He started as a jazz guitarist making Barbie albums on the side, and has ended up on over 500 releases. From bebop with Elton John to Americana with Alison Krauss, Ribot recalls the richest of careers
‘I felt like a warrior for this viscerally powerful music I heard all around me. I heard it in Richard Hell’s band at CBGB. I heard it at block parties, in the Cuban music bleeding through the walls of my Lower East Side apartment. I heard it in Haitian rara, in Croatian wedding music. I couldn’t figure out yet what all this music had in common, but I was ready to go to war for this cause. I wanted to reach people’s souls and make them dance, or cry, or puke.”
Marc Ribot is on a phone call remembering the kaleidoscopic sounds of the New York he moved to in the late 70s, in an acerbic New Jersey drawl that melts with the warmth of the memory. In the decades since, Ribot has gone on to become a wildcard sideman treasured by icons and iconoclasts including Tom Waits, Marianne Faithfull, Robert Plant and many more. He teaches at the New England Conservatory, and has released dozens of collaborations and solo albums exploring his various fascinations with Latin pop, jazz, avant-noise, protest folk and much more. Now, he’s made his first vocal album at the age of 71: Map of a Blue City, which has been in the works for three decades.
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