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Missing Music: Voices from Where the Dirt Roads End
Missing Voices from Where the Dirt Roads End details Grammy-winning music producer and author Ian Brennan’s ongoing quest to provide musical platforms for underrepresented nations and populations around the world. In a compact and quick-read format, Missing Music collects the latest narratives from Brennan’s field-recording treks. This edition features a greater emphasis on storytelling and an even greater abundance of photos from his wife, Italian-Rwandan photographer/filmmaker Marilena Umuhoza Delli. Together, they meet the elderly shamans of the world’s most musical language, Taa, a tongue that sadly is dying, with fewer than 2,500 speakers left. The duo traveled the most remote roads of Botswana to find the formally nomadic people now relegated to small desert towns. In Azerbaijan, Brennan and Delli ascended to the mountainous Iranian border to record centenarians in scattered villages of the Talysh minority, where the world’s oldest man reportedly reached the age of 168. The result is the only record ever released to feature the voices of singers over one-hundred years of age. Among other tales, Brennan also updates the saga of the Sheltered Workshop Singers following COVID, including the tragic deterioration of his sister, Jane. Arising from the more than forty records that Brennan has produced over the past decade from underrepresented nations such as Comoros, Djibouti, Romania, South Sudan, Suriname, and Cambodia, Missing Music serves as the newest suite in the multiverse symphony of the world’s most ignored corners—the places where countries expire and the “forgotten” live.
168 pages, Paperback
Published April 2, 2024
19 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 18, 2025
Missing Music is a short and compact work of non-fiction documenting the author’s journey of discovery of unrepresented music across the globe, illustrated by fabulous photographs in collaboration with Marilena Umuhoza Delli, his wife.
Brennan is concise in his insights yet very readable, as this is a flavour of his work over the last 10 years rather than an academic text. It is an invitation to really listen and be open-minded to new styles and sounds, not just as a consumer but to really engage with diverse cultures. In the main body of the book, this is presented as a series of “road maps” from various regions in Africa, Asia, eastern Europe and Central America as well as marginalised communities in the US.
In her introduction, Evelyn Glennie describes the book as a celebration of extraordinary music. As a music producer, Brennan has produced great recordings within what gets characterised as “world music”. A criticism of the genre is the colonialist nature of plunder of another culture. By promoting the performers artistic control and allowing them to perform within their own parameters, preferring one-take recording with a minimum of technical manipulation, Brennan does the opposite. He is not a collector of the exotic but a creator of opportunity, giving space for artists who would otherwise be ignored by the mainstream music “industry”. Brennan has also worked in the field of mental health, and having a disabled sibling adds high sensitivity in collaborating with people in disadvantaged circumstances.
Missing Music is published by PM Press, “an independent, radical publisher of critically necessary books for our tumultuous times”. Brennan highlights many of the challenges faced by artists from poorer communities, with limited access to material resources. The problems some ethnic groups face in obtaining visas when asked to perform in Europe throws a shade over inequalities, injustice and issues of migration.
Brennan is critical of the capitalist world order and his work offers alternatives, which is urgent and necessary in the context of collapsing economic globalisation and the end of empire. Having said that I turned to YouTube to rediscover and explore the music he has produced and here is a sampler (remember to mute the adverts) https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list...
Brennan is concise in his insights yet very readable, as this is a flavour of his work over the last 10 years rather than an academic text. It is an invitation to really listen and be open-minded to new styles and sounds, not just as a consumer but to really engage with diverse cultures. In the main body of the book, this is presented as a series of “road maps” from various regions in Africa, Asia, eastern Europe and Central America as well as marginalised communities in the US.
In her introduction, Evelyn Glennie describes the book as a celebration of extraordinary music. As a music producer, Brennan has produced great recordings within what gets characterised as “world music”. A criticism of the genre is the colonialist nature of plunder of another culture. By promoting the performers artistic control and allowing them to perform within their own parameters, preferring one-take recording with a minimum of technical manipulation, Brennan does the opposite. He is not a collector of the exotic but a creator of opportunity, giving space for artists who would otherwise be ignored by the mainstream music “industry”. Brennan has also worked in the field of mental health, and having a disabled sibling adds high sensitivity in collaborating with people in disadvantaged circumstances.
Missing Music is published by PM Press, “an independent, radical publisher of critically necessary books for our tumultuous times”. Brennan highlights many of the challenges faced by artists from poorer communities, with limited access to material resources. The problems some ethnic groups face in obtaining visas when asked to perform in Europe throws a shade over inequalities, injustice and issues of migration.
Brennan is critical of the capitalist world order and his work offers alternatives, which is urgent and necessary in the context of collapsing economic globalisation and the end of empire. Having said that I turned to YouTube to rediscover and explore the music he has produced and here is a sampler (remember to mute the adverts) https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list...
January 9, 2026
Important read, engaging and interesting. Would recommend to my anthropologist sister and people looking to become more educated about the world.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews