Eric Isaacson (the founder of the inspirational Mississippi Records label and shop) is touring his latest project, an audio/visual show called A People's History of Music.
Ready yourselves for a presentation of around 90-100 mins (more of an engaging performance/screening rather than academic lecture), which charts a moving and vital people's history of underground musical resistance.
Making wide, bold swings while always coming back to intricate and strange details, this show covers music from Ethiopia, Slovenia, Kenya, the USA and beyond, while drawing on Eric’s colourfully described, personal experiences of the fascist creep. It's a whirlwind presentation of archival film, sound clips and images that avoids political grandstanding, instead emphasizing vital anti-authoritarian stories of resistance through samizdat music distribution.
The Cramps, Jimmie Rodgers (The Yodeling Brakeman), Kipsigis Tribal Musicians, Sting, Scientologists, Ethiopian pop stars, Portland punks, Russian bootleggers, Spotify, Octopus, The Beatles, The Germs, African cowboys and Techno Fascists are some of the characters who will be discussed.
Eric is known for his humbly comical, singular style and for his ability to revitalize audiences through digging up buried treasures from the global music underground. He has an intuitive and captivating way of finding the kinks, idiosyncrasies and soulful stories in the histories of under-acknowledged punk, gospel, soul, blues and roots based music from around the world. Eric has previously constructed and internationally toured three other mind-altering presentations, but never one as timely as this — a must-experience sampling of audio and visual folk art.
The tour travels around Ireland and the UK and Europe. The programme and tour is a heartfelt response that pays tribute to the messages, wonder and spirit that gets embedded into music. It's a show & tell revealing how music and its players, mechanisms and audiences respond when political powers become misaligned, corrupted and sick. There are also offbeat but meaningful tangential stories, bizzaro clips and examples of the deluded attempts of power-obsessed-leaders to use music as propaganda. Eric ensures things don't get preachy and as the show progresses we never know what's going to happen next!
ERIC ISAACSON BIO:
Eric Isaacson is the founder of Mississippi Records and many other small esoteric record labels such as Cairo, Pyramid and Velvet Ramp. Over the past twenty- three years he's released over 390 records and 165 mixtapes of DIY music from around the world. This catalog includes punk, African guitar griots, Greek criminal underground music, deep country blues, Gospel, Folk, Estonian classical music, Soul, Spiritual Jazz and much more. Eric conceptualized, designed the covers, edited, worked with artists and their ancestors, wrote the liner notes, assembled and mailed these records out.
For its first seventeen years Mississippi Records operated with zero internet presence, released no digital music and ran a cash only record store in Portland, Oregon. The company refused all press inquiries and never appeared on social media. Even with these limitations, Mississippi managed to sell over one million records.
Beyond releasing records and running a retail shop, Eric has traveled with presentations like this for the past twelve years. These performances all champion DIY culture and try to expose the exploitative nature of the mainstream music industry.
Tour Produced by Qu Junktions