Burundi Beat and Treated Trumpet

It would have been the summer of 1980. This is one of those moments I think we all have, when a piece of music becomes rooted in a specific time and place.

The music was “Charm (Over Burundi Cloud) by Jon Hassell and Brian Eno. A whole side of an album made up of authentic Burundi beat with Hassell’s heavily treated trumpet shifting over it. The whole album evokes strong images of Africa and of a world music which Hassell has plenty of reason to claim that he invented.  Hassell had been experimenting with this music – he called it Fourth World Music – since the mid 1970s. He was an early pioneer of tribal musics  merged with electronics and jazz. His trumpet sound draws on Miles Davis at his breathiest together with Indian phrasings that Hassell learnt when he trained with Indian raga singer Pandit Pran Nath. It was a spectacularly original mix. Hassell guested on music by Talking Heads, David Byrne and David Sylvian.

But the first time I heard him was on this album. It was a collaboration with Brian Eno, one of my favourite musical innovators. I had bought the album when it came out and been spell-bound by it.

Here I was, at the end of my first year at university. I had spent the year in Halls of Residence in the suburbs of Liverpool. (McNair Hall in Mossley Hill to be precise). I was one of the last to leave, as I waited for my father to collect me with all of my belongings to take back to my family home in the Midlands for the summer.

I had the whole floor of the building to myself. I put on the album loud and opened my door to the corridor. The music drifted and swirled through the building, like heat haze across a desert. Each note would be fixed forever in this setting, this ambience, the feelings of closure on one scene of my life as I moved out of the room that had been my first place of independence. I can hear it now, and can see that location as if it were before me right in this moment.

Over the years I carried on buying Jon Hassell’s music – as guest and host of albums over the years.  I still love his distinctive sound and the way that he has forged out his own musical world. His music lent itself beautifully to the world of remixing and digital technology. Right up to his most recent album “Last Night the Moon Came Dropping its Clothes in the Street” (which is a beautiful album title), which appeared on ECM records, he has continued to innovate and fill me with a sense of wonder.

It all began back then with the first “Possible Musics” album and that perfect setting for playing it loud and indulging totally in the sound. I am so glad my father was caught in traffic and arrived a bit late that day!

Also published on Medium.