Across the Great Divide

simon emerson, chief cook and bottlewasher with The Afro Celt Sound System, sees roots music in clearly defined, but broad terms, and favours a perspective that?s truly a ?come-all-ye? one.
?Roots music means to me music that comes from a specific indigenous area,? he offers, ?so I would include jungle, and hip-hop in the Bronx, in relationship to where I live in East London as roots music. Massive Attack play the roots music of Bristol and the West Coast of England. I don?t necessarily define it as something that goes with drinking real ale, or sitting around in Aran jumpers.?
One of Emerson?s biggest gripes is with the chasm between the huge public interest in roots, and what he sees as the media?s apathy towards it. Despite the live successes of The Afro Celt Sound System, (as well as their not inconsiderable sales of 130,000 copies of their debut album), they still struggle to get the skimpiest of print and TV media attention.
?There?s a huge cynicism among the press about world music,? he avers, ?and I don?t think there?s been a huge explosion in interest among journalists. The Afro Celts haven?t done a single interview in any of the British rock press, and won?t, because the commissioning editors have no interest in covering world music because they consider it to be unfashionable. Nonetheless, I know that The Prodigy love Sheila Chandra, and Nusrat Fati Ali Khan has a huge following.?
It?s this fractured media representation of roots music that frustrates Emerson most.
?There are huge differences between the way roots music is represented and the way that people receive it,? he avows. ?I think there?s a huge reaction against roots in the media, and commissioning editors in most British music papers are completely cynical about what they commission and what they write about. Yet acoustic music is on the way back, and The Afro Celts played at the Cambridge Folk Festival this summer and we went down incredibly well, and played comfortably on the same bill as Sharon Shannon and a whole spectrum of English folk musicians. Equally we played at hardcore techno raves too. We played after Skunk Anansie at the Lowlands Festival in Holland and went down brilliantly, so definitely there?s a return to something that?s more organic.?
The colour-by-numbers marketing principles that the media have clung to in the past are long outdated, according to Emerson, and nowhere is it more evident than in the resurgence in roots music.
?Perameters that used to define people?s musical taste,? he offers, ?like age, and social class and fashion and regionalism, have disappeared. The world is shrinking and expanding at the same time. It?s shrinking in that it?s easier to get hold of the music, and it?s expanding in that people can access so much more now. But this is rarely reflected in record company strategy and we?ve had incredible difficulties convincing our record company that we?re more than just an eccentric flash in the pan.?
Maybe it?s this very resistance among the corporate bods to roots that nurtures its development outside the confines of mainstream rock and pop though.
?I think that what?s great about roots music is that it is committed to the margins, yeah,? Emerson agrees, ?and it?s not attempting to do anything else. One of the interesting things that?s happened in England and in Ireland is that the musicians, who in the ?60s were all going to India and Tibet, leaving their own roots behind and looking to the East, are now looking under their own feet and taking an interest in their own musical roots. I mean, there?s a massive interest now in Celtic music, and for me the last outpost of world music is probably English folk music! I was brought up with it and I think it?s wonderful and long overdue for re-discovering!?
Emerson views the rehabilitation of Irish music, in particular, with optimism, and suggests that it illustrates some creative thinking among the marketing gurus of the industry.
?What?s happening in Ireland is hugely encouraging,? he insists, ?and people like Michael McGoldrick (a flautist who?s recently released his debut solo album) have been brought up with dance music and drum ?n? bass. So he?s as happy with that as he is playing traditional stuff. It?s also true of Eliza Carthy, who?s the daughter of Martin Carthy and Norma Waterson, two of the stalwarts of the English folk scene.?
Emerson is quick to point out the socio-political influences on roots music interest too. All music must be contextualised, and he considers roots music?s explosion to be part of a wider consciousness-raising phenomenon in recent years.
?I think that among a lot of people now the return to roots music is associated with a rise in things like green politics and the rejection of crap mass consumerist culture,? he suggests. ?People are so open to being transformed and transported by a sean nss song from Iarla O?Lionaird, who?s a magician. I think that alternative culture and altenative spirituality is very much tied in with that, and again, that?s something that lies outside the marketing strategies of record companies.? n