World on the Strings

World musician David Lindley is like the adventurous friend you had in college, the one who always nudged you out of your comfort zone. While others have settled in, Lindley has remained the perpetual student, journeying all over the globe, investigating anything that interests him.

Once a year or so, he returns to us to play some new songs he's picked up from goat herders in the Carpathians, or to show off an esoteric instrument he's recently mastered. Or maybe it's simply to entertain, tell stories and once again nudge us out of our musical comfort zones. Lindley is the model of a musician who is creating all the time. He's also the model of a musician who is successful in the business without compromising his own vision.

Best known as Jackson Browne's guitarist from 1971 to 1981, Lindley was also one of Los Angeles's top studio pickers. He played on groundbreaking albums for stars such as Linda Ronstadt, James Taylor and Warren Zevon. Lindley could have joined most of the rock crowd, which in the '80s began to play it safe. Instead, he began collaborating with adventurous fellow travelers like Ry Cooder. He already had discovered the unfamiliar and limitless sounds of world music, and as most '80s-era musicians went with the big-money flow, Lindley packed his bags, literally and figuratively. "I like a more personal way of dealing with music," he says. "I've been the other way, the big star. I'm happier with the minor planetoid thing. It allows me complete freedom to do whatever I want in terms of what I play."

The minor planetoid thing began with El Rayo-X, Lindley's mid- to late-'80s band. El Rayo-X was Lindley's eclectic vision, a band that combined blues, rock, Cajun, zydeco, Middle Eastern music and other elements. Then in 1991 Lindley and guitarist/ethnomusicologist Henry Kaiser traveled to Madagascar and recorded six albums of Malagasy music, including two collaborative CDs, A World Out of Time, Volumes 1 and 2, for Shanachie.

"The musicianship in Madagascar is very high-level, and so fitting in with that was a little difficult for me. It was all these forms I'd never played before. I learned three tunes, note for note, off the local record. They were a bitch to learn because the Malagasy musicians play in three time signatures at once. Everything evens out at the end of the bar. It's wonderful stuff but difficult to learn."

Unlike other labels that had recorded in Madagascar, "We made it a point not to take advantage of the local musicians," says Lindley. "I remember Henry telling me one lady got angry with him, saying, 'You have ruined it for everyone.' His response was 'I hope so.' " The World Out of Time project resulted in a considerable amount of international touring and American recording contracts for many of the top Malagasy acts, including D'Gary and Tarika Sammy.

The African project was followed by a Shanachie-sponsored trip to Norway. Kaiser and Lindley documented the country's rural fiddle music and produced The Sweet Sunny North. "The Norway thing was a different story," relates Lindley. "We went back into the valleys to find the regional stuff. It was more of a field recording.

"Regional music there is still intact, especially the Old Norwegian music that uses scales that are kind of Middle Eastern, notes and pitches that we're not used to hearing. I got to meet and play with some wonderful players.

"On this Old Norse saga ['Dei Frealause Menn'/'The Exiled Men'], I played the [Turkish] saz. The song is an epic, an amazing, long song about a ship that gets stuck in the ice for nine years. There are some amazing commonalties [between this song and] the Islamic musical maqam and traditional Turkish music. Our version turned out to be a Norwegian-Turkish thing, the only time this song has ever worked with another instrument," says Lindley.

Whether with Kaiser, Jordanian percussionist Hani Naser or his current touring partner, percussionist Wally Ingram, Lindley has been on the road playing his brand of expansive acoustic world music for the past 12 years. More important, Lindley doesn't play fusion music. He works within established forms. He's got an encyclopedic knowledge of thousands of styles of music.

"You can go into Tower Records and find this stuff," says Lindley. "But I'm exposed to it wherever I travel. So I don't have to buy 30 CDs to find out who is the best player in a particular style."

For the rest of us mere mortals, there are labels you can trust, says Lindley, who recommends the French Ocora imprint, Shanachie, the WOMAD stuff and the Real World label.

Apparently Lindley has exhausted the world's supply of stringed instruments, because now he's inventing more. One is a cross between a flamenco guitar and an Arabic oud. "It's going to have a pickup inside, but acoustically, it's got to sound really good. There are three prototypes being made here in the U.S. Fortunately the craftsmen know what they're doing."