Steve Roden’s …i listen to the wind that obliterates my traces (music in vernacular photographs 1880-1955) is a multimedia package that attracts attention with a whisper and glance, rather than a bell and a whistle. Two CDs containing a total of 51 tracks of early American music (plus a handful of sound effects from the same period) are slipped into the front and back cover pockets of a cleanly designed hardback book. The interior heavyweight pages are bursting with scans of 150 historic photographs—a mix of unidentified music makers and listeners of many stripes. Though the fresh ink offers a solid dose of new-book smell, it’s admittedly tempting to blow the non-existent dust off the still-spotless cover, so evocative are the faded, scratched, and water-stained images. And even though all the music has been transferred to CD, the hiss and crackle of the original recordings remain and you don’t have to squint too hard at your stereo to see the Victrola.
Both the images and audio were drawn from Roden’s personal collection. If you’ve ever spent time hunched over a box of yellowing photographs or flipping through dusty piles of 78rpm recordings at a flea market hunting for—What? That image or object that speaks to you even if you can’t precisely define why?—Roden is a kindred spirit, and traces is an invitation to get lost with him in this world of mysterious artifacts. In fact, halfway through my first listen, I wondered if I was more attracted to the materials themselves or to the care and commitment it seemed evident Roden brought to their assembly. In the end, I decided it was an equal measure of both. Taken all together, after all, it’s a mix tape of sorts—a revelation of a slice of a hidden past and also a gift from a passionate collector bravely showcasing what has spoken to his own heart.
Though none of the included tracks exceeds three minutes and change, it’s quite a volume of material to consume, and rushing seems antithetical to the spirit of the project. The photographed subjects often stare out from their portraits, seeming to demand an invented history if their own can no longer be recalled. And the musicians, with a mix of styles and skills, offer an aural postcard from a voice dug out of the past: a bittersweet dance between the violin and singer Eva Parker in “I Seen My Pretty Papa Standing on a Hill” here, and a few tracks later an amazing jaw harp performance of “The Old Grey Horse” by Obed Pickard. The tunes leave us pinin’ in Hawaii, and caution us against kickin’ the dog around. None of it is junk mail.