so horsemouth recently wrote on substack a piece on his graphical choices when he was in his fake brooklyn afrobeat band
bush house (roughly 1988 to 1995)
he did this under the title (and subtitle).
to reconfigure people’s notions of the world (and thus of world music)
as horsemouth could have perhaps said more clearly the distortions required to fit the surface of a globe onto a flat 2D map create (or encourage) a number of political distortions in our understanding of the world.
horsemouth was interested in inverting the world map to put the south at the top (to make the global 'south' politically more important), and in the peters projection that showed continents and countries at their proportionate size (this also serves to make the global 'south' politically more important).
the second was certainly the argument the new internationalist was making when it published the peters projection map.
horsemouth was interested in this because it fits into his understandings of music and politics and how they relate. it fits with his need to undermine world music as marketing category, to turn it on its head and set it on its feet.
when horsemouth came to london and started hanging out with anarchist types in the early eighties it was soon made clear to him that only two types of music were really acceptable - punk (preferably anarcho-punk) and reggae. the rest of it was commercial 'product' and ideologically suspect.
only in punk and reggae were the correct fusion of politics and music held to occur.
later on hip-hop started to happen (this was acceptable too - up to a point). later house music started to happen (this was acceptable too).
later on lots of things happened.
horsemouth (ever the contrarian) became interested in african guitar music - starting with king sunny ade. he was fascinated that you could have a band with so many guitarists in it without there being murders. he was fascinated by the way that foregrounding the interplay of rhythms made this possible. he heard this as very democratic. in this he was probably mistaken.
politics at the level of process/ politics at the level of the globe.
meanwhile if rhodesia had fallen (to become zimbabwe) but apartheid in south africa was still dragging on interminably. the releasers of compilation albums from these countries (how horsemouth heard this stuff) were not above playing up the political aspect - rhythms of resistance was one album title of south african music, take cover the title of another from zimbabwe. and then there was thomas mapfumo.
the music seemed politically engaged but also dance music. uniting people.
horsemouth became interested in learning how to play this music. he studied (very briefly) with noted african guitar teacher folo graff and jenako arts in hackney. there were lots of people in hackney at that time (in the post paul simon graceland moment) trying to make that fusion (and most of them were in folo's class).
and he formed his own anarcho-punk band playing this sort of stuff.
but lets be clear about this. it was an anarcho-punk band, what they were singing was agitational propaganda and intended to be played at benefit gigs for anarchist-type causes.
because punk had limited musical means it was often open to a bit of thievery from other musical genres - think of that relationship with reggae and dub, the clash's sandinista, blondie's rapture, a certain ratio, 23 skidoo...
phase one: the band form
the first time he recorded with ross and andy they did a cassette of 3 songs - a punk one, an on-u soundish dubby hip-hop one, and a (somewhat dull and derivative) soca. there was a kind of minuteman/ firehose thing going on too.
however horsemouth's enthusiasm for this sort of material was not enough to sustain his fellow band members (particularly when the band expanded out to include noma on vocals and pete on percussion).
once the initial excitement of being in a band, playing gigs and recording wore off the rest of the band's interest in playing this sort of material did too.
horsemouth did his level best to find a way through but ultimately he was defeated.
meanwhile hip-hop had really started to happen for anarcho types with the message, white lines and public enemy, house music and raving had happened. the whole sampled, sequenced music thing was happening and by 1993 jungle and drum and bass were happening.
phase two: the band began their dalliance with the machines
in this phase horsemouth was closest to what was going on in the wider culture. sampling had given people access to a wider range of musics within the fields of house music and hip-hop, there was coldcut sampling ofra haza for eric b and rakim's paid in full, there was fundamental, there was transglobal underground, there was afro-celt sound system, there was jah wobble's invaders of the heart, there was the rai of rachid baba and the bhangra of bally sagoo. there was mory kante's yeke yeke.
but still they couldn't make it happen and ultimately you only have a certain amount of time to make it happen.
and horsemouth fell out of love with his original inspiration because he could not make it happen.
later there was the asian underground, the seeding of the world with electronic dance musics, hip-hops and dancehalls.
the temptation is always to arrange the elements of the story in the light of the way it turned out rather than in the light of how people saw it at the time, the potential in that moment.
but let us reactivate the sediments of that original inspiration.
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