The guitarist Marisa Anderson has been dubbed as one of “this era’s most powerful players” for her deep and varied interpretations of American music.
Her latest album, “The Anthology of UnAmerican Folk Music,” takes inspiration from folk music from around the world. From Vietnam and Syria to Afghanistan and the former Soviet Union, the album is shaped by songs from countries that have been in conflict with the U.S. in her lifetime.
Anderson joins us to share more on her album and performs live in-studio.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. The Portland guitarist Marisa Anderson has made a national name for herself with her deeply personal interpretations of the tangled roots of American music. For her latest album, her source material came from much further away; countries like Afghanistan, Vietnam, Cambodia, Syria. The album is called “The Anthology of UnAmerican Folk Music Vol. 1.” It’s made up of songs from countries that the U.S. has been in conflict with over the course of Anderson’s lifetime.
Marisa Anderson joins me now. It’s great to have you back on the show, something like 13 years after your first time.
Marisa Anderson: It’s great to be here again. Thank you.
Miller: I’m so used to having guests holding guitars start right in with a song. But I want to do something different today, in honor of your new album. I want to hear 30 seconds or so of a track that was recorded 50 something years ago in Pakistan.
[“Hamd / Mamoor Ho Raha Ha” by the Sabri Brothers plays]
Miller: What did we just hear?
Anderson: That is a recording of the Sabri Brothers. It’s from 1968 and it’s Pakistani qawwali music. The Sabri Brothers are pretty prominent Bali musicians, going back generations.
Miller: Can we hear your version of the song that we just heard?
[“Hamd” by Marisa Anderson playing, live in studio]
Miller: That’s my guest Marisa Anderson playing the song “Hamd,” from her new album called “The Anthology of UnAmerican Folk Music.”
Where did you hear that original track that we heard first, the first time?
Anderson: The first time I heard it, I was in a residency with the final personal record collection of Harry Smith, who in 1952, made the “Anthology of American Folk Music,” which went on to change the face of American music. I had the opportunity to spend nine days with his record collection, and I was given permission to download whatever I wanted. Like you mentioned earlier, I chose to download music that was from countries that the U.S. has been in conflict with during my lifetime, such as Southeast Asia, Soviet Union, and the Arabic and Islamic world. That was the music that I spent time with. And that’s where I first heard that song.
Miller: I want to come back to that organizing principle and the reason for that. But I’m just curious about the process of going from that original where this whole group of men were singing, with one instrument there … how you go from that to making a kind of orchestra of sound with just your electric guitar? How do you go from the original to your version?
Anderson: That source recording is 18 minutes long. So what we heard was just a part of it, and that was a very active part. The whole beginning of the piece begins with this solo melismatic vocal line.
Miller: Melismatic?
Anderson: Yeah, meaning that it’s not tonal, like a guitar, or like a piano or something. It’s kind of like glissando, [which] would be the closest Western word.
Miller: Slides of sound?
Anderson: Yeah, in melismatic music, it’s not moving from one note to the other note, it’s sliding. So that big, slow melismatic intro – or I don’t know if it’s an intro, I think it’s probably a statement of the various things that are in the piece – I transcribed, not the whole thing, but what I could of it. Many, many phrases. Then I developed those phrases into an arrangement that is the first part of the piece that I just played.
Further on in the piece, there is this call and response with 10 men singing. There’s harmonium, so there’s a drone, and there’s percussion. And the men singing some variation on “do do do, da da da da da da da da da da da da.” I just built that into a piece that I could play.
One of the things about the tunings I use in the way that I play is that I organize the notes that I’m playing around the notes that I’m letting ring, so that I can get a drone and so that I can get some dissonance. So that I can get a sense of notes wavering against each other, to create this kind of melismatic effect.
Miller: As you were listening to this music from Southeast Asia, from the former Soviet Union, from the Middle East, do you think that you would have been hit in the same way if you’d done that 10 or 15 years ago?
Anderson: I don’t think that I would have had the listening skills 10 or 15 years ago. Most of this music is not in structural or theoretical formats that are recognizable easily by an ear that is really attuned to the West, as my ear is. I grew up here. I work in the field of vernacular American music. That was one of the reasons that I wanted to do this project, to grow what I could hear, to grow my recognition of different forms, different types of scales and different sonorities.
Miller: Let’s turn to the un-American piece. What does that word mean to you?
Anderson: It’s an interesting word, because on the surface, it just means not American. And so then, of course, it’s interesting … Why is that a provocative thing to be un-American? It just means not. But in fact, we have the House Un-American Activities [Committee] and we have taken this phrase, “un-American,” and turned it semantically into something that is anti-American. So I wanted to play with that provocation for sure. As well as “The Anthology of UnAmerican Folk Music,” anybody that’s familiar at all with Harry Smith’s work is going to recognize the illusion there, the nod.
Miller: We’re gonna hear another song, your version. But first, let’s hear a little bit of the original that was your inspiration. This is a violin solo from Syria. It’s called “Taqsim.”
[Original version of “Taqsim” plays]
Miller: Can we hear what you did with that?
[“Taqsim for Guitar” by Marisa Anderson playing, live in studio]
Miller: That is Taqsim from Marisa Anderson’s new album, “The Anthology of UnAmerican Folk Music Vol. 1.”
You said that as you were listening to these pieces you wanted to steep yourself in different musical worlds, to learn different languages. Having done that, has that changed the way you think about or play traditional American music?
Anderson: That’s a super interesting question. I’m still very much in the process with this music. The easiest response I can have there is, for example, that piece that I just played, it took me three weeks to transcribe and then months to learn. I would have to go deep, and then I would rise up and just play freely, and the most American sounding stuff would come out.
So it is the equal and opposite reaction. I would say the way that it has affected my playing is this reflexive leaning hard into American tropes in some of the newer music that’s starting to develop, post this recording. So I feel that in some ways, perhaps the next work I have to do is around home.
Miller: Oh man, the clock is going too quickly today. Can we hear one more song though?
Anderson: Yes.
Miller: What are we going to hear now?
Anderson: This is from Afghanistan. Quodlibet. I don’t know how to say it because I’ve only ever read it. It was collected in 1973 by a researcher from the University of Michigan. He did write down the name of the performer and when I looked up that performer, I couldn’t find any information until I ran it through Google Translate. And it is just the word for “old man,” so I don’t know who did this originally.
[“Quodlibet” by Marisa Anderson playing, live in studio]
Miller: That is Marisa Anderson playing the song “Quodlibet” from her new album. It’s called “The Anthology of UnAmerican Folk Music.”
I could listen to you all day, but there’s a minute and 20 seconds left, and I have to say goodbye. Do you mind playing us out with one of your own songs? It’s a pleasure having you on the show again. Thank you.
Anderson: I’ll play us out. Yes, thanks for having me.
[Marisa Anderson playing music outro]
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