Marisa Anderson’s mixtape

Join Jennifer Lucy Allan to delve into the latest exclusive Late Junction mixtape from American guitarist, composer and researcher Marisa Anderson.

Anderson’s work looks to ‘channel the history’ of the guitar and incorporate and ‘stretch’ traditions present both in the American canon and worldwide. Her approach encompasses a wide variety of musical modes, from minimalism, electronic music, drone and 20th century classical music to compositions based on blues, jazz, gospel and country genres. We’ll hear sounds that have shaped her musical imagination and listening life as well as gain a unique insight into her latest work, ‘The Anthology of UnAmerican Folk Music’. Assembled from a collection of nearly one thousand songs that failed to make it into anthologies of acclaimed polymath Harry Smith, Anderson covers and embellishes this material to create a dialogue between herself and the recordings, recontextualising their historical significance for a modern audience.

Elsewhere, there’s the ‘feral’ wailing of Orcutt Shelley Miller and David Yow as they take a Captain Beefheart classic to task; the saintly sounds of the ever-shifting Glasgow collective Uzganc Choir; and a rushing wall of deftly-intricate sounds from Bolivian-American duo Los Thutanaka.

Produced by Alex Yates
A Reduced Listening production for BBC Radio 3