American guitarist Marisa Anderson has released a new album, The Anthology of UnAmerican Folk Music, on Thrill Jockey, drawing on the archives of famed collector Harry Smith. The album features reinterpretations of folk tunes from Southeast Asia, Soviet Russia, and the Islamic and Arabic worlds, regions shaped by major US conflicts since Anderson's birth in 1970.
Anderson gained access to Smith's shuttered archives in 2023, discovering hours of non-American music. She learned to perform and share these compositions, resulting in nine tracks that blend tradition and improvisation. The opener, Quodlibet, is a minor-key medley of Uzbek tunes originally played on the dambura, with Anderson adding bluegrass techniques to compensate for her inability to play quarter-tones on guitar.
Highlights include Hamd, a qawwali vocal tune rendered with stacked guitar layers, and Sarvi Simin, a shimmering tune from Soviet-era Afghanistan featuring violinist Gisela Rodríguez Fernández. On Zar, a Yemeni tune meant to exorcise evil spirits, Anderson and Fernández constantly rearrange five notes without repetition. Dark ambient moods emerge in Pair of Duduk, where Anderson shifts Armenian woodwind drones to reverb-heavy guitar and bassy synths.
Anderson's liner notes explore what is lost and found in translating these compositions, questioning the porous nature of musical cultures. The album also includes Whistle Song, a Vietnamese tune transferred from bamboo flutes to electric piano, highlighting its closeness to minimalism.
