
Basho helped invent the playing style known as American primitive, but his music was nearly forgotten after his death. Then a few years ago, a trove of never-before-heard recordings suddenly surfaced.
By Joel Rose
A few years ago, filmmaker Liam Barker was at work on the film that would become his 2015 documentary Voice of the Eagle: The Enigma of Robbie Basho. Barker’s subject was the late guitarist who (along with figures like John Fahey and Leo Kottke) helped invent the acoustic style known as American primitive, and he kept hearing about a collection of the artist’s personal recordings that had seemingly been lost after his death in 1986. That’s how the director found himself in a ramshackle house in South Carolina, surrounded by stacks of old newspaper and animal excrement.
“When I went there, it was kind of like something out of a horror film,” Barker says. “It was like, you know, unbelievable filth all around.”
But to his amazement, Barker found exactly what he was looking for: box after box of magnetic reel-to-reel tapes, still sealed. “Miraculously, some of these recordings sound like they were recorded yesterday,” he says.
Now, the personal recordings stashed in those boxes are being released for the first time in a five-disc set called Song of the Avatars: The Lost Master Tapes. [ . . . ]
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