Music the Universal

 “Missing Music – voices from where the dirt roads end” by Ian Brennan, 2024

This book actually functions as a music travelogue pursuing how music transcends human boundaries as a universal of sorts. The dirt roads in question involve singers and players in many countries, usually in rural areas. They include Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Botswana, Bhutan, Comoros, Djibouti, Ghana, Kashmir, Namibia, Rwanda, Sao Tome, Suriname and Tuva (via Venice, Italy). Brennan is part of a group of musicologists who have done field recordings of unknown musicians. Alan and John Lomax are the most famous in the U.S., but Bela Bartok and the 'song-catcher' Olive Campbell come to mind too. Brennan visits Parchman Farm prison in Mississippi, recording prisoners doing gospel, a prison that once incarcerated Son House, Bukka White and Vernon Presley. This is much like John Lomax's visit to Angola Prison in Louisiana where he discovered Leadbelly. Is Brennan secretly hoping for the same?

Some of Brennan's finds made it to the WOMAD festival in the U.K. which he is not ashamed about. What is odd is that at the same time he disdains what he calls world music.  He doesn't like 'colonial pathways' that highlight some countries either.  He doesn't like Afrobeat or K-Pop too.  He looks down on music from 'the West' all together.  This while he is well-acquainted with it.  He's a drummer and has been a record producer / engineer for bands like Green Day, Fugazi, Merle Haggard, Tinariwen and John Waters. He condemns mediocrity as the “greatest cultural crime” (Really?) and puts down some of his work colleagues as unlikable without naming them. In the intro he denounces academic terms yet sees his work as 'intersectional.' If this all seems a bit sanctimonious, it colors the book.

Brennan describes the difficulties of recording in the field just using a mic and laptop, preferably outdoors. Humidity, no shows, ambient noise, interruptions, wind, out of tune instruments, women not allowed to sing, rare languages, commercialism and rain are some of the issues. He notes how much of the music has a mournful quality, much like Delta blues, especially in Bhutan. In Bangladesh among the Rohingya it was either songs about genocide or love. In Kashmir the occupation was obvious and here he finally admits there is a difference between talented amateurs and solid musicians. In Rwanda the genocide there still reverberates in the languages spoken. He makes pitches for improvisation, music therapy and the excellence of vocal harmonies. Some songs he records are very long and improvised or done a capella. He considers what he is doing an event and sometimes uses live looping of voices or instruments. His group pays the musicians, even though many don't live in a cash economy.

Brennan explains that in the countries he visited migration from one country to the other or within countries is central.  This mixes populations, languages and sounds, burying some, promoting others. Rural musicians have provided the roots of many of the most important music styles according to him. Yet he notes how difficult it is for these musicians to visit countries like Britain or the U.S. for a festival, as they are frequently turned down for a visa. Brennan has sent 22 artists to festivals outside their home countries and that was the repeated experience. High costs, massive paper-work, time difficulties and bureaucratic nightmares awaited these players and sometimes they were barred from entering by U.K authorities, as they were an illegal risk. Some of them could be global music hits if given the chance, but all return to poverty and obscurity.

Brennan could hear 'western' music all over these countries, as taxi drivers, radio stations, discos and youth play rock, pop, rap, techno and Christian hymns.  Some of the musicians played a Chuck Berry tune without knowing where it came from. The African station in Sao Tome played Brazilian music as it was a former Portuguese colony too. The cultural impact of colonialism and imperialism was clear, as local music had taken a back seat. Some rural African players had never heard of Nigerian Fela Kuti so it went both ways, as isolation is a two-edged sword.

Brennan ends with an attack on the corporate control, limitations and vanilla excesses of popular digital music and its visual counterparts. As part of this he oddly accuses all 'white' people of being oppressors, evidently including him and that homeless or poverty-stricken 'white' guy on the streets of San Francisco. Brennan is not a source of political astuteness, but perhaps a source of an unlimited supply of white guilt. Nevertheless his trips have taught him about deep poverty and capitalist functioning. This spurred his travel into the heart of poor, mostly rural regions and the music that will not die. It is evidently his way of countering the computerized commercial slop of contemporary pop and the oddly continuing impact of classic rock. The latter is, by the way, a frequent soundtrack in his adopted homeland of Italy.

At the end Brennan comes across as that haughty record store clerk who thought your taste in music was shite, not the modest, unassuming lover of music. One of his quotes is “pop stars … unable to play the guitar, they break it ...” Yeah, Hendrix, Townsend and others. After all Brennan's the edgy guy whose been on 60 Minutes, the BBC, NPR, PBS and in the NYT. Too bad.

Prior blog reviews on this subject, us blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 17 year archive, using these terms: “In Search of the Blues,” “Cool Town,” Kids”(Patti Smith); “Zappa,” “Laurel Canyon,” “Grateful Dead,” “Mississippi Delta,” “Life”(Keith Richards); “Janis Joplin,” “We Have Fed You All a Thousand Years,” "33 Revolutions Per Minute," "Searching for Sugarman," "Marie and Rosetta,” “The Blues – A Visual History,” “How the Beatles Rocked the Kremlin,” “Echo in the Canyon,” “The Music Sell-Outs,” “Palmer’s Bar,” “Treme,” “Subculture,” “The Long Strange Trip,” “The Playlist,” “Cool Town,” “Really the Blues” (Mezzrow),”Music is Power.”

And I bought it at May Day Books!

The Kultur Kommissar / August 10, 2024