Capture

Liner notes

When cultural historians and musicologists look back on this era, it might not be rock and roll and rap music that dominates their retrospective vision. It might be the burst of cross-cultural fertilization that took place in music as technology, global communication and economical trans-continental travel brought the sounds of the world together. Plugging into this development, Afro Celt Sound System executed a pan-global convergence that was so organic, you couldn’t understand why it wasn’t always this way.

By the time of their debut in 1996, cross-fertilization was already the musical vernacular of our era. But Afro Celt Sound System emerged from a profound realization of the connections between ancient and modern, the seeds of one planted in the fields of the other and then blown back on planetary winds, transformed. They weren’t dabbling, using ethnic sounds for color or exoticism. They were creating an electro-charged global fusion that promised a new musical relationship, one born from collaboration, drawing from ancient heritages wedded to modern electronics. The evidence is here on Capture, from the opening electro-African-Indian-aire of “Lagan” to the closing dervish of “Whirly 2.”

Afro Celt Sound System wasn’t supposed to last beyond one recording, let alone five CDs, (two of them Grammy-nominated), a remix album and this collection. They were an ad hoc group, one of many that got together in 1995 at Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studios in the west of England. But the Afro Celts had something many of the other assemblages didn’t: a vision.

Initially, that vision was a merging of African and Celtic music, weaving the threads of griot melodies and Irish aires, djembe grooves and bodhran beats, Celtic harp melodies and kora cycles. It was all wired into the circuit boards of electronic beats and synthesizer atmospheres pushing the music to another level, while transporting audiences to a higher ground, especially at festivals where the Afro Celts are favorites. If you saw them live, you’d experience a band who start at joy and quickly morph into rapture. An Afro Celt Sound System performance is a celebration at the global village crossroads. They make you think that maybe the world really was all one.