Black Mirror: Reflections in Global Musics

Single CD of recordings made between 1918 and 1955 assembled and annotated by Ian Nagoski. This compilation contains 24 tracks from Bali, Burma, Cameroon, China, England, Germany, Greece, India, Japan, Java, Laos, Poland, Portugal, Scotland, Spain, Sweden, Syria, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine, Vietnam, and Yugoslavia all newly transferred and mastered from 78 rpm discs. At least 18 tracks appear on compact disc for the first time with all but one never having been previously reissued in the U.S.

Ian Nagoski discusses Black Mirror with Bruce Wallace:

Acknowledgments

"The role of the spiritual intermediary, like the polyphonic character of the lament, affords both license and protection to the individual. The dead may themselves lament through their intermediaries." — Gail Holst-Warhaft, Cue for Passion: Grief and its Political Uses (1990)

"Immortal, it passes through the mirror
Pupil contracts a clean destruction
It's the star-ghost with black-fire soul
A null point in its inner coursing
Eye devours eye at the eternal nothing." —"Eternity in the Blink of an Eye" from Black Mirror: The Selected Poems of Roger Gilbert-Lecomte (1938)

"For myself, I can only say that I am astonished and somewhat terrified at the result of this evening's experiments: astonished at the wonderful power you have developed, and terrified at the thought that so much hideous and bad music may be put on record forever. But all the same I think it is the most wonderful thing that I have ever experienced, and I congratulate you with all my heart on this wonderful discovery." — Arthur Sullivan to Thomas Edison (1888)

Excerpts from Selected Reviews

Baltimore City Paper: "...enigmatic, transfixing, haunting, pretty, and just plain odd. And while, yes, it's the product of a record geek for record geeks, it's such an idiosyncratic dose of the weird and the beautiful that it's hard to imagine any music fan not being intrigued by the mysteries it contains."

Fader: "wonderfully diverse... a testament to the continuing spirit of the excavation of lost music. There are so many musical revelations brought to focus on this single disc that it can be used as a valid primer of non-American ethnomusicology. That Nagoski had the wherewithal to curate such a heft of magic with such limited resources should be a call of arms to all of us that mine the crates. Here's hoping that this becomes a series as I bet there's plenty more treasures under this umbrella."