Some uncomfortable truths about World Music

Joe Boyd’s masterly history of what some of us still defiantly call World Music – more on which later – takes its title from Paul Simon’s ‘Under African Skies’, but is really less about the roots of rhythm than its routes. A typical chapter will start with a song from a particular geography, then wind the clock back to the country’s history, then forward again to show how that history has contributed to the development of its music, and finally move outwards, following the trade winds as they carry the sounds around the world.

Thus we open with Malcolm McLaren recording in Soweto; jump to Paul Simon’s more successful sojourn there; wind back to the Zulu incursions of the 19th century, through the Gold Rush and apartheid and musical censorship; alight on Solomon Linda’s ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’; thrill to the rise of Mbaqanga, the powered-up Zulu jive that combines call-and-response vocals with basslines that have the guttural shudder of house renovation; then follow the golden generation of South African jazz musicians out into exile and premature death.

Later chapters perform the same trick with Jamaica, Cuba, Brazil, and with Argentinean tango – where Carlos Gardel urges a young Frank Sinatra to turn from crime to music. A mysterious tape from Bulgaria sets up a wide-ranging discussion of the music of eastern Europe. A concert by Ravi Shankar begins a chapter that encompasses the music of the subcontinent and the influence of the Roma. Having started in Africa, the book ends by covering most of the rest of the continent, including Senegal, Mali, Ethiopia, both Congos and Zimbabwe.

Because it follows the migrations of music and its makers, this is also inevitably a book about empires: the British in South Africa, Jamaica and India; the French, Belgians and Italians in Africa; the Russians in eastern Europe; and in South America the Spanish and Portuguese and indeed the United States.