There Is No Eye: Music For Photographs Compiled (and photographed) by John Cohen

“There is no eye, there is only a series of mouths… Long live the mouths.” So wrote Bob Dylan; and so photographer, filmmaker, musician and field-recorder John Cohen says to us – by way of explaining the idea behind this wonderful collection of disparate but beautifully interconnected folk music. Ranging from the floorboard-stomping gospel of Harlem to the blues-fertile silt of the American South, from the Appalachian outback to the gypsy encampments of Scotland, from Ugandan-tinctured guitar-folk to cigarette-stained beat-poetry – capturing planet-class performances from 1947 through to 2001 – Cohen celebrates a century’s worth of mouths, so to speak, capturing both their sound and each relevant folk-tradition context with immaculate loving care.

Cohen spent his life photographing musicians, and this purports to be an aural document, in response to Dylan’s assertion that there is “no eye.” However, Like Harry Smith’s 1952 Anthology Of American Folk Music before it (arguably the definitive collection of early American recordings), also on Smithsonian/Folkways, …No Eye is beautifully presented – each song arrives with a few (amazing) photographs and a brief illustrative tale. Near-immortals (Muddy Waters; Woody Guthrie, Dylan himself) rub shoulders with lesser-known folk legends and local talents Cohen located through tireless exploration and grassroots music-community word of mouth – and all are revealed to be equally interesting, precious and relevant. It’s like the finest – and most meritocratic – down-home dinner party you’ve ever attended.