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The ‘world’ before globalisation: Moroccan elements in The Incredible String Band's music

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2011

Oliver Lovesey
Oliver Lovesey
Affiliation:
University of British Columbia, Okanagan Campus, Kelowna, BC, Canada. E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

Before the advent of ‘world’ music in the culture of globalisation, The Incredible String Band in the 1960s added elements of Moroccan and other international music into their work. In the context of an exploration of the band's journey to the east, this article argues that the ISB's ‘exotic’ sounds became the aural signifier of the psychedelic, and that the ISB's aesthetic of appropriation veered from fetishisation, and also homage and parody, to ritualised adaptation. The ISB's pre-‘world’ use of international music was self-consciously naive, but it may have enabled later modes of cultural appropriation.

Type
Articles
Information
Popular Music , Volume 30 , Issue 1 , January 2011 , pp. 127 - 143
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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Discography

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The Incredible String Band, The Chelsea Sessions 1967. Pig's Whisker Music, PWMD5003. 1997Google Scholar
The Incredible String Band, The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter. Elektra/Hannibal Records, HNCD 4421. 1968Google Scholar
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The Incredible String Band, Wee Tam & The Big Huge. Elektra/Hannibal Records, HNCD 4802. 1968Google Scholar
The Incredible String Band, ‘Willow Pattern’, BBC Radio 1 Live in Concert [1971/72]. BBC Worldwide Music, Strange Fruit, SFRSCD 033. 1997Google Scholar
The Incredible String Band, The 5000 Spirits or the Layers of the Onion. Elektra/Hannibal Records, HNCD 4438. 1967Google Scholar
The Incredible String Band, Nebulous Nearnesses. Amoeba Recordings, AR002. 2004Google Scholar
The Master Musicians of Joujouka, Joujouka Black Eyes. Blue Moon, PG 1008. 2003Google Scholar
Williamson, Robin, The Iron Stone. ECM, 1969 9876441. 2006Google Scholar
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Robin Williamson and His Merry Band, Journey's Edge. Flying Fish Records. 1977Google Scholar