In this fluidly written book, researcher/musician/producer Samuel Charters gathers detailed descriptions of his travels in search of music. Considering Charter's lifelong interest in Blues music and his extensive work on the subject, it is no surprise that the journeys narrated in the book focus on African musical traditions and their ramifications throughout the Americas.
It was the search for the roots of Blues music that led the author to Africa in the mid-1970s on a voyage described in the opening chapter of the book. Charters writes that the source of Blues music was to be found somewhere else but his time in Africa made him aware of the continent's complex gathering of cultures, reflected by American musical traditions. It was in Gambia that Charters met the griot singer Alhaji Fabala Kanuteh who performed a song that can be considered a musical landmark of the diaspora, tracing the routes of slavery from Africa to America. The translated lyrics of the song are reproduced in the book (pp. 10–16), revealing historical accuracy and detail. In many senses, the song anticipates the book's structure: each chapter represents a destination point of the great Atlantic crossing imposed on the slaves, portraying the musical traditions originated by the encounter of African and regional cultures all over the American continent.
The style of the writing indicates that Charters addresses a broader public, reaching far beyond the scholarly or even musical fields. On the one hand, the book is a travel journal full of landscape descriptions, poetic comparisons and impressions; on the other hand there is a great amount of valuable musical, historical and geographical information on the cities and countries visited. The researcher's perception is always present, but the traveller's impressions often take over the writing; in Charters' book, incidents regarding hotels, guides and transportation are narrated as part of the usual stages of academic field research, including the first insights into the subject of study, preliminary research and the actual fieldwork. The result is a text that is both a personal and academic account of an ethnomusicologist's experiences, making the reader wonder if it is even possible to sustain such a distinction. Charters' text is always direct and simply formulated. That also can be said of the style through which the musical information is described, which avoids technical terms and translates musical jargon into ordinary written English without any loss of technical precision.
From an ethnomusicology point of view, the book covers a wide range of subjects: from the expected Blues and Jazz traditions to a number of other African-rooted musical styles found throughout the Americas such as the North American Spirituals and Gospel music, Trinidad's Calypso, Jamaican Reggae, the Cuban musical universe and the rhythms of Brazilian Carnival, to name just a few examples. Specialists on these musical traditions may find occasional misspellings and inaccuracies but nothing that compromises the value of the musical information, always presented within a broader cultural, social and historical framework.
One of the great merits of this book is offering the readers (especially the ones outside the scholarly/musical world) an account of ethnomusicological research beyond its usual academic products such as papers, articles and the like. So much of a researcher's experience is left out of such writings which are strictly limited to academic knowledge. A very good example can be found in the second chapter of the book, describing a trip to the Canary Islands in search of the possible African roots of the Canario dance and music tradition. Charters' initial hypothesis, triggered when he heard a radio broadcast of the Spanish composer Gaspar Sanz's ‘Canarios’ for guitar, was not proved by his later field research. Nevertheless, what might have been considered an academic fiasco is turned into an insightful and rich description of the islands' cultural history, including their participation in the African slave trade, as well as a glimpse into their current traditional music scene.
Reading Charter's book, even an experienced researcher may find precious tips on how to articulate sources and conduct fieldwork. The author's experience in finding and interviewing local musicians and making profitable use of literary and historical sources can be useful for the academic public as well as providing a pleasant reading experience for the non-specialist.
