Marisa Anderson Brings a World of ‘UnAmerican’ Music To Her Guitar
The first arrangement that instrumentalist guitarist and songwriter Marisa Anderson completed for The Anthology of UnAmerican Folk Music, Vol. 1 is a song called “Hamd.” The original version, known as “Mamoor Ho Raha Hai,” is an ecstatic, 18-minute Sufi Qawali by the legendary Sabri Brothers of
Black News 
The first arrangement that instrumentalist guitarist and songwriter Marisa Anderson completed for The Anthology of UnAmerican Folk Music, Vol. 1 is a song called “Hamd.” The original version, known as “Mamoor Ho Raha Hai,” is an ecstatic, 18-minute Sufi Qawali by the legendary Sabri Brothers of Pakistan. It features 10 singers, drums, percussion, flute, harmonium, and a long-necked plucked string instrument called a tanpura. The lyrics, translated in a YouTube video, speak in sweeping terms the universality of God, who is everywhere and in everything. “Kaunsi shakl hai jis shakl mein maujood nahi?/Mamoor ho raha hai aalam mein noor tera — Which form is it in which the divine manifestation is not present? Your radiance is filling the whole world.” they chorus, their voices rising in wailing, yodeling transcendence.
“I was like, okay, I’m going to just do the best I can with this seemingly impossible piece of music,” Anderson says. “Like, how do you put that on a guitar? And so that began the process of working out my parameters.”
In large part, those parameters — and the album’s improbably eclectic repertoire — were set by legendary music acquirer and curator Harry Smith. In 1952, Folkways Records released Smith’s compilation of commercial folk, blues, and country releases from the 1920s and ’30s, The Anthology of American Folk Music, which has since become one of the foundational collections of all time. That repertoire had a formative effect on Anderson’s own development as a guitarist and originally drew her to examine the Harry Smith Library Collection at the Woody Guthrie Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which includes his final record collection.
