests for him to come closer to the mic – but in his own laid-back way Boyd has a great knack for telling a story, and evidently the book is full of them. With the occasional slide and music excerpt, he illustrates tales such as those of singer Mahmoud Ahmed and pianist/composer Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou, known to some as ‘The Honky Tonk Nun’. There’s also the strange, rather tragic saga of the Solomon Linda song Mbube, aka Wimoweh, aka The Lion Sleeps Tonight. If your knowledge of that goes no further than its appearance in The Lion King or Tight Fit’s hit 1982 version, you really don’t know the half of it.
Even over the hour or so of this event, certain issues recur and loom large. One is that many of the stories involved hinge on pure fluke. Repeatedly, almighty career breaks are shown to depend simply on the right record falling into the right hands at the right time. Another matter is that of cultural appropriation. By Boyd’s reckoning, Paul Simon’s Graceland project went some way to honouring the African musicians involved, whereas Malcolm McLaren’s Duck Rock album was more of a shifty musical smash and grab.
There’s also that ‘world music’ tag, often derided as patronising and reductive. Boyd takes the point, but argues that some kind of name was necessary to get the music into record shops, and that doing so brought acclaim and royalties to many hitherto little-known musicians, so it’s a necessary evil. It’s a minefield, of course, but Boyd’s level-headed wisdom on these issues – “there is no ‘pure’ music” he declares – is highly appealing.
In spending almost 20 years to write nearly 1,000 pages’ worth of book, Boyd has clearly not taken this project lightly, riddled as it is with thorny conundrums, and he is in no hurry to offer trite, over-simplified answers. He acknowledges that, to some, so-called ‘world’ music has been the preserve of the white middle classes, and a scan around the audience tonight suggests that’s still very much the case. Nevertheless, in person Boyd demonstrates that he can unpick and convey this whole labyrinthine tale, in the process turning his audience on to sounds unheard. At heart, then, he remains the passionate music fan he’s always been.
Main image by Cathy Bolton
Joe Boyd’s And the Roots of Rhythm Remain: A Journey Through Global Music is available from Faber & Faber in hardback, audiobook and ebook formats
