And the Roots of Rhythm Remain: A Journey Through Global Music by Joe Boyd

from Heavenly Recordings

Book/Magazine

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And the Roots of Rhythm Remain: A Journey Through Global Music by Joe Boyd

Includes book plate signed by Joe Boyd

Published: 4 July, 2024
Hardback. 352 pages

The definitive study of global music that does for the genre what Alex Ross' The Rest is Noise did for 20th century classical music.

Joe Boyd was part of a small group of label heads and journalists who chose ‘world music’ as their marketing slogan in the 1980s. They had little idea how fast and how wide those simple words would spread, the controversy it would cause, and only the vaguest idea of how far back the history went.

Following the international success of his memoir White Bicycles, Boyd set out to explore the stories behind the music he had helped to populariee. His experiences as a producer working in Cuba, Brazil, Bulgaria, Mali, Hungary, Spain and India had given him the skeleton of an idea, though the subject is far broader. Over the past decade he has interviewed musicians, producers and academics, travelled the globe and spent years reading, listening and writing.
The resulting book, And the Roots of the Rhythm Remain, is like no other. It shows how personalities, events and politics in Havana, Lagos, Buenos Aires, Soweto, Rio and Seville are as colourful 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.

Joe says:
"And the Roots of Rhythm Remain: a journey
through global music will be published on July 4 in the UK by Faber and on Sept 3 in the US
by Ze Books.

It’s a bit of a door-stop. Sherpas will be provided to purchasers to help them carry it home.
Faber is promoting it as the ‘global music’ equivalent of Alex Ross’s The Rest is
Noise, which I take as a great compliment. Mine may be slightly longer, but I’ve done my
best to make it a non-academic page-turner, full of anecdote and personalities and
backstories. Did you know, for example, that promoter Bill Graham was a champion mambo
dancer? That Charles Dickens wrote a scathing review of a Zulu choir’s performance in
London in 1853? That Frank Sinatra owed his career to a tango singer from Buenos Aires?
That Desi Arnaz’s father banned his son’s future meal-ticket, the conga drum, when he was
mayor of Santiago de Cuba? That the Soviets hated Bulgarian women’s choirs? That George
Harrison fell for Indian music while lying in ZsaZsa Gabor’s bathtub?"

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Joe Boyd is the legendary producer of Pink Floyd, Nick Drake, Sandy Denny, John Martyn, R.E.M. and numerous others. He also ran the world music record label Hannibal for twenty years. His memoir White Bicyles sold over 70,000 copies worldwide and been translated into seven languages. He appears frequently on radio, television and in the broadsheets talking and writing about music. His podcast, Joe Boyd's A-Z has been listened to over 100,000 times.