“If John Fahey is the Mississippi River of “American Primitive” acoustic steel-string guitar playing, Robbie Basho is the Ganges. If Fahey is the Everest, Basho is the Fuji. Though overshadowed in life and death by his fellow Mid-Atlantic area native, Basho—he was born Daniel R. Robinson, Jr. in 1940 and died at age 45 in 1986—has been the subject of renewed interest for the past decade and a half. His immersion in Asian philosophy and Persian and Indian music—his quests included creating an American raga system—positioned him perfectly for discovery and veneration by the freak-folk movement, and attention to Basho’s legacy has mounted in recent years.
The artists who contributed to the 13-track album include both U.S. and international musicians: Glenn Jones and Matthew Azevedo, Richard Osborn, Chuck Johnson, Michael Gulezian and Henry Kaiser, Tamman Saeed and April Centrone (Syria and the U.K.), Paolo Laboule Novellino (Italy), Yair Yona (Israel), Basho-Junghans (Germany), and Mariano Rodriguez, Jonah Schwartz, and Karina Vismara (Argentina and the U.K.).”