Up, Bustle and Out is a group from Bristol, England that travel around the world to different locations in order to make music with the local musicians of different countries. The core of the group consists of two members, ‘Clandestine ‘Ein” and Rupert Mould, who travel the world recording in different countries and locales which have included Jamaica, Tibet, Cuba, Mexico, Palestine infusing their music with influences from each place. Their practice belongs in the realm of global art as they seek to navigate and negotiate new ways of interacting with other cultures that them come in contact with.
Instead of stealing these musical traditions and recording them on their own, Up, Bustle and Out often recruit local talent to play and sing on their recordings, providing a non-exploitative, collaborative process that could be useful in creating a meaningful form of global art. They can be seen as global traffickers of music as they go to different countries and ‘translate’ their musical traditions into a cultural form that is more accessible to western sensibilities. Yet in doing so they run the risk of misinterpretation or creating only a surface understanding of other countries’ musical traditions and forms or creating a two way dialogue that is limited in scope and doesn’t take the scheme of the global project into consideration.
Zorn Pink
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