The late Harry Everett Smith was a restless spirit, credited as an artist, experimental filmmaker, bohemian, mystic, hoarder, student of anthropology and a Neo-Gnostic bishop, he was also a musicologist and avid collector. Beyond his celebrated 1952 Anthology of American Folk Music, he left behind a private collection of nearly a thousand records — and it’s this trove that Portland, Oregon-based guitarist Marisa Anderson had the good fortune to explore, with the idea of focusing on reinterpreting music from places the United States has been in conflict with since 1970. Her new album, The Anthology of UnAmerican Folk Music, feels like a very open-armed project and a gesture of connecting that could hardly be better timed.
Anderson’s approach to the music documented was to listen deeply to the pieces she selected for this volume and, through a process of ‘trial and error’, adapt them to her own instrumentation. Reading the generous album notes, it seems the process was as fun as it was painstaking, with a clear love for the music being studied coming through on the finished songs. Rabāba is an example that immediately jumps out; a piece about an escaping red cow, taken from a 1968 tanbūra (a bowl lyre) recording on the borders of Sudan and Eritrea. Anderson plays the requinto jarocho, tres cubano and electric guitar on this one, conjuring a campfire vibe with a tight refrain on the requinto and percussive backing on the tres. The sound is minimalist, but quite urgent, with the sharp riff and odd drone notes in the background giving it a secretive, ceremonial character.
Perhaps more typical of Anderson’s usual style is the Pakistani tune Hamd, taken from an elaborate, ten-brother-strong recording of vocal harmonies, flute, percussion, harmoniums, and tanpura (a plucked, four-string instrument). Anderson’s version sees a clean electric guitar doing most of the work, with accordion and faint acoustic guitar strums providing the background. What begins as a pretty loose melody develops as the song does until a very beautiful meditative melody emerges at the halfway point. Stunning.
Elsewhere and full of vim is Sarvi Simin, a piece from the Soviet Union that celebrates the rubob, “the generic name of a variety of string pizzicato instruments that differ in the number of strings and the form of the body”. Here, the electric guitar traces a muscular, mercurial melody, while the accordion adds pulsing notes. Anderson shares in the notes that the music didn’t feel complete until she brought in the violin of Gisela Rodríguez Fernández, and after listening, you understand the point. The bowed notes add real fluidity to a sturdy piece of music and really light a fire under the tune.
While Anderson is, as she states, “a musician, not an ethnomusicologist, or an anthropologist,” she is an artist with a deep interest in music, its craft and its history. The Anthology of UnAmerican Folk Music is, of course, a project as much about people around the world and their connection to each other as it is about the music itself. She shares, “I am interested in how people and music move across the world, how war, migration, nomadism, colonization and contemporary and historical economic dynamics affect music and musicians. What is the musical relationship of people to place? How is that relationship altered when shifting borders or global conflicts curtail movement or force migration into or away from a place? What do we carry with us when we leave home, and what do we bring home from faraway places?”
The Anthology of UnAmerican Folk Music is pointed, too in that it focuses on places the United States has been in conflict with since 1970, Anderson asks: “Who are the people we’ve been told in our lifetimes are ‘unamerican?’ What have we lost or been denied access to in the fallout from that label?” Given the current climate and where Anderson is based, these reinterpretations could easily have carried a charge of anxiety or even anger; instead, the open-armed gesture wins out. The music here is beautifully studied and played, the clear love for the source material coming through in every interpretation. As the first volume of what is hopefully an ongoing project, it’s a resounding success — and one that could hardly be better timed.
The Anthology of UnAmerican Folk Music (May 22nd, 2026) Thrill Jockey
A portion of the album’s proceeds will go to Tamizdat, supporting international cultural mobility for artists.