The year on the booklet that accompanies these twelve LPs (which booklet, free with the purchase of the boxed set, sports its own price tag — one dollar — in its lower right hand corner, raising a simple yet haunting question: why?) is 1961. The U.N. was sixteen years old that year, so perhaps the existence of this remarkable item is already a little less puzzling; what right-thinking 16 year old wouldn’t release a 12-disc boxed set, given the right resources? The adolescent U.N. didn’t even need to write its own songs or find a dependable drummer; all it needed for this project were some cooperative friends in faraway places. The idea behind Music for the United Nations is that every member country would be represented by a song or two. As one Mr. John Briggs puts it in the booklet’s brief foreword: “A people never speaks to us so directly and forcefully as through their music.” |