Triple Earth - an oblique history ...

Triple Earth was born in the haunted tower of an old cinema. OK, before that there was a small flat in West London, but the first official (i.e. legal) offices of the company were in the dilapidated tower of a 1920s cinema which had been converted into an antiques warehouse and kindly donated by an old friend. It wasn't his fault that it turned out to be haunted.

In those days (1983) it was a mail-order business specialising in 'acoustic music from around the world'. In fact, perhaps the biggest mistake was to let go of that mail-order business. This was before PCs, or MACs, or even affordable photocopiers, and it just seemed such a chore to be typing out catalogues on mechanical typewriters when you could be in the studio recording magnificent music. Oh well, perhaps given the same situation I'd make the same choice today.

Because when the opportunity came to record - I leapt at it. Hukwe Zawose was the member of an officially sanctioned 'cultural' group from the Bagamoyo College of Music in Tanzania and performing at the Commonwealth Institute in London. All very establishment. Except the people weren't. Neither those organising, nor those performing. And it is with great indebtedness to Robert Atkins, Prakash Daswani, Godwin Kaduma (then Minister of Culture and Sport - lovely combination) and not least, the musicians themselves, that I was able to record, over two seasons, music of the musicians from Bagamoyo and release, over the course of time, two albums.

This is not to forget a certain Bunt Stafford Clark who, for a fairly long period of time, became my partner. Bunt was, still is (we haven't spoken for some time, but chances are he'd be charmed - or appalled - to read this) a senior mastering engineer at the Townhouse Studios in London. As well as his technical skills in the studio he's a drummer and we met in the 70s when he drummed for a group I organised that rehearsed for two years to play one gig. But that's another story.

Flushed with the success of 'Tanzania Yetu' - Sterns had bought a few copies - I took to whisky. And heard Cheb Khaled. Who makes an awful lot of sense when drinking the Water Of Life. A Parisian / Maghrebian deal was done and Triple Earth released 'Hada Raykoun'. Shortly followed by another recording, but this time our own production, of Najma Akhtar - a UK born singer of 'ghazals'.

It's fun to write about it now but in those days it was deadly serious. A mission to reveal and promote what lay beneath our ears. In fact so serious that I even convincingly (?) argued for the term 'world music' - first seen as the title of a short lived Swedish publication - as a suitable term to ... to .... what? to describe? to capture? to exploit? to ... 'market' music that originates from outside the Western axis.

Aaahhh.... 'marketing'. Thereby hangs a tale. Enough to say that - in my experience - musicians hate the category but, sometimes, love the result. And with good reason - on both sides.

Aster Aweke followed Najma and preceded Mouth Music. It's impossible for me to write objectively about these, or any other of the artists with whom we have worked. If we didn't think they were the beginning, middle and end, then we had no business working with them. Twist my arm? Well ... I would probably have to say that I learned the most from .... No! It can't be done.

So: here's a salute to all the artists who drive record companies crazy, to all the record companies who are crazy enough to work with the artists who drive the record companies crazy (as if they weren't crazy enough already) and to all the beautiful music that comes out of it. World music or Schmurld Music - it's not the companies who create it, it's the artists. And perhaps even they don't know how or why. Damn it! Salute.

Iain Scott, London 2003