Feature photo by Siri Reynolds
Story by Siri Reynolds
Iconic music producer Joe Boyd gave a talk for MTSU’s Distinguished Lecture Series Thursday about his decades-spanning career and his new book, “And the Roots of Rhythm Remain: A Journey Through Global Music.”
Earlier in the day, Boyd spoke to Adam Caress’s Bob Dylan and the Spirit of Creativity class about his role as production manager at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. This was the notable performance where Bob Dylan “went electric.” The afternoon lecture was delivered to a very different crowd — a room full of professors and music devotees already familiar with Boyd’s body of work.
In addition to Dylan, Boyd has produced artists like R.E.M., Pink Floyd and Nick Drake, although this was not the topic of his discussion. Rather than his work in folk and rock music, “And the Roots of Rhythm Remain” remembers Boyd’s time founding and managing Hannibal Records, one of the first labels to use the term “world music” and release records in the genre. The scope of his book is broad, ranging from the music of Mali to Cuba to New Orleans — all of which, Boyd explained, are more similar than meets the eye.
MTSU history professor Mark Doyle gave Boyd a reverent introduction, also emphasizing the book’s wide range of topics.
“What [the book] is is a guided tour of the histories and cultures that generated sounds that we in America usually encounter only in their most commercial forms,” Doyle said. “It really is the work of a lifetime.”
Several difficulties interrupted the lecture: Boyd’s playlist glitched, causing a long pause and some confusion, and no books were available for purchase due to a manufacturing issue. Despite these problems, audience members remained captivated as Boyd described the way musicians everywhere imitate one another and grow through technical innovation.
After the technical issues were solved, Boyd punctuated the discussion with clips from Nigerian Afrobeat innovator Fela Kuti and American funk legend James Brown, demonstrating how rhythms permeate across different cultures. Enthralled audience members tapped their feet and nodded their heads, and Boyd occasionally danced along. At one point, after a long period of talking, he joked about how he’d gone “too long without music” and played a clip from Cuban musician Arsenio Rodriguez, which he accompanied with his own little shuffle.
A discussion of African music in the Americas isn’t complete without acknowledgment of how the influence arrived. Boyd emphasized the things people all share in music, but was also careful to talk about the importance of slavery in the worldwide spread of different instruments and rhythms. He discussed how African drum rhythms made their way to Brazil and how the banjo was introduced to the American South — and, later, how minstrelsy affected musical culture.
Despite these somber moments, the overall tone of the lecture was positive and hopeful about how music brings people together.
“I think the point I try to make in the book is how interconnected we all are,” Boyd said. “And how the music from the most unlikely places, in the most unlikely ways, shapes the music that we’re very familiar with.”
Siri Reynolds is a contributing writer for MTSU Sidelines.
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