Joe Boyd is, amongst other things, an archivist, musicologist and a celebrated producer of early Pink Floyd, Nick Drake, Sandy Denny, John Martyn, The Incredible String Band, Fairport Convention, REM and recently Hank Dogs. Often cited as a curator of British folk-rock, he also ran world music label Hannibal for 20 years; his memoir White Bicycles has sold over 70,000 copies worldwide and been translated into seven languages.
Boyd has spent a lifetime travelling the world, and witnessing the growing popularity of music from Africa, Latin America, India and Eastern Europe since the 1960s was instrumental in the development of what came to be termed world music in the 1980s. Now aged 82, but looking decades younger, we find him standing alone in front of a lectern in the Donald Gordon Theatre, reading extracts from his new book And The Roots Of Rhythm Remain (named after a Paul Simon Graceland lyric) and recounting a selection of fascinating stories drawn from his extensive journey in pursuit of eclectic music from around the world.
Over the past decade, Boyd has interviewed musicians, producers and academics, and spent years reading, listening and writing. His book is a weighty encyclopaedic tome – over 900 pages and bigger than the Bible, indeed it could be viewed as the definitive authority of world music. Through a series of personal accounts and stories which often bordered on self-opinionated, Boyd began his hour-long talk telling the audience about his research for the book and giving us what he called “core samples” – which, somewhat confusingly, involved both Dizzy Gillespie and a 1552 Islamophobic edict by the King Of Spain.
There followed an admission that he had discovered many other things along the way: why the Soviets hated Bulgarian women’s choirs, how Frank Sinatra owed his career to a French tango singer from Buenos Aires, and why Charles Dickens wrote an angry polemic against a Zulu choir that visited London in 1853. Both the South African people and, in relation to his Graceland project, Paul Simon were lauded by Boyd, who chronicled Simon’s tour and gave his views on the country’s political and musical history. (Zulu choirs, he notes, were a success in London in the 19th century, despite Charles Dickens.)
Boyd’s affection for the music of India is inescapable, particularly the influence of Ravi Shankar on Western artists such as the Beatles. Boyd recalled matter-of-factly how in 1965, after the fab four had appeared at Shea Stadium, they were staying at Zsa Zsa Gabor’s mansion. Picture, if you will, John Lennon and George Harrison in a bathtub, listening to David Crosby and Roger McGuinn extolling the virtues of Ravi Shankar…
Joe Boyd certainly has a gift for storytelling through his own personal involvement and experiences, and the many amusing and revealing anecdotes were extremely impressive from historical, educational and entertaining perspectives.
Llais: Joe Boyd, Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff Bay, Sat 12 Oct
words COLIN PALMER photos POLLY THOMAS
