A Conversation with Joe Boyd

For this week’s episode of Notes from the World, we had the great pleasure of speaking with the United States-born, British-based record producer Joe Boyd, who has helmed some of the most important recordings of some of the most influential musicians of the last sixty years, including Nick Drake, Pink Floyd, Richard and Linda Thompson, Vashti Bunyan, Toots and the Maytals and R.E.M. He is also the author of two fascinating books, 2017’s White Bicycles: Making Music in the 1960s and this year’s And the Roots of Rhythm Remain: A Journey Through Global Music. Our conversation ranged from the great significance of the Haitian Revolution in the development of music in the United State to examining the musical bouillabaisse that is New Orleans to looking at the curious relationship between the great purveyor of Congolese rumba and soukous music Franco and the dictator Mobutu Sese Seko to the missing link between the music of Nick Drake and João Gilberto.