In the '90s, world music became once again a touchy-feely subset of lifestyle music -- itself a creation as old as the music industry. Whereas the parents of baby boomers set their dinner parties to the exotic strains of Hawaiian guitars or strolling zithers, and the boomers themselves used Ravi Shankar for the same purpose, in the '90s it was young adults (as well as boomers) who found new strains of music that were neither Anglo nor indigenous to any U.S. minority communities. For most, this meant a brief flirtation with any number of recordings by chanting monks or Celtic folkies that now hold the same place in American CD collections as the Tijuana Brass once held in American LP racks.
That's part of why ex-Talking Head and eclectic David Byrne founded the Luaka Bop label 10 years ago. Back then, he decided to work within the admittedly colonialist confines of world music and seek out pop that most Americans had previously considered at most exotic and at least unlistenable.
Rather than venture into the bush to bring back recordings of drumming pygmies and savage flautists, Byrne sought out pop misfits and funky miscreants. Those are the kind of artists who populate "Zero Accidents on the Job: Luaka Bop 10th Anniversary," a double-CD compilation that proves Byrne has found world music that is at its heart as populist as it is progressive.
There are tracks on "Zero Accidents" that sound as though they could have been penned by Byrne himself. Los Amigos' "Sexy," for instance, has the same brainy funk that characterized some of the more compelling moments in "Stop Making Sense." But to say that the sum of Luaka Bop's output resulted from Byrne looking into a mirror-coated globe would be grossly incorrect. Without the forum of Luaka Bop -- and perhaps, a solid anticipation of the worldly '90s zeitgeist -- it's hard to say whether or not Cornershop would have captured the indie imagination. And it would have been near impossible to predict the transformation -- and eventual Luaka Bop canonization -- of Os Mutantes from forgotten Brazilian popsters to their current status as the new Velvet Underground.
Those two bands bookend "Zero Accidents" -- Cornershop with Fatboy Slim's remix of "Brimful of Asha" and Os Mutantes with their re-working of Caetano Veloso's "Baby." In the loopy world of Luaka Bop, those two are the gateway groups. But if you stick around for the 23 artists between those bands -- Tropicalia oddball Tom Zi, smoky chanteuse Susana Baca, African diva Cisaria Ivora -- you'll realize what an achievement and labor of love Luaka Bop has been.
