53f Village System
Simon Emmerson is the brains behind Afro Celt Sound System, The Imagined Village and a considerable amount of other popular ethnobopping. Chris Nickson hears the word on the footpath…
I
f you don’t know Simon Emmerson, then you haven’t been paying any attention over the last three decades. As part of Working Week, Afro Celt Sound System and most recently The
Imagined Village, he’s made some of the most interesting, boundary-pushing music to have come along, while as a producer he’s helped artists like Baaba Maal and Manu Dibango define their sound. It all began at the end of the ’70s.
“I was coming out of punk,” Emmer- son recalls. “I’d been in Scritti Politti, I was working in a jazz shop and got into the Brazilian and African stuff, and I was part of the whole soul boy culture. We had a band called Weekend, and we were trying to emulate the twin guitars of African music. Then came Working Week, and both Robert Wyatt and Tracey Thorn got involved. Venceremos was a big under-
ground track, DJ Paul Murphy used to play it. Working Week were very successful, we toured a lot, we had a massive following in Germany. It was a shock to be told it was world music.”
Back in those days, though, you
wouldn’t have found Simon Emmerson’s name anywhere. He was known as Simon Booth. From Working Week he went on two produce two Acid Jazz albums, and that led him to produce African artists.
“Manu Dibango liked those albums. There was a connection between the underground London scene and world music, and we saw Manu as a godfather.” He worked with Manu “in the early ’90s, but the company went bankrupt and it looked like I wouldn’t get paid. I didn’t have any work, then I got a call asking me to go to Senegal and work with Baaba Maal.”
When there, they ended up in the stu- dio during a power cut, and the musicians kept on playing acoustically, the piece that became Lam Tooro. When power returned, “I recorded it with Baaba just singing. That track became the basis of Afro Celt Sound System. I heard music I was familiar with, it was like Irish music.” Although he’d work with Maal again – Emmerson produced the Grammy-nominated Firin’ In Fouta – he had fresh fields to conquer.
“The first Afro Celts record was a col- lection,” he remembers. “I’d envisaged three records, each with a guest produc- er. I had no Irish credentials; I wanted Donal Lunny to produce one of them.” Emmerson had been involved in record- ing weeks at Real World studios in Wilt- shire, where musicians from different backgrounds came together to experi- ment, and loved the place. “I just
Photo: Judith Burrows
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