Music from the Beer Lands!?

August 21, 12:57 AMSF Craft Beer ExaminerBrian Yaeger

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Putumayo plays favorites with winos over beer enthusiasts.

Open letter to Putumayo World Music:

A story by the Seattle Coffee Examiner on your Music From the Coffee Lands got me to thinking. I am a huge fan on your world music compilations. I own several, from Arabic Groove to Gypsy Caravan to Music from the Wine Lands. As always, someone there paid great attention to the musicality, the vibe, and the locales. Listening to it makes me want to uncork bottles from France, Italy, Argentina, Chile, etc. The snappy jazz of Australia's Stringmansassy makes me want a glass of Black Opal cab I discovered in college. (I hope Black Opal isn't considered the Fosters of Aussie vino.)

On your site, the description for this comp begins, Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote “Music and wine are one.” No matter where grapes are grown, wine is enjoyed, or songs are sung, it’s undeniable that one complements the other. Really? That just goes for wine? Evidently not, as you have a series of such discs, including music from the lands of coffee, tea, and chocolate. I couldn't help notice two things. The first is that these fine beverages (you can drink chocolate) hail from specific regions or continents (wine, according to the CD, mostly hails from Europe; coffee percolates from Africa and South America; tea from Asia.) I'm guessing the Chocolate mix gave someone there fits because they had to comb music from over five continents. The disc description says Chocolate has been enjoyed for thousands of years. Used for medicinal and religious purposes, as well as for pleasure, traces of this “food of the gods” have been found in early Mayan pots dating back to 600 B.C.E.

This brings me to the second thing I deduced about this series. There is no Music from the Beer Lands! Everything you say about chocolate holds true for beer, however this "nectar of the gods" dates back not merely to 600 B.C.E., but at least 6,000 years ago. And instead of Mayan pots, beer history has an ancient Sumerian tablet devoted to Ninkasi, goddess of beer. I bet she had the voice of an angel. Think about it. A CD featuring this music could double as your Sumerian Groove or Babylonian Lounge.

The main difficulty in compiling such a disc would be where to cull music from. I'll help you start. I have an awesome CD of German drinking songs to polka down do while downing Lagers. And Irish Stout goes better with nuggets from my disc of Irish drinking music such as The Clancy Bros. doing "Beer, Beer, Beer," (an ode to Charlie Mops, the man who invented beer). The problem for the compiler there, no doubt, is where to go from there. Aye, when Charlie Papazian reports there are an estimated 5,000 breweries in the world, and precious few nations don't boast at least one of them (although, not to push for such an album to be loaded with American artists, but we do lay claim to over 1,500 of all those breweries).

So how 'bout it, Putumayo? You get a fifth album in your high-grossing series and music and beer lovers around the world get about a dozen folk tunes to drink beer by. And after all, in the words of the great Louis Armstrong, "All music is folk music. I ain't never heard a horse sing a song." Same goes for beer, unless you can show me one brewed by a horse. So let's have it. Music from the Beer Lands. What do you think?

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