Marisa Anderson rewrites the folk archive on The Anthology of UnAmerican Folk Music

Marisa Anderson releases The Anthology of UnAmerican Folk Music on 22 May via Thrill Jockey, one of the most conceptually rich folk and guitar records of the day. The album responds to the legacy of Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music by looking elsewhere: toward non-American 78rpm recordings connected to regions touched by U.S. conflicts during Anderson's lifetime.

That premise could have become an academic exercise, but Anderson is too expressive a guitarist for that. Her playing has always been able to make instrumental music feel like a story, a place or a moral question. Here she draws from Uzbek, Yemeni, Afghan, Armenian, Vietnamese and other musical traditions, reimagining them through her own guitar language with occasional additional instrumentation.

The title is pointed. UnAmerican does not simply mean foreign. It asks what gets excluded when a country tells itself stories about roots, authenticity and inheritance. Anderson's guitar becomes a way of listening across boundaries rather than claiming ownership over them.

For an indie music digest, this is a vital 22 May release because it treats folk music as a living argument, not a museum label. The record asks listeners to hear beauty, history and geopolitical violence in the same breath, while still making room for the pleasure of a resonant string and a patient melody. Source: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2026/may/15/marisa-anderson-the-anthology-of-unamerican-folk-music-review-harry-smith