There have been many acts in the life of veteran music producer Joe Boyd. At the center of the counterculture in the 1960s (he was the sound technician at the Newport Folk Festival when Bob Dylan “went electric”), he’s produced albums for the likes of Pink Floyd and later R.E.M. Stories from this time fill his first book, “White Bicycles: Making Music in the 1960s” (2007). In his most recent book, he takes a wider frame to tell a world-spanning story of traditional folk music cultures, largely from the global South, and the way they shaped the sounds and culture of the West.

Coming in at nearly 1,000 pages, “And the Roots of Rhythm Remain: A Journey Through Global Music” (2024) was over 15 years in the making. Based on deep historical research and interviews, the book is a love letter to traditional music cultures from all over the world, and takes its name from a lyric in “Under African Skies” from Paul Simon’s South Africa-inspired album “Graceland.” And as a central player in the 1980s “world music” moment, which popularized music from Cuba, Bulgaria, Mali, South Africa, India and more in Western markets, Boyd had a front row seat to many of the music scenes he so lovingly describes in the book. 

As such, he frequently pops up, Forrest Gump-like, as a direct participant in key moments throughout the book, conferring with a nervous Simon at a Hollywood party prior to the release of “Graceland,” judging a raucous singing competition in newly independent Kazakhstan or navigating complicated politics to put together elite ensembles in communist-era Bulgaria.

Boyd’s life has taken him all over the world, but a fateful trip to Albania a decade ago opened a new chapter when he met his now wife and musical collaborator Andrea Goertler. Goertler, a German water policy expert who moved to Albania to advise on environmental issues, is a passionate folk dancer and the duo’s mutual love of Balkan folk music quickly brought them together. They’ve since dove headfirst into the scene, producing two award-winning albums for Bosnian sevdah performer Damir Imamović as well as the remarkable album “At Least Wave Your Handkerchief At Me: The Joys and Sorrows of Southern Albanian Song” by Saz’iso. 

K2.0 spoke with the couple over Zoom about Boyd’s recent book and how the Balkans transformed their professional and romantic lives.

K2.0: How did your Balkan connection come about?

Joe: In a way the whole story, the Balkan connection, on my side — not Andrea’s — starts back in the late ‘80s when a lute player from Sheffield walked into the office of Hannibal Records in London. That was my label then and we had put out some Bulgarian and Hungarian records. And he walked in with a video and put it on my desk and said, “You’ve got to watch this.” He had managed to get into Albania when it was still pretty much a closed country. He talked his way into a visa to go to the Gjirokastra Folk Festival, which happened every five years. And then not only did he get to the festival, but he actually somehow made friends with the TV crew and persuaded somebody to hand him a video copy of the TV highlights broadcast on Albanian television.

A few days later, I went home, I put it in the video player and up comes the fortress of Gjirokastra, the red and black eagle flags, the mountains in the background, and these guys in conical hats singing the most extraordinary polyphonic music. And I just said, I’ve got to go there and experience this and see this music. 20, 25 years later, I still hadn’t been. 

And then there was this woman I knew called Lucy Duran who teaches African and Cuban music at SOAS University of London, and who’d also done a program called World Roots for the BBC where she’d go to different cultures around the world and record people locally. She had done a series of programs on Albanian music with the help of a woman called Edit Pula. 

They remained friends and Lucy happened to mention to me that she was going to Albania for Edit’s birthday party on the beach with traditional Albanian musicians. And I said, can I come please? You know, I want to come too! So I was brought along and it turned out that Edit’s flatmate was Andrea and Andrea knew all the traditional dances of Albania and was leading the dance line at the party with her handkerchief. 

Andrea: That did it. [Laughs] 

A few years earlier I was working for the German International Cooperation Agency, GIZ, and they asked me if I wanted to manage a project in Albania on water and environmental issues. So I said, well, if you let me go and have a look, I’ll consider. They let me travel to Albania for a few days in 2009. That’s when I moved there and I haven’t really left.

The environmental agency where I was placed as an advisor was full of people who were really good dancers and so I got really motivated to learn all the Albanian traditional dances. I found a teacher and had weekly sessions and when I met Joe at this birthday party, I had learned all the dances from north to south.

I’ve always had an amateurish private interest in music. Dancing was just a way into Balkan music. And then Edit Pula, who I shared a flat with, has a very deep interest in preserving heritage in the Balkans and has a deep love of traditional music, though most people her age found it quite uncool for a while after the fall of the wall because people were force-fed too much Albanian traditional music during the communist years.

Joe: One thing Andrea and I discovered that we shared was a determination to go to the next Gjirokastra Festival. And so we went together in 2015. 

And so, like in my book, which is full of chance encounters, I had a chance encounter with a guy I know who runs the Barbican Art Center in London. In those days, he was using his expense account to go to festivals in Louisiana and Colombia and Dakar. So I said, I’m going next week to this festival in Gjirokastra in southern Albania, it should be cool, why don’t you come? 

He booked himself a ticket, got a taxi from the airport, arrived at Gjirokastra and loved it. And as he was getting in the car to go back to the airport, just before he closed the door, he turned to me and Andrea and said, if you guys want to put together some kind of Buena Vista Social Club project, like a collection of music veterans, I’d put them on at the Barbican. And that was the birth of Saz’iso.

Joe, as you describe in “And the Roots of Rhythm Remain,” back in the 1980s you helped “invent” the “world music” genre, now more often referred to as “global music.” It was a time when you could readily buy CDs of Bulgarian choral music, Malian guitar jazz, Romanian Roma string bands in stores across the U.S. and Western Europe. Can you elaborate a bit on your connection and involvement in this wave, particularly the Bulgarian angle?

Joe: As I write in the book, there was this moment in 1965 when Albert Grossman, who was Bob Dylan’s manager, heard a 10-inch LP from the Parisian label Chant du Monde of the Filip Koutev Ensemble from Bulgaria and it blew his mind. He was in Paris and the next day he just walked into the office and said, how much do you want for the American rights? He gave them 2,000 bucks in cash and walked away with a tape. Then he persuaded Elektra Records to put it out on their Nonesuch Explorer series, which was a precursor to “world music” in a way.

I went to work for Elektra right as that record was being released. I remember listening to it for the first time and just going, holy shit, this is incredible stuff. A lot of folkies, hippies, musicians, stoners would light up a joint, put on the headphones and listen to Filip Koutev. And then it kind of died away. It got superseded by Indian music and all sorts of other things and the record went out of print eventually. 

Then 10 years later, you know, the Swiss metallurgist Marcel Cellier somehow managed to leave Sofia with tape copies of a bunch of radio choir tracks. He thought up the name Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares because he was Francophone, and put it out in France and Germany and Switzerland where it did pretty well. But then it was released in the mid-‘80s in England by 4AD Records, which was the label of the Cocteau Twins. So it was hugely hip. John Peel was the radio DJ that played a lot of Cocteau Twins and then he started playing a lot of Le Mystère, and it just took off like crazy. 

I was chagrined because my brother had kept saying to me, “You should license that record and release it in America.” And I went, nah, you know, it’s just too obscure and I love it, but nobody would buy it. 

And then by that time, in a way, in a pre-echo of my quest to go to the Gjirokastra Festival, I had a quest to go to the Koprivshtitsa Festival, which is a similar festival in Bulgaria. I went there in 1986 and had my mind blown by this incredible assemblage of village musicians and thought, let’s get the professionals who are playing in these ensembles, just a small group of the best of them to play in the old village style. And so that put together this group called Balkana. We toured and we did some great shows and put out some records. But Le Mystère Choir became a worldwide sensation and kind of dwarfed what we were doing with Balkana.

Although Albania isn’t featured in your recent book, the last paragraph of the acknowledgements reads:

“The shaft of musical light that has brightened my life is the time Andrea and I have spent in Albania, where many pages of this book were written. We’ve passed memorable evenings listening to polyphonic singing, crossing the border into Greece to hear the wonderful, closely related music of Epirus, joined the dancing at friends’ celebrations and, above all, recorded, toured with and listened, both on stage and off, to the eight marvelous, southern Albanian musicians whom, with our friend Edit Pula, we united under the name Saz’iso. The story of Albanian music may not have fit into the narratives I constructed for this book, but seeing how moved their European audiences were and witnessing the way enthusiasm for traditional music at home spread, especially among younger listeners, confirmed my belief in the power of music grown from ancient roots.”

Joe: The years surrounding the lockdown, it’s kind of a blur. But sticking out from my memory of those times are moments, particularly in Gjirokastra, listening to isopolyphonic music. I remember the first time we went to Gjirokastra we were having a meal outdoors on a little back street and there was a table nearby with some guys just drinking raki. And then the conversation stopped and somebody started singing. The acoustics were perfect because it was stone pavement and brick walls on either side. I kind of caught one of their eyes and they beckoned me over and I put my head in the middle of this circle of guys and it was an unforgettable experience.

It’s so striking that in Gjirokastër, that type of social singing is a living tradition. A lot of other folk music practices have turned into “art music,” but there, polyphonic singing is something guys do when they hang out.

Andrea: I think we were lucky in two ways in terms of music in Albania. First, ever since we united the singers and musicians of Saz’iso, we spent a lot of time with them. And we didn’t only go through that very intense experience of recording and choosing the repertoire and finding a common ground with these eight artists, we were also touring with them, hearing them night after night, spending a lot of private evenings. And often the most divine moments happen after the concerts, at dinner, when people just grab the instruments and start singing. 

Because of them and because of Edit, we found so many friends that were engaged in music. Through them we would find musical moments that normally, as a visitor or an outsider, you don’t really find.

With “world music,” there is sometimes a tension between what listeners “at home” most enjoy and what an international audience is seeking. I noticed that on Spotify the cities with the most listeners to the Saz’iso album were either in Albania or Kosovo or were cities with large Albanian diasporas. In producing the Saz’iso album, were you trying to frame things specially as more accessible for an Albanian audience or an international “world music” audience?

Joe: I think the answer I would say simply is no.

Andrea: One thing we did was we got an expert involved, Vasil Tole, who was present, who advised and who also gave speeches about how important this recording is because we will kind of freeze a moment in time. And so we had a lot of responsibility as to what gets put down on record as Albanian traditional music. He was a bit worried. 

Joe: There was a very interesting moment with him. You know, we are very respectful of the musicians and very concerned to create a good atmosphere so everybody feels relaxed. And Vasil arrived during one session and listened to something and started giving the musicians a really serious harangue. Like, with a very loud voice shouting at them almost, saying, “Come on, step it up guys. That was not good enough!” In a way that we wouldn’t have dared say. And the performances immediately after that were really some of the best takes we had.

Andrea: But I think the audience was not in our mind. I think it was more to create a beautiful record with this group of musicians and with the repertoire that fit their voices and fit their interests.

Joe: I have huge respect for the ethnographers who’ve gone with a tape recorder out into the field doing documentation. But I’ve never been interested in it myself. To me the point about recording this music is not to get a document, but to record this music with the same respect you would record a pop band or a string quartet. This music is beautiful, this music is thrilling, this music can be treated with [top-notch] microphones and world-class engineers.

And not only do you treat it with respect and not record it like a field recording, but you also don’t need to add a jazz piano or a Norwegian fiddler or whatever to an Albanian record. The music is so good that you treat it with the respect that it doesn’t need jazzing up. It doesn’t need fusion. It doesn’t need sauce. It doesn’t need seasoning. It’s great. Let’s give it the best recording we possibly can.

We carried that spirit when we toured Saz’iso across Western Europe. The way that the tour was presented in art centers with really good sound and lights and a seated audience was something that the group had rarely experienced before. We also went and played at DokuFest and the concert was fascinating because the audience was a young Kosovar crowd. I think that was the start of a love affair between the young Kosovar audience and Saz’iso. 

Saze music from southern Albania is not the music of Kosovo. It’s not their music as such. But I saw all this enthusiasm and this young hip crowd was gripped by this music. It reminded me of America in the 1960s, when the folk audience was gripped by music from the South, from the Mississippi Delta and the Appalachians, in an iconic moment. And for many, we hope, it was an iconic moment for young Kosovars to discover something that’s connected to their culture.

The two of you have also produced two albums with Bosnian sevdah singer Damir Imamović. How did those projects come about?

Andrea: We met Damir around 2015 in Sarajevo. I was on a work trip there and Joe came and joined me. A friend of Joe’s connected us to other friends in Sarajevo to meet them who then invited other friends, and one of them that got invited along for a drink was Damir Imamović. We spent a wonderful evening together in the hills above Sarajevo in a rustic cafe talking about music.

Joe: And then as we were leaving, we said to Damir — this was a Friday evening — we said, “We’re going to be here over the weekend. Is there any place to hear music that you would recommend?” And he said, no, there’s not really anything. Then just as the car door was about to close, he said, “Actually, I’ll put something on.” He ended up doing a solo concert at an art gallery and we were blown away. He was just so good. We got along with him really well, and then, he sang at our wedding. 

Andrea: When we were in Sarajevo we bought a whole stack of sevdah compilations and took them home and listened to all these songs from the golden era of Radio Sarajevo and really got into sevdah and the melodies and performers. 

Joe: One of the most prominent in that collection was his grandfather.

Andrea: And then we stayed in touch with him and he came and sang at our wedding and we always had a vague idea that if a nice project presents itself, we could collaborate. 

Joe: He told us that he was doing a concert in Sarajevo with Greg Cohen, who was a fantastic bass player, Tom Waits’ bass player for many years, and somebody I knew from New York. So we came to Sarajevo for this concert.

Andrea: It was a 40th birthday concert. 

Joe: And it was wonderful. We’d been talking to Damir about doing a record. He’d made a record for Glitterbeat that was good, but if that was the sort of thing he wanted to do, we weren’t necessarily the right production team. But after this concert, we said to him, “Hey, if you want to make this the record, we could do that in a heartbeat.” And so we ended up calling my old friend Jerry Boys, who was the engineer for the Buena Vista Social Club and lots of other great stuff.

Andrea: Like Saz’iso.

Joe: Like Saz’iso. 

And so we all met in Berlin to make “Singer of Tales.” We were recording the old fashioned way, you know, not putting people in isolation booths. It was a very warm and lovely sound and it was a pleasure to make. Not so easy, subsequently, to sell. 

Andrea: It was during the pandemic so it fell a little bit into that hole where he couldn’t tour. But it got great critical acclaim, great reviews.

Joe, you had Hannibal Records back in the 1980s which put out a lot of global traditional music. Compared to then, what are the market conditions and economic possibilities for this type of music?

Joe: I’m not an expert on the market today because I’m not as active in it, but it has changed dramatically. I know that during the late ‘80s, some of the labels that were involved in the creation of the “bin divider” called “world music”… if we sold three or four thousand of an LP, that was kind of disappointing. And there were records that sold ten, thirty, forty, a hundred thousand copies. Today, if you sell three or four thousand, it’s like, whoa, fantastic. 

I think the whole infrastructure that was set up in the late ‘80s under the “world music” heading — labels, concert series, review subheadings in newspapers, a whole column of “world music” reviews every weekend in a Sunday paper, radio shows — this whole thing is pretty much gone now. There are lots of reasons for that. But one of them is the inexorable spread of modern technology and recording and the fact that most traditional cultures are drawn to modernity. Hearing a traditional melody or a traditional singing style with a four on the floor machine drumbeat is kind of exciting and feels like, okay, we’re modern. And that isn’t going to be of that much interest to the kind of audiences that packed halls in the late ‘80s for a series of concerts on Fado.

But also, we find that the immigration issues in America, the jingoism and the difficulties with visas has made things harder. It used to be not that hard to get a visa for an African group to come play New York and then tour the rest of America. Now it costs a fortune just to apply.

Andrea: It went as far as Damir’s Serbian bass player not getting a visa to come to the U.K. tour during the launch of the last album. It’s become so difficult to move people around and across borders. But also getting attention for music from small countries is hard.

Joe: Just to add one more thing about Damir. Saz’iso represents one side of the kind of thing that interests Andrea and I: finding people who are completely immersed in a tradition and represent that tradition. As important as that is, something like what Damir represents, which is somebody from a younger generation with a grand connection with his family to the sevdah tradition —

Andrea: — and his research deep into the history and the repertoire and the songs —

Joe: — and yet he is able to compose new songs within the tradition without turning on the drum machine or the power chords on the guitar, to play within that history beautifully. And at the same time, he writes lyrics that are contemporary to the issues that confront Bosnia and young people today. I think that that is as important as paying homage and respect to the great artists like Donika Pecollari and Adriana Thanou, the two women singers of Saz’iso. Paying homage to them is very important, but helping Damir with his career and what he brings to the Balkans and to Sarajevo is something that was also very exciting for us. 

Any future music production plans?

Andrea: Having toured with Saz’iso for so many years and with more and more of their repertoire emerging, we would love to follow up with a new album. 

Joe: I’m afraid my book has kind of pushed everything to one side for the last few years. But eventually, there will be a pause and we hope to do more projects together.

Andrea: Including in the Balkans.

Joe: Particularly in the Balkans.

This article has been edited for length and clarity. The conversation was conducted in English.

Feature image: Courtesy of Joe Boyd and Andrea Goertler.

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