BWZ  MUSIC EXTRA! by Barry Harrington
		World Music Reaches the Musicians One of the funniest moments I've ever experienced occurred when I was interviewing Jon Anderson. It was the summer solstice, and the metaphor was not lost on me: it was the longest, brightest, most sunny day of the year, and I was talking with the man who had named his rock band "Yes" because it is the most positive word in the English language. We were clearly on the same page with one another, trying to figure out exactly when world music, (or, as it was clumsily called in the 70s, "ethnic music" or "third-world music"), crossed over into the mainstream. First it became acceptable, and then its popularity exploded. Anderson was discussing the fact that he had just been in Carnival Trinidad and found the rhythms and expression of what we now call World Music to be much more exciting than straight-ahead rock (even though, with all its classical sources, Yes is anything but straight-ahead rock). He then said he returned to England where upon he, in 1976, dropped the idea of doing a dance album on Yes. Contents World Music Reaches the Musicians Interview with Jesse Reuben Wilson of ARC Music World Music We Recommend It was one of those funny moments that reveal what era you are from--in the 70's Yes was at the top of the charts, and I was a young listener. But musician or listener, we hated disco the way Pat Buchanan hates a burning cross that just won't stay lit. We (Anderson and I, not Pat Buchanan) laughed from the bottom of the belly. "I think the others had thought I had lost my reason for living," Anderson continued, and I imagined Squire, White, Wakeman and Howe hearing this pitch and thinking of Saturday Night Fever II. It's still a very funny image when you think of it, yet, sadly, it took Anderson another 20 years to produce his venture into world music with High Street Records' Deseo and The Deseo Remixes. Which all leads to a question: what is world music? Did it cross-pollinate over into rock, or did rock borrow from it? What companies are selling good world music right now? World music has, of course, between around since the first olden tribes of man sat around the fire pit and, using only hands and knees, drummed a killer version of "Wipeout". But mainstream world music finds its popular roots much later. Credit Peter Gabriel, circa 1980. In 1975, following The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway tour, a then 25 year-old Gabriel left not just Genesis but (so he thought) The Business. It still seems odd to the appreciative listener that he would want to leave a successful band and career at such a young age, but the real point here may be Gabriel's artistic instincts work on overdrive. He went into the country, farmed, had children, and was back with a solo album by 1977. Ironically, his first two albums (the first four were all officially named Peter Gabriel) were strong, but eclectic; oddly not as melodically strong as Genesis' first two post-Gabriel efforts, 1976's A Trick Of The Tail  and Wind & Wuthering. It was with Gabriel's third album that everything changed, not just for Gabriel or Genesis, but for the world. On this album, thanks in a big part to various friends, Gabriel was turned onto what he calls his "three tools of liberation". The first was rhythm, which has always been the foundation of his musical thinking. In Genesis, as well as lead voice, actor, leader, and main songwriter, he was a bass drum player and flutist. Hence when Larry Fast (Synergy) introduced him to a cheap PAIA drum machine kit, Gabriel was no longer dependent on someone else to produce rhythm for his songs or to use as a writing tool. Gabriel evolved his use of technology from playing with tape speed to obtaining a Fairlight. While there was no word for it at the time, the Fairlight enabled the user to sample sound textures. His third tool of liberation was world music, (that dance music stuff Jon Anderson wanted Yes to write during the disco era), which found its way into an extremely politically bold song, "Biko". Blatantly writing revisionist history for the world who had dismissed (or didn't know about) South Africa's apartheid policy, (which killed Steven Biko, imprisoned as a political prisoner the now President Nelson Mandela, and forced blacks into ghetto-like townships while the whites had mansions with pools), Gabriel dropped the first popular world music song on an unsuspecting public. Oddly, The Third Album was dropped by Atlantic (only to be picked up by Mercury); the only reason given was that the LP was "disturbed" (but nothing compared to Pete Hammill records; who do these A&R guys listen to?). Gabriel had drawn up a sketch of dark and insane characters, not unlike the ones he had created for absurdist Genesis pieces, but now somehow moodier. It is a darkly beautiful album, one that had one more ground-breaking device on it. While Gabriel was goofing around with Hugh Padgham in the Genesis control room--with Phil Collins (on tuned drum kit)--playing out in the studio, the drum sounds had a noise gate and limiter on them which gave Collins' drums an entire new sound. Gabriel noted the sound, then asked Collins to record five minutes of the same pattern, which Gabriel took to his own studio and used the rhythm to build up "Intruder". With its macabre, unaffected feel, it become the "drum sound of the 80s", stumbled upon (or heard by an innate gift) by Peter Gabriel. Thus on the Fourth Album, [the title "Security" was slapped on the record by a Geffen marketing director for USA distribution--and thus the title was widely boycotted by listeners and refered to as its true title, Peter Gabriel], the real roots of world music (and Gabriel's future endeavors) appear full bloom. The jump in writing maturity is no less profound than The Beatles' amazing leap from Revolver to Sgt. Pepper's. "The Rhythm of the Heat" utilizes African drummers; "San Jacinto" details the death of the American Indian culture; "I Have The Touch" uses bizarre post-modern electronic rhythms with lyrics as clever as any used in Gabriel-era Genesis; "The Family and The Fishing Net" foreshadows Passion; "Lay Your Hands On Me" taps religion devotion (and, performed live, with his fall into the crowd, is great theater and shows a certain faith all its own). "Wallflower" is a second song about political prisoners, and the background for his "Witness" program which provides cam-corders to third world countries to video tape oppression. And, finally, "Kiss of Life" is a rocker-meets-world-music. Now, for those who weren't hearing the stirrings of world music...well, they just weren't listening. Gabriel made some commercially smart moves for much of the decade (I had often wondered if he had a self-destructive tendency in his work for he often made simply bizarre career moves). By 1986, he finally delivered a straight-ahead pop album, So, which suddenly made him a household name, and the recipient of the "Number One Video of All Time" award for "Sledgehammer". So was uncomfortably popular for old-time Genesis fans who wanted The Gabe to succeed well enough to enjoy life and keep the music coming, but it was strange to see this genius cult-hero named Number One on MTV. What was next, joining Genesis? Then came one of those moves that must have had record executives pulling their hair out, but reassured old fans that he wasn't going to become the next Michael Jackson. Instead of doing his own tour, he joined Amnesty International's Conspiracy of Hope (with Bruce Springsteen, Sting, etc.). By 1988, he was working on a soundtrack for a movie that had already been released. Things were back to normal. Having been contracted to do the score for Martin Scorsese's film The Last Temptation of Christ, he wasn't satisfied with releasing an album with 20 second bits of music on it. Rightfully so, he wanted to build bits into compositions that had all the power of the movie. That Gabriel was the right choice for writing the soundtrack is an understatement on the par of "The Beatles were popular". While a non-practicing Christian, he obviously has the mythology and symbols at a root level. He went to a Christian school, after all, where Genesis formed as teenage lads with enough talent to get a demo album sold via Jonathan King, who suggested they base the album on Biblical pieces. The effort, From Genesis to Revelation, is a theme Genesis and its former members have hardly strayed from in 25 years. Gabriel was introduced to the film by Scorsese showing him a film clip of Christ carrying His cross up to Golgotha through Moroccan streets. Gabriel sensed what he wanted in the music right away: a sad mixture of soulful voices above a moody backdrop with a world beat (this one Brazilian) running beneath. It was very painful, but the darkness and fear melts into joy, especially in the final scene where Christ "wakes" from his dream of temptation to death on the cross, saying, as His final words, "It is accomplished". Not to understate, but with Passion, Gabriel clearly stepped into the world music arena. It is not an album that is easy for the westerner's ear to grasp at first (but for what it is worth, it is clearly my favorite, most deeply felt, Gabriel CD...those interested in this music would love Gabriel, Lennon, and King Crimson bassist extraordinaire Tony Levin's World Diary on Papa Bear Records). Here he was not "simply" working with foreign musicians and blending their music within his own. Here he was actively listening and learning what made this music, and what made world music good or bad. It turned music, as westerners know it, on its, er, ear. There was the absence of standard pitch, rhythm, chordal devices and melody. As Gabriel stated in a late 80's Musician interview, "Pitch was a particular problem, in that some of the scales are very different from our own. Originally I wanted to try and get comfortable with some of the other scales, and, really, I didn't pull it off. There are one or two things we did which will reflect those scales and tunings. I also worked with this guy who played an A-flute from Turkey, who showed me some of the scale divisions--he would have 70 divisions in his head in one octave, while we only use 12. It's somewhat like Indian scales, where you'd end up at a different frequency depending on whether you'd arrived on the on an ascending or descending phrase." Above all, it is that Gabriel offers a certain integrity to working within these hallowed sounds. Gabriel had world music credentials long before (nearly a decade before) Passion was created. Instead of ripping off the Third World, he exchanges musical influences with them, and also has built Real World Records and Studios where many world music artists are recorded and distributed because of Peter Gabriel. This recording of world music is an exchange as well; note the sample of the Russian Dmitri Pokrovsky Ensemble used in "Come Talk to Me" off US. The sample used in "Come Talk to Me" has an entire other color-tone than when heard on the original. And it does not taint or altar the original in any way. Real World has a huge catalog that can be found in most large record stores, or through direct ordering via the two phases of company, U.S.A. and U.K. We provide such contact information on Real World and other related record companies here: Real World Records WOMAD Box Wiltshire, SN14 9PN, UK or: Caroline Records Inc. 114 West 26th New York, NY 10001 USA EarthWorks is also marketed and distributed by: Caroline Records, Inc. 114 West 26th New York, NY 10001 USA Real World is one of Virgin's specialist labels. For a full listing of the other specialist products write to: Virgin Records Kensal House 553-579 Harrow Road London, W10 4RH Papa Bear Records released Tony Levin's World Diary which features most of Gabriel'sSecret World touring band, as well as WOMAD artists, and Bill Bruford Papa Bear Records P.O. Box 498 Woodstock, NY 12498 Now, I'd like to offer you a glimpse of a smaller but quite worthy world music company with a uniqueness all its own: ARC Music. Interview with Jesse Reuben Wilson of ARC Music
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