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Producer Joe Boyd On The Interlocking Rhythms Of The World

Andrea Goertler

“I grew up surrounded by music and maps,” says Joe Boyd when asked about the origins of his lifelong commitment to sounds and grooves from “over the horizon,” as documented in his new book The Roots Of Rhythm Remain. As a kid growing up in Princeton, NJ, “I loved airline guides and plotting imaginary trips. You know, okay, we're going to fly to Vladivostok, and then from there, we're going to Valparaiso. And I would figure out how you would do that.”

Meanwhile his family exposed him to sounds from all over - Carmen Miranda from Brazil, Edith Piaf from France, Marlene Dietrich from Germany - and he started building a musical mind that would carry him to those faraway places he’d dreamed of. “I don't really like a particular genre so much as I like certain artists, no matter where they're from,” Boyd says in Episode 302 of The String. “And I think because I spent so much time listening to different records and going deep into music of all kinds, you know, I don't get put off by unusual scales or strange sounds. I'm intrigued by them.”

So who is Joe Boyd? I had to figure that out myself when the offer of an interview came to my inbox. Sounds familiar, I thought, but I had no idea. Turns out he’s one of the most accomplished and eclectic record producers in the story of popular music. As an American living in London, he helped break psychedelic folk rock pioneers The Incredible String Band and worked with Pink Floyd, Nick Drake, and Fairport Convention. He founded Hannibal Records, giving a home to the solo career of Richard Thompson, and the show starts with the title track from one of my favorite albums of all time, 1982’s Shoot Out The Lights.

In the same era, Boyd produced R.E.M.’s Fables of the Reconstruction and 10,000 Maniacs’ The Wishing Chair. In 1974, he also oversaw a special one-off progressive bluegrass project called Muleskinner with Peter Rowan, David Grisman and Clarence White. And the catalog stretches forward and backward and around the world with artists as diverse as Kate and Anna McGarrigle, Toumani Diabate (the late great Malian kora player), jazz orchestra Cubanismo, Geoff and Maria Muldauer, and many more. He was, moreover, part of the small cadre of music marketers and labels that created the market category of World Music in the 1980s.

Boyd’s also an acclaimed journalist and author, with his memoir - White Bicycle: Making Music In The 1960s - appearing in 2001. During his wide ranging world travels, he collected stories and studied historic context with the intensity and rigor of a scholar. He traced origins and influences and hybridizations, and it’s all come together in the jam-packed book And The Roots of Rhythm Remain: A Journey Through Global Music. It starts with a deep dive into the many stories behind Paul Simon’s legendary Graceland album, a case study in how tradition, conflict, religion, and politics shape musical expression and collaboration.

The book, says its publisher blurb, “shows how personalities, events and politics in Havana, Lagos, Buenos Aires, Soweto, Rio and Seville are as colorful and fascinating as anything that took place in Storyville, Harlem, Laurel Canyon or Liverpool. And, moreover, how jazz, R&B, and rock ‘n’ roll would never have happened if it wasn’t for sounds emanating from over the horizon and below the equator.”

“One of the things that the book revealed to me, and I hope I reveal to readers, is how this idea of connectedness between cultures, cultures being influenced by one another, was not invented in 1985 by a bunch of British independent label owners meeting in a pub,” Boyd tells us, referencing the World Music meetings. “It goes back to the dawn of time. There is no pure music. All music is mongrel. All music floods across borders, leaks, is influenced, and the speed of that ramped up fantastically starting in the late 20s with electrical recording.”

One interesting note about this conversation is that it’s a bit more like a seminar, and I’m good with that. I talk a lot less than usual. Boyd told stories and I didn’t feel the need to intervene much. It was an honor to sit down with him, and I hope you get as much out of this encounter as I did.

Craig Havighurst is WMOT's editorial director and host of <i>The String, a weekly interview show airing Mondays at 8 pm, repeating Sundays at 7 am. He also co-hosts The Old Fashioned on Saturdays at 9 am and Tuesdays at 8 pm. Threads and Instagram: @chavighurst. Email: craig@wmot.org</i>