A casual conversation with fresh beers, mainly focusing on early 78rpm Indian music between musician, (die-hard) record collector, film maker, Sublime Frequencies contributor Robert Millis and ali_fib concert series programmer Maxime Guitton.

The conversation took place in a Parisian apartment on a sunny sunday late afternoon, June 8, 2014, a day after Robert screened his latest travelogue film, This World is Unreal Like A Snake in A Rope at Espace en Cours, documenting his second journey through the ancient Southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu featuring Hindu trance ceremonies, street music, festivals, nagaswaram improvisations, impossibly loud cities, ancient temples, processions, devotions, decay, fireworks, abstractions and more. The recorded conversation is just a fragment of an extended conversation which unfolded over a weekend, encompassing a variety of topics, including Harry Smith’s music collection and Anthology of American Folk Music, Joseph Cornell’s boxes, Jacques Stern’s secret life, Indian raags, the impact of recording Indian music on the very fabric and appreciation of the music, etc. Bits of the following conversation may occasionally refer to some of these (non recorded) previous exchanges.

A conversation proposed by Maxime Guitton