MaRC RiBOT

Versatile guitar polymath rallies some high-profile troops

“The idea for this album came up about five minutes after Donald Trump was elected,” says Marc Ribot, discussing Songs Of Resistance 1942–2018, his new collection of protest songs. “I’ve been listening to and performing some of the songs on this record for years – and I figured now is the time to record them.”

These aren’t trad folk renditions, though, but instead a wild mix that takes in everything from country to the free-jazz of Charlie Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra. “I love that record,” says the guitarist, discussing the LP’s influences. “Also Sounds Of The Civil Rights Movement on Smithsonian Folkways, and everything The Last Poets ever did.”

From the start, the album was intended to feature guest vocalists – “I wanted to reach past the relatively small number of listeners who can tolerate my ‘singing’” – and those enlisted include Tom Waits, Steve Earle, Meshell Ndegeocello, Tift Merritt, Sam Amidon and even a Mexican performer who appears anonymously on “Rata De Dos Patas” for fear that “Trump would retaliate by messing with her artist visas”.

“I worked on the arrangements, but each singer interpreted the lyric as they saw fit,” explains Ribot. “And that’s why I wanted the artists on this record. Because I knew that they understood what this is about, and what’s at stake, and what we need to communicate.”