If there is anyone who knows music, it’s Joe Boyd. With a career spanning 60-plus years, Boyd is an indisputable legend; he’s has been there, done that, and seen it all. A Harvard grad, Boyd got his start in the music industry tour managing Muddy Waters, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Sonny Rollins, and Stan Getz, and others before going on to organize folk and jazz fests. Eventually, pairing with John “Hoppy” Hopkins, he opened what came to be the epitome of London’s psychedelic scene — the UFO club — while working at the Elektra Records’ UK office.
Fast forward to 1979, when Boyd opened his own label, Hannibal Records, welcoming the likes of Nick Drake, R.E.M., Toots and the Maytals, Richard Thompson, Pink Floyd, and hundreds more, becoming the mastermind behind many of the big hits we all know and love today. While heavily hitting the main markets, Boyd never lost focus on his primary goal — to bring more world music to the ears of Western audiences.
His resume alone is enough to write a brilliant music book… Which he did.
Collecting his early career experiences into a 2007 memoir entitled White Bicycles: Making Music In The 1960s, Boyd has already topped the bestseller list with loads of critical acclaim. Sir Elton John himself has publicly accredited the book as his favorite on the industry of all time! And, boy, was the 1960s a pivotal time for music… The decade housed the collision of American jazz, southern blues, and Elvis-style rock-and-roll (aka, more blues, just done by white people) with the budding Brit rock and folk scene. What a time!
But how did this auditory amalgamation come into play? What were all the precursors that led up to such an industry radicalization? Boyd has searched for the answer ever since his White Bicycles hit the shelves, digging through historical records and deriving the source of several oral histories in order to pinpoint the exact genesis of each and every modern musical influence. And, like before, he just so happened to do it.
After 15 years of extensive research, Boyd is set to release his findings — And The Roots Of Rhythm Remain: A Journey Through Global Music — via ZE Books on September 24th. Loaded with sociopolitical commentary (and a fair amount of deserving jabs at white people), Boyd analyzes the genealogy (and colonization) of global sound. The journey starts in South Africa with the evolution of Mbube, traveling westward to son on the street-corners of Cuba, before hopping islands to Jamaica to talk about the Catch A Fire movement… and that’s just the first three chapters in this goliath of a book.
But none of these historical accounts are that simple.
Mbube (and other styles of ngom’ebusuku, or “night music”) was an artistic expression against apartheid persecution. In fact, music has woven in and out of South Africa’s historical fabric since the turn of the 20th Century. It was the dividing line between tribes; it was heard throughout the decrepit ghettos that blacks were assigned to. Music played a part the creation of the ANC political party, the jailing (and eventual release) of Nelson Mandela… even the eventual flack Paul Simon got for his 1986 Graceland, when he found it fitting to introduce the western world to (and profit off of) mbaqanga grooves. But it was Simon’s release that made Boyd — among others in the Western world — realize that key African players laddering up to this “new” sound were mostly likely lost in time. After diving deep into archives, Boyd has found few recordings in existence — and you can be sure any modern-day samples of which aren’t sending out royalty checks.
The pattern of persecution guiding pop music continues in Boyd’s account of Cuba or, as he put it, the reconnecting of North America’s musical culture to African rhythms “through the back door opened by the jokers in this deck of musical cards — the French.” Haitian slaves were a dime a dozen when the tobacco plants went up, with more slaves being shipped in from Africa all the time. Without getting too into the details (read the book!!), this leads to yet another predicament where whites felt threatened by people of color who offered rhythms beyond their conservative capacities and dancing styles outside of what they deemed socially “proper”.
Although a whopping 744 pages of global atrocities aired for the sake of musical antiquity, Boyd phrases his findings in such a whimsical way that it comes off as entertaining — even if your ancestors were the merciless, megalomaniac white ones. Boyd’s new book not only locates the epicenters of rhythms, but goes a step further in spelling out the colloquialisms in many foreign languages to understand each in context.
It’s truly impressive the extent of knowledge that Boyd shares.
Culturally significant and historically accurate, And The Roots Of Rhythm Remains stands as a testament to the fallen soldiers who ultimately birthed New Orleans jazz, New York hip hop, the greatest band out of Liverpool, and numerous other off-shoots of today’s music genres.
With the book release on the way, Boyd is currently in the midst of a national book tour, wrapping up in Austin on October 8th. David Byrne (of Talking Heads) even showed his support for this colossal release last week by teaming with Boyd for a lecture in New York City! There’s still several cities to go, so for information to reserve a spot or to get your copy in-person, see details below. And make sure to pre-order your copy of And The Roots Of Rhythm Remain: A Journey Through Global Music today!
Remaining US book tour:
- September 16 – Chicago, IL – Old Town School of Folk Music
- September 19 – Murfreesboro, TN – University of Middle Tennessee | Not open to the public
- September 20 – Nashville, TN – Americanafest (in conversation with Buddy Miller)
- September 22 – Tulsa, OK – Bob Dylan Center
- September 24 – Santa Fe, NM – Collected Works
- September 25 – Albuquerque, NM – Bookworks
- September 30 – San Francisco, CA – Book Passage, Corte Madera Store (in conversation with Jerry Harrison)
- September 30 – Berkeley, CA – Mrs. Dalloway’s
- October 3 – Los Angeles, CA – Book Soup
- October 6 – Houston, TX – Contemporary Arts Museum
- October 8 – San Marcos, TX – Center for Texas Music History, Texas State University (in conversation with Joe Nick Patoski)
- October 8 – Austin, TX – Waterloo Records
‘And The Roots Of Rhythm Remain’ playlist:
Cover photo by Andrea Goertler
Share this article
or
Get music updates in your inbox