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Music from the Marginsis a passionate defense of listening itself, and a celebration of how denied and devalued voices are often the ones most worth hearing.
Mass media is a crime scene. It steals marginalized voices, drowns imagination beneath commercial noise, turns art into spectacle, and weakens the direct human connections that give culture meaning.
In this provocative and deeply personal new work, acclaimed producer and field recordist Ian Brennan charts a radically different path. Part manifesto, part travelogue, part creative handbook, the book gathers decades of hard-earned insights from a life spent listening to people the world too often ignores.
Brennan offers a series of concise, evocative reflections on creativity, perception, and artistic practice, meditations designed not merely to be read but returned to again and again. Throughout are also compilations of extraordinary stories from his ongoing field-recording journeys, accompanied by striking photographs from Marilena Umuhoza Delli.
Travel from the mountains of Lesotho, where rival Famo music gangs have left trails of bloodshed, to Appalachian snake-handling churches preserving echoes of proto-Rockabilly. Encounter ancient hymns sung in Ethiopia’s nearly vanishedGe’ezlanguage, endangered musical traditions among minority communities in northern Laos, songs of survival from the Tigray people, voices from Kiribati as rising seas threaten their entire nation, and the haunting sounds of Mississippi’s infamous Parchman Prison.
“Most music books are ivory tower musings or fanboy indulgences. Ian Brennan's books are among the few that are brave, challenging and important.”
—Michel Faber, author of LISTEN: On Music, Sound & Us and the novel, Under the Skin
“Music is one of the best doors into a culture and Ian Brennan has opened them in more far-off corners than anyone. He writes of the people he meets and their music with vivid directness and great generosity of spirit.”
—Grammy-nominated producer, Joe Boyd (Nick Drake, Richard & Linda Thompson, Pink Floyd) and author of And the Roots of Rhythm Remain and White Bicycles.
“An activist and ambassador for the overlooked and under-appreciated musicians of the world. Brennan is an important counter-culture figure of our time. His writing, like his productions deserve a spotlight.”
—Ted Hughes, award winning poet