Obit: John Storm Roberts, world music scholar

Subject: RE: Obit: John Storm Roberts, world music scholar
From: GUEST,Bob Coltman
Date: 11 Dec 09 - 05:46 PM

A world music pioneer and helpful and attentive to me back in the 80s when I was nearly unable to find out about some difficult info from anyone else.

I'll miss John. He ought to have been more widely appreciated than he was.

Bob Coltman

Subject: RE: Obit: John Storm Roberts, world music scholar
From: GUEST,999
Date: 11 Dec 09 - 01:44 AM

LOL in a sad way. Great obit. RIP.

Subject: Obit: John Storm Roberts, world music scholar
From: Desert Dancer
Date: 11 Dec 09 - 01:37 AM

Only to stir the pot, and with good humor, I would direct your attention to the final three paragraphs of this story (once you've absorbed the rest...)

RIP.

~ Becky in Tucson

John Storm Roberts, World-Music Scholar, Dies at 73

By MARGALIT FOX
New York Times, December 10, 2009

John Storm Roberts, an English-born writer, record producer and independent scholar whose work explored the rich, varied and often surprising ways in which the popular music of Africa and Latin America informed that of the United States, died on Nov. 29 in Kingston, N.Y. He was 73 and lived in Kingston.

The cause was complications of a blood clot, his wife, Anne Needham, said.

Long before the term was bandied about, Mr. Roberts was listening to, seeking out and reporting on what is now called world music. He wrote several seminal books on the subject for a general readership, most notably "Black Music of Two Worlds" (Praeger, 1972) and "The Latin Tinge: The Impact of Latin American Music on the United States" (Oxford University, 1979).

"Black Music of Two Worlds" examines the cross-pollination — in both directions — between Africa and the Americas, from the influence of African music on jazz, blues, salsa and samba to the popularity in Nigeria and Zaire of American artists like James Brown and Jimi Hendrix.

In writing the book, Mr. Roberts sought to connect a diffuse web of existing studies by ethnomusicologists. The studies typically appraised local musical traditions while ignoring the reach of Africa as a whole.

"It was like a landscape with a large number of artesian wells, and nothing linking them," he told The New York Times in 1992. "And I conceived of 'Black Music of Two Worlds' being more like canals joining."

In "The Latin Tinge," Mr. Roberts trained his ear on the influence of musical forms like tango, rumba, mambo and salsa on a wide range of American pop styles, among them ragtime, Tin Pan Alley, rhythm and blues, jazz, country and rock.

Reviewing the book in The New York Times Book Review, Robert Palmer called it a "painstaking, pioneering" work, adding: " 'The Latin Tinge' is an important addition to the literature of American music."

John Anthony Storm Roberts was born in London on Feb. 24, 1936. His father, an accountant who often traveled abroad on business, brought him records that were then scarcely available in England: jazz and blues from the United States, Brazilian music by way of Portugal and much else. By the time he was in his early teens, John was irretrievably mesmerized by the sounds that leapt from his turntable.

A polyglot who came to speak more than half a dozen languages, including Swahili, Mr. Roberts received a bachelor's degree in modern languages from Oxford University. In the mid-1960s he spent several years in Kenya as a reporter and editor on The East African Standard, a regional newspaper. Returning to London, he was a radio producer with the BBC World Service.

Mr. Roberts moved to the United States in 1970, becoming an editor on the periodical Africa Report. He was later a freelance journalist, contributing articles on world music to The Village Voice and other publications.

In the early 1980s, Mr. Roberts and Ms. Needham started Original Music, a mail-order company that distributed world-music books and records. In those pre-Internet days, Americans outside big cities found these almost as hard to come by as young Mr. Roberts had in postwar England.

In business for nearly two decades, Original Music also released many well-received albums of its own. Among them are "The Sound of Kinshasa," featuring Zairian guitar music; "Africa Dances," an anthology of music from more than a dozen countries; and "Songs the Swahili Sing," devoted to the music of Kenya, an aural kaleidoscope of African, Arab and Indian sounds.

Mr. Roberts's first marriage, to Jane Lloyd, ended in divorce. Besides Ms. Needham, whom he married in 1981, he is survived by two children from his first marriage, Stephen and Alice Roberts; three stepchildren, Melissa, Elizabeth and Stephen Keiper; two grandchildren; and three step-grandchildren.

His other books include "Latin Jazz: The First of the Fusions, 1880s to Today" (Schirmer, 1999) and "A Land Full of People: Life in Kenya Today" (Praeger, 1968).

In choosing what to release on the Original Music label, Mr. Roberts did not disdain modern, popular numbers: by his lights, a song simply had to be good. This distinguished him from musicological purists who, in ceaseless quest for the authentic, recorded only material seemingly untouched by modernity.

In an interview with The Los Angeles Times in 1987, Mr. Roberts illuminated his selection process.

"I don't care how esoteric it is, but it's got to be terrific," he said. "Not this 'you-can't-hear-it-and-it's-terribly-performed-but-it's-really-very-interesting-because-it's-the-only-winkle-gathering-song-to-come-out-of-southeastern-Sussex' attitude."