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Joe Boyd @ The Ealing Book Festival 2025
Saturday 26th April @ 6:00 PM
Overview
‘I doubt I’ll ever read a better account of the history and sociology of popular music than this one.’ Brian Eno
Legendary music producer, writer and record label boss Joe Boyd was there when Dylan went electric at the Newport Folk Festival, when Pink Floyd was born and when Paul Simon’s Graceland was released. Working with bands from Toots and the Maytals to R.E.M., Pink Floyd to Taj Mahal, he has spent a lifetime travelling the globe and immersing himself in music. He has witnessed first-hand the growing popularity of music from Africa, India, Latin America, the Caribbean and Eastern Europe since the 1960s and was one of the protagonists of the ‘world music’ movement of the 1980s. Boyd’s magisterial new book offers a fascinating insight into the enormous influence of global music and music’s vital role in fighting oppression, while uncovering extraordinary backstories, including how Afrobeat began with a subscription to an American jazz magazine and why Frank Sinatra owed his career to a French tango singer from Buenos Aires.
Joe Boyd will be in conversation with Mark Cooper, co-creator and founding producer of Later . . . With Jools Holland, and executive producer of over 250 BBC music documentaries. He is the author of Later . . . with Jools Holland, 30 years of Music, Magic and Mayhem.
About Joe Boyd
Joe Boyd is a record producer, writer and film producer. Over the course of his 60 year career he has produced Pink Floyd, Nick Drake, ¡Cubanismo!, R.E.M., Toots and the Maytals, Toumani Diabete and Taj Mahal among many others. As a film producer, his credits include the Aretha Franklin documentary Amazing Grace, Scandal and Jimi Hendrix.
About Ealing Book Festival
The aim of Ealing Book Festival is to celebrate the joy of reading and to advance engagement and education around literature and reading. Through our events we hope to bring people and communities together; grow audiences for literature; inspire writers and readers of all ages; showcase well-known authors and promote local writers.