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Tony Burke speaks to music producer JOE BOYD about his new book, and his career promoting world music
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And The Roots of Rhythm Remain – A Journey Through Global Music
Joe Boyd, Faber, £30
JOE BOYD’s music career began promoting blues music at Harvard University. He managed a British tour featuring Muddy Waters, Sister Rosetta Tharpe and others in 1964 and he was the sound engineer at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival when Dylan plugged in.
He was sent to Britain to establish Elektra Records’ office in London and started the underground UFO Club in 1966 and began producing records by Pink Floyd, Soft Machine, the Incredible String Band, Fairport Convention and later Toots & The Maytals and Billy Bragg as well as owning world music label Hannibal Records in the 1980s and writing a book about the ’60s music scene, White Bicycles, published in 2006.
In an interview for the Morning Star, he told me: “I started on Roots of Rhythm Remain after White Bicycles was published. Yes! Sixteen years ago! It took a while to get going. There are so many, deep, explorations of different musical cultures hiding in specialist and academic bookshelves. I’ve tried to bring some of the most interesting and important narratives from those wonderful experts into a broader readership — while giving full respect and credit to the pioneers.”
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