Behind this gorgeous collection of folk tunes from Southeast Asia, Soviet Russia and the Islamic and Arabic worlds lies the legacy of two Americans: the peyote-dropping 78rpm collector Harry Smith (whose 1952 Anthology of American Folk Music presented folk, blues and country recordings from the 1920s and 1930s) and the exploratory guitarist Marisa Anderson, whose back catalogue is steeped in tradition and improvisation. In 2023, she begged for time in Smith’s shuttered archives, discovering hours of non-American music, before learning to perform and share it.
Here, Anderson interprets nine of these tunes, pointedly taken from regions shaped by major US conflicts since her birth in 1970. While her fascinating liner notes track what is lost and found when trying to translate these compositions, their universal musicality still cuts through. Opener Quodlibet is beautiful: an intricate, minor-key medley of Uzbek tunes originally performed on the dambura (a fretless lute), on which Anderson adds bluegrass techniques to counter her inability to play quarter-tones on her guitar. Her take on a qawwali vocal tune, Hamd, is also a highlight, her stacked guitar layers ringing with warmth and emotion.
