Marisa Anderson – The Anthology of UnAmerican Folk Music

The seeds of this remarkable project were sown when Portland-based guitarist Marisa Anderson got the chance to spend some time exploring the archives of the eccentric musicologist Harry Smith—another Portland native, most famous for compiling 1952’s legendary Anthology of American Folk Music.

Anderson was evidently quite taken with Smith’s extensive collection of ethnographic folk recordings and set to work delving deeper into the music within. The Anthology of UnAmerican Folk Music features nine of Anderson’s interpretations of pieces from Smith’s collection, with a conscious focus on works from countries that the USA has been in conflict with since 1970.

In lesser hands, this anthology could have become a record of superficial homages or, worse, an exercise in cultural appropriation. But Anderson is a master of her craft, and her performances are as respectful as they are mesmerising. While I haven’t heard all of her source material—not everything is publicly available—there’s a strong sense that Anderson’s reworkings are complex conversations with the originals, and there is an air of unspoken reconciliation throughout that is utterly beguiling.

Highlights include the sprawling “Quodlibet,” based on Bābā Qerān’s dambura music, which has its roots in Afghan and Uzbek teahouses, and the ghostly drone of “Pair of Duduk,” which Anderson adapted from a 1960 recording from Turkmenistan.

The hypnotic finale, “Whistle Song,” builds on a fragment of bamboo whistle music from central Vietnam, poignantly recorded in the early years of the Vietnam War. It’s a fitting way to round out Anderson’s collection, and a pointed reminder that in this fragile world, both beauty and horror are never too far apart.

The Anthology of UnAmerican Folk Music is out now via Thrill Jockey.