Noise Of The World: Non-Western Musicians In Their Own Words

by Hank Bordowitz
Soft Skull
softskull.com

It certainly is nice to have something from Hank Bordowitz skip across my desk (no matter now late I am in actually getting to review it.) Hank and I were both contributors to the publication Reflex back in the late ‘80s, and although I became more well-known for my coverage of metal and he for his work at the publication Jazziz, we both really had a thing for what they call here in the U.S. “world music.”

Although I interviewed quite a few of these international artists, Hank, by far, really took the ball and ran with it. "Noise of the World: Non-Western Musicians In Their Own Words" is 384 pages of testament to that fact. The book spans over 20 years of interviews and is organized in a concise format with only a brief introduction of each artist from Bordowitz. All hallmarks of the standard q&a format are removed, so what stands are just the pure words of the interviewee without any overbearing personality of the interviewer.

Bordowitz includes artists as varied as Ernest Ranglin, Jimmy Cliff, Kid Creole & the Coconuts, Kassav, Beausoleil, Yomo Toro, RubenBlades, Al di Meola, Hassan Hakmoun, King Sunny Ade, Fela Anikulapo Kuti, Youssou N’Dour, Aster Aweke, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, The Mahotella Queens, Jorge Pardo, paco De Lucia, The Klezmatics, Les Mystere des Voix Bulgares, Ravi Shankar, and Ofra Haza (but this is still a very truncated list compared to the contents of this book.) I highly recommend this to anyone who is interested in anything outside the realm of mass-produced American pop music.



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