Joe Boyd: Roots of Rhythm

I remember doing a book event with you in London right before Covid, and at that time you were finishing your new book after having already worked on it extensively. Yet, last year you told me how you were still toiling long hours refining it right up until the last minute.

Well, I started writing it 16 years ago – in 2008. So, during that time, particularly in the early years, I did lots of other things, too. With my first book, White Bicycles: [Making Music in the 1960s], I found that kind of easy to write. I got that done pretty quickly, working part-time on it – just over two years. So, I tried approaching the new book that way, but it didn't work. [laughter]

You've described the new book as “a bit of a door-stop.”

The main book is at about 820 pages. I mean, the bibliography itself is 60 pages long! I read a lot of books for this.

What was your motivation for this book?

To try to create a book about “global music” that tells the back stories and histories like it has been done so richly for Western music. In my flat, I have two bookshelves on either side of my hall. One is full of nothing but books on American music, the other is all books on British music. There are countless biographies on Elvis, Louis Armstrong, and the Rolling Stones. We’ve generated a cottage industry in telling these stories endlessly. But there is an absence for the rest of the world, and so much nuance is lost.

The book also includes some amazing archival photos. What were some of the most surprising facts that you learned during your research?

In the 5th century, during the fall and rubble of the Roman Empire, the Iberian Peninsula [Spain, Portugal, etc.] was in chaos. There were lots of different pagan cults, and the Visigoths were gathering in the south of France, pillaging and fucking up everything. So, the Pope made a deal with the head of the Visigoths. He said, “Look, I’ll approve you going and taking over Iberia – just go and capture it. But, you have to suppress and get rid of all cults and all pagan vestiges, and impose a rigid, Rome-approved version of Christianity.” The central element of pagan worship in the Iberian peninsula was drums. So, all drums were eliminated. Plus, throughout Europe in the early years of the spread of Christianity, one of the first things that Christians did was get rid of the fucking drums. The Christian church has always been paranoid about rhythm. So, flash forward a thousand years to the gates of Vienna. The Turkish army is approaching, and the Hungarians and Austrians are trying to battle and fight back. The Turks have these guys on horses with kettle drums. They start taking out their mallets and hitting these giant drums and making this huge noise. The enemy horses go crazy; the enemy soldiers go crazy. They'd never heard anything so loud, because they’d been without drums for a thousand years! So, what the Europeans learned was that drums are really good for getting soldiers excited – for pumping up adrenaline. So, drums were adapted widely in Europe starting in the 16th century – but for military purposes only. Then, in New Orleans in the early 20th century, somebody figured out that a good money-saver was instead of having two or three percussionists, you could just have one. All of the key parts that went into that drum kit were military percussion. The snare, the bass drum, the cymbal – it’s all military stuff.

This book is such an epic undertaking. What would be a thumbnail overview?

Rhythm has all these enemies. In authoritarian states, they don't like people moving freely and shaking their asses around since most authoritarian states are puritanical. And then, of course, the churches and religions are almost always against rhythm. Also, the cultural majority are against the rhythms of the minority cultures. But in a way, the greatest threat to rhythm – human rhythm – is from the drum machine. It's like the rhythm sections in music were kind of the...