Joachim Cooder first learned music at the foot of his famous father Ry, and eventually joined him as percussionist on projects as big as The Buena Vista Social Club. He’s made his name as a film composer for movies from The End of Violence to Riding Giants, and has produced albums for his wife Juliette Commagere and Carly Ritter (granddaughter of Tex).
Following a solo album six years ago, on which he was composer and instrumentalist backing others, he’s back with an EP out March 30 called “Fuchsia Machu Picchu” on which he also handles vocals for the first time.
Cooder conjures an alluring sound, blending thumb piano and other bright, tuned percussive tones to his unusual and compelling voice. For Cooder, it’s all a result of a charmed childhood, “influences I’ve had since I was really young, growing up around people like Ali Farka Toure or seeing John Lee Hooker live at a really young age,” he told Billboard magazine. Those two influences are especially felt in the one cover on the EP, which we’re proud to be premiering here at TVD.
“Country Blues” is a classic, spooky, otherworldly sound from banjoist Dock Boggs that he is said to have learned in turn from itinerant bluesman Homer Crawford. Boggs’ recording of it from the 1920s—and its wider dissemination as part of Harry Smith’s influential 1951 Anthology of American Folk Music—brought it to a wider audience, where it is considered one of the touchstone tracks of early roots music.
And now, with Cooder’s ingenious interpretation, it seems to have widened further with a global feel that’s always been part of his music. “I’m always hearing some sort of defunct cosmic ice cream truck in my head,” he says. “That’s the sound I’m after with my mbiras and tanked drums and other tuned percussion.”
Take a listen and be transformed.
