Marisa Anderson: The Anthology of UnAmerican Folk Music

A guitarist received brief access to Harry Smith’s remaining record collection and discovered thousands of folk recordings from many regions, including Afghanistan, Pakistan, Vietnam, Eritrea, Yemen, and Soviet Russia. With a grant, she downloaded about 900 songs from 70 records, totaling nearly 45 continuous hours of raga, taqsim, and diverse folk forms and languages. She then researched how the music was made by studying Arabic music theory, examining maps and migration routes, and consulting Smith’s cryptic notes. She interprets selected songs on multiple instruments, including guitar and others, and connects the repertoire to places the United States had treated as enemies during her lifetime, deepening her sensitivity and artistic transformation.

"When guitarist Marisa Anderson asked to see the famed folklorist and anthropologist Harry Smith's record collection-or what was left of it when he died in 1991-she was given 15 minutes. It was enough time for her worldview to explode. Sitting in the climate-controlled room in the back of the Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa, she shuffled past the expected southern gospel, country blues, and Native American ceremonial records to discover literally thousands of folk recordings drawn from around the world: Afghanistan. Pakistan. Central Vietnam. Eritrea. Yemen. Soviet Russia. Her mind reeled. What was this music, and how had it wound up in Smith's collection?"

"When she returned a year later with a grant, she downloaded about 900 songs spread across 70 records-nearly 45 continuous hours of raga, of taqsim, of forms and lexicons of folk languages she didn't even begin to speak. She didn't know how the music was made, or what rules undergirded it. So she set about researching: She investigated Arabic music theory; she pored over maps and migratory paths. She consulted Smith's indispensable yet maddeningly gnomic notes for clues about the disembodied sounds that had captured her attention."

"On the first volume of The Anthology of UnAmerican Folk Music, Anderson finds a way to show us her own image reflected in all of this study. The songs she has chosen to interpret and record all come from places that her home country, the United States, had deemed "the enemy" at some point during her life. She plays them on guitar, yes, but also on requinto jarocho, the tres Cubano, keyboard, accordion, and the pedal steel. The assignment has brought untold depth and sensitivity out of her. She pours herself deeply into this music, as if she might herself take new shapes inside it."

Read at Pitchfork