Marathon Interview: Tom Pryor, National Geographic Online
2006-11-01 13:47:18.727

Story by: Katie Reedy
Despite the absence of pop-heroine Nina Persson of the Cardigans, one of Tuesday's first panels, Bridging the Gap: The United Nations of Music, soldiered on in true seat-of-the-pants style, with the rest of the panel of foreign-music industry insiders compensating for Persson's presence by offering a host of interesting and often humorous insights into the scheming and planning that goes into "breaking" a foreign band in the United States. We were informed, for instance, of the plight of the many Chinese and Japanese bands who sell out stadiums in their home markets only to be obliged to sleep in a van for two months in the U.S. European industry figures stressed the importance of visas, which are often frantically obtained hours before a flight bound for Yankee shores, the destructive force of language barriers and the ultimate importance of a Super Bowl commercial endorsement or successful club remix.
We caught up with the moderator of the panel, Tom Pryor, who edits Nationalgeographic.com's World Music section, to find out why world music is relevant to college radio and new music.

CMJ: One might think that college music and world music wouldn't have much in common. Do you think this is true?

Pryor: Not really. Let me tell you a story about how I got into world music. I got into world music because of the Clash, ok? The Clash put out that wonderful record called Sandinista in 1980, and there's all sorts of crazy rhythms-you know, beyond reggae and dub. There's all sorts of Latin stuff... And I think that when I was a kid in the '80s, in the post-punk era, which is the same era that CMJ comes out of, there was a lot of musical experimentation with non-Western sounds. And it's still out there, and I think that in some ways "world music" is the real alternative music or one of the real alternative musics. There are great groups. There are guitar bands, for instance, Amadou and Mariam, who work with Manu Chao. There's Tinariwen, who're this amazing group from Northern Mali. They sound like Television! They do. A friend of mine joked that their first record sounded like African Velvet Underground and their second like Television. So there are a lot of intersections between this broad term of "new music" and world music. And even if it's traditional, if you haven't heard it before, it's still new... I just came from a conference in Spain called Womex, which is a big world music expo we have every year, and there was a great band from Colombia there called Aterciopelados. Aterciopelados are superstars in Colombia and Latin America- they're alternative rock, but in Spanish... They're one of my favorite bands.

CMJ: Is there anyone playing that you're excited to see, either within your "beat" or in general?

Pryor: Who am I excited to see... There's a band called Extra Golden, and they are part Kenyan, part American. They're on Thrill Jockey, and their management contacted me; I don't know if they're officially playing a showcase, or they're just going to be around, but they're going to be playing a show. And I'm dying to see them because I've been down in D.C. for the last couple of months, and I haven't been to a lot of good shows in New York. And I didn't wanna miss these guys. Two of the guys are from D.C., and the other two are from Kenya, and they make beautiful music and I wanna go see them.

CMJ: Have you been involved with Marathon before?

Pryor: It's my first time working the Marathon. I've come as guest many times before. As a music journalist who lives in New York, you can't not. Although in recent years I haven't been able to so much because it coincides with Womex, which is, for me, the beat that I cover. And there is so much world music in New York that crosses boundaries. Like, I just got approached by some guys from Nomadic Wax, who're a great label based in New York who do African hip-hop and bring African hip-hop here. And of course they're going to come, because this straddles two of the worlds that they live in.

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