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thought of kora, harp, bodhran and talking drum together. Peter [Gabriel] was very supportive. Martin Russell and Jo Bruce put together the rhythms and I invited musicians like James McNally, who was big on the London Irish scene. Iarla O’Lionaird came from nowhere, as did Ronan Browne, and I brought over my mates from Baaba’s band. I did several years research before I made the record. I didn’t know if it would work, and I knew I wanted to pass the baton after the first album.”
y the time the first Afro Celt Sound System, Volume 1: Sound Magic, arrived in 1996, there was already an established scene of so-called world fusion bands. Mouth Music had pioneered the African-Celtic connec- tion, while Fun-da-Mental and Transglobal Under- ground were both quite well known. But the new band vaulted pretty much to the front of the pack.
“Punk was about breaking down barriers and that was the basis of Afro Celt Sound System. Plenty of us came from that and the very first Womad festival reflected that. That London scene made a huge contribution to what’s called world music. So did every city. There’s nothing more natural than musicians of all cul- tures working together.”
It worked, and sales far exceeded most expectations. The label expected to shift perhaps 35,000 copies, and in the end it sold an impressive 250,000.
“The only people not surprised were the Irish contingent,” Emmerson laughs. “James and Iarla thought it could be huge. I thought we’d probably play the alternative stage at hippie festi- vals, but before we knew it we were playing the main stage at rock festivals.”
Things looked incredibly bright, but then everything dimmed when Jo Bruce – the son of bassist Jack – died very young follow- ing an asthma attack.
“It was terrible when Jo died, it was touch and go whether we’d continue; the band was volatile anyway. Sinead O’Connor was one reason we kept going, because of the lyric she wrote for Release. In fact, that second album received a Grammy nomination, and one of the things that hurt was no-one commented on it.”
In America, though, Afro Celt Sound System were never viewed as a world music band, per se, “and we were being reviewed alongside the Beta Band. We weren’t put into a ghetto, we were played next to mainstream bands. We performed When You’re Falling (the track they did with Peter Gabriel on vocals) on television and the video was set to go into heavy rotation on MTV. We pulled it when 9/11 happened.”
Circumstances scuppered them becoming a massive attraction in the US. But after that they did manage to put their own foot in it, by changing the band name, if only for one album, to Afro Celts. It was a mistake, as Emmerson admits, saying “it was classic management tinkering. It was a ridiculous idea. We just wanted to make music. I was party to it, but then everyone was.”
It didn’t work, and by 2005, for their fifth album, they were Afro Celt Sound System once more. Since then there have been no new recordings, only a compilation two years ago, although the band still plays live and time in the studio at some point hasn’t been ruled out.
But Emmerson has also been busy with his newest baby, The
Imagined Village, named for the excellent book by Georgina Boyes. The idea was dreamed up during conversations with fRoots editor Ian Anderson as far back as 2000, and took shape at a time when there were numerous discussions about exactly what it meant to be English in the 21st Century. It wasn’t as giant a step for Emmerson as many might imagine. In his youth he’d been a denizen of folk clubs, and as one of Scritti Politti, a regular visitor to Cecil Sharp House to see Martin Carthy perform.
Mark one of the band included a pair of Carthys, along with Billy Bragg, Chris Wood, Sheila Chandra, Benjamin Zephaniah, and others, all featured on the eponymous debut. Released to general- ly excellent reviews, Emmerson admits that “I’d be the first to say it’s not an easy album, and I didn’t think the press would get it. There were so many producers on that album. I got all the credit but it was a disparate bunch. It was an experiment.”
Emmerson deserves the credit, though. He was an instigator, the one who put everything together and developed the identity of The Imagined Village. In that incarnation, though, it wasn’t sus- tainable; people had too many other commitments. And, as he admits “we didn’t have a band,” it was a collection of individuals who’d come together for the project. To sustain it, there had to be a nucleus, and so the band came into existence. It included Carthy
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