Luaka Byrne

We will have a lot to say about David Byrne in this course, so this blog post is likely to grow over time. I remember the first time I heard of his band The Talking Heads, from a radio ad that was popular when I was in high school. A booming baritone voice intoned, "Talking Heads has a new album; it's called Fear of Music." We had albums back then; I became a big fan during college, when my friend Karl (who coincidentally, perhaps, is the guy who introduced me to geography) gave me a cassette mix tape he had created and labeled "Talking Heads and Grateful Deads." Karl also took me to my first and only, Dead show, incidentally.

Photo: Jordan Cronenweth / A24
by way of Smithsonian Magazine

All of which is to say that I was immersed in the music of David Byrne and pleased to find out that he and I had lived in the same town (Arbutus, Maryland), albeit many years apart. I watched Stop Making Sense during its first run -- and I'm delighted to see that this groundbreaking concert film has been re-released forty years later.

After Talking Heads, Byrne moved on to what I consider more important work. I used to say that he was instrumental in the foundation of "world music." I just found his 1999 New York Times article entitled Crossing Music's Borders: 'I Hate World Music' -- so I might need to modify that narrative. Might need to. He describes some difficulties with the production and consumption of "world music" in an article that also explains why it is essential and why it is equally difficult to define with any clarity.

His complaint is essential reading for anyone exploring a vast category of music that he helped to make available to us through his label Luaka Bop. I learned a lot about several genres of music in Brazil and Cuba because of his efforts, so I welcome his cautions. (I recommend the article without hesitation, but with a small caveat: it is astonishing that the NYT editors did not catch "Columbian" used for "Colombian" and "it's" used for "its." Egad!)

Despite the gloomy title, the article includes this important passage: 

For example, there are guitar bands in Africa that can be, if you let them, as inspiring and transporting as any kind of rock, pop, soul, funk or disco you grew up with. And what is exciting for me is that they have taken elements of global (Western?) music apart, examined the pieces to see what might be of use and then re-invented and reassembled the parts to their own ends. Thus creating something entirely new. 

Here Byrne offers an encouraging counter-example to the kind of musical "tourism" he warns about throughout the article. The musicians he admires most are not riding the world-music bus; they are driving it. The innovation is not just from American and European musicians sampling and absorbing the work of others, but rather from musicians worldwide creating as equals.

A very fine example of this is the work of his good friend -- and my hero -- Benin-born superstar Angelique Kidjo. I had been enjoying her work for years -- often including her homage to Yemaya in my teaching about syncretism -- before I learned of her friendship with David Byrne.

Her re-imagining of his Once in a Lifetime (another song I often use in my teaching) closes the creative circle. She takes elements of his work and incorporates it into her own. The result is a series of videos like the one above and an entire concert tour, which I was lucky enough to experience in Providence in February 2020 -- my last hurrah before the pandemic sent us into our houses.