Review: Robbie Basho’s Lost Live Recordings Unearth a Sonic Treasure Trove

In the late 1950s, in response to what he saw as the pretentiousness of the folk revival, fingerstylist John Fahey invented a genre of music he dubbed “American primitive”—a raw, introspective form of folk- and blues-based solo-acoustic guitar music. His acolytes, including the visionary guitarist Robbie Basho (who recorded on Fahey’s Takoma label), went on to explore the fringes of American primitivism while expanding the genre.

An avid student of Eastern and Western philosophies, the Baltimore-born Basho harbored an intense interest in Japanese, Iranian, and Native American music, influences that can be heard in his use of open-tuned, trancelike drones. These Eastern influences can be heard on the heady instrumental studio tracks “Seal of the Blue Lotus,” “Sansara in Sweetness After Sandstorm,” “Dravidian Sunset,” and throughout the 14 studio albums he released before his death in 1986. 

Despite Basho’s voluminous studio output, live recordings, mostly of his extensive tours on American college campuses, were few and far between. That situation changed radically in 2020 when a trove of archival tracks surfaced while filmmaker Liam Barker was researching his 2015 documentary Voice of the Eagle: The Enigma of Robbie Basho. The discovery resulted in the release of the critically acclaimed Song of the Avatars: The Lost Master Tapes, on the San Francisco–based Tompkins Square label. That collection has now birthed a second box set, Snow Beneath the Belly of a White Swan: The Lost Live Recordings. 

The five-CD White Swan set features numerous previously unreleased titles, as well as Basho favorites. These intimate live tracks, culled from Basho’s personal archive, bring the prolific performer’s creativity into sharp focus as he improvises before small audiences to sometimes scant applause that sounds like just a single caffeinated patron in a mostly empty coffee house. The recording fidelity varies and tracks of poor quality have been included for their historic value. The set also includes extensive liner notes, a show poster insert, and original show flyers and rare photographs.

Overall, the music, played on six- and 12-string guitars, is far reaching in terms of Basho’s influences and his treatment of the songs. He tenderly fingerpicks his way through a rendition of Fahey’s signature tunes “Sligo River Blues” and “Himalayan Highlands,” which he tells the audience was “supposedly Fahey’s wedding song.” “Portrait of Fahey as a Young Dragoon” finds Basho singing in a powerful Irish-folk style. He describes “Pasha” as a Persian autumn folk tune. The Basho original “Chaconne Fandango” (which he pronounces in the intro as “Chicano”) is an ode to a group of Mexican-Americans with whom he dined one summer evening. “Kateri Tekakwitha,” replete with Native American-inspired chants, is a murder ballad telling of the death of a young Indian woman.

Barker has called the career-spanning collection “the mother lode of Basho live recordings.” For fans of visionary folk- and acoustic-guitar music, the pay-off is mighty.