Cheers for the heads up about a book about them. Have added it to my wish list. It's a subject that I've dipped a toe in over the years but have yet to really get a grip of what is, an enormously complex subject. I've read bits on blogs, interviews, quotes etc about it - from 'both sides', but to have a good book to read (and it looks to be a well thought out one) is a real bonus. I've skim read the 'look inside' bit on amazon, and it looks a good, well thought out read potentially.
I don't know much about ethnomusicology, but it must be a truly fascinating area to immerse oneself in.
Things will get even more complex to decipher and work out when a member of the Sun City Girls is involved tho, which I reckon, is something that this book will try to delve into, but maybe miss its 'targets' when trying to understand the drive that Alan Bishop (head of Sublime Frequencies) has in excavating this stuff on his label. Alan Bishop was one third of arguably the most complex, difficult, and extraordinary bands that have ever been in my opinion. Impossible to categorize, and impossible to get a real grip on - they exist on the outer limits like no other band I've ever come across. They subvert anything and everything... they champion and destroy things in equal measure and nothing is off limits... but that doesn't mean that they are out to exploit for commercial gain in their plus 100 album output over the years. Far from it. They court the unsavoury, and have kept a dying idea about the avant garde very much alive.
I've been listening to The Sun City Girls for nearly 30 years... and I've never been able to work them out - I gave up trying to work them out very early on. They were a band who were deliberately obtuse and deliberately counter-intuitive at every turn. A punk band with a deep love for the sounds of other cultures... and have spent most of their lives investigating it - living amongst it, listening to it, promoting it - and being western explorers to it. But the band members hold this stuff close to their hearts - if they've strayed from correct remuneration to those that recorded these things originally occassionally ... then yes, that starts to be difficult as a potential buyer, but I don't think for one minute that that was in some way a strategy. They are not out to exploit in my opinion, but out to champion. It may go thru the prism of punk and the DIY aesthetic, but SCG have never towed a line in anything they do, and I for one, will always champion that.
and may aswell stick this up again...
<![CDATA[<a href="https://www.youtube.com/v/R_OQpW-uOPM?rel=0" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="bbc_link bbc_flash_disabled new_win">https://www.youtube.com/v/R_OQpW-uOPM?rel=0</a>]]>and as an edit: a song from Alan Bishops brilliant band, Invisible Hands... a band he got together while he was in Egypt during the uprising a few years back. Bishop is 60-70, and the band were in their twenties and heavily involved. They took 2 years recording it due to conditions. Wonderful album.
<![CDATA[<a href="https://www.youtube.com/v/A4QJI6FeIkw?rel=0" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="bbc_link bbc_flash_disabled new_win">https://www.youtube.com/v/A4QJI6FeIkw?rel=0</a>]]>
