Not-So-Instant Nostalgia: Mining Old and Archaic Music in the 1990s

Musicians and labels have never shied away from looking to the past for sounds and styles to help them push the present up the charts. The 1990s had their fair share of hit covers and spot-the-sample moments, the latter spreading from hip-hop and aggressive styles of electronic music outward to pop and modern rock. The industry’s fascination with box sets and reissues grew wildly during the ’90s as well, revisiting the obscure or lost and constantly retouching the famous. But for a decade that immeasurably changed music’s acceptance of the new, successful artistic archaeology often ended up finding sources far more specific, and often far older, than your standard-issue crate digging.

To wit, the 1990s kicked off with the OG popular music: classical. Italy’s Luciano Pavarotti cut a unique cultural figure after belting out his tenor in opera houses worldwide, with Spain’s Placido Domingo following close behind. They were invited along with fellow Spanish tenor José Carreras and conductor Zubin Mehta to perform in Rome at the close of the 1990 FIFA World Cup. While genre purists may have found the resulting show imperfect and flamboyant, the recording revitalized a conspicuously graying fanbase. Carreras Domingo Pavarotti in Concert (later called The Three Tenors in Concert) won awards and set sales records, but by turning “The Three Tenors” into a years-long cottage industry with offshoots based on nationality and vocal range, it also opened up entry points to classical and opera for new and curious listeners.

In short order, actual pop music embraced even older sources. Through experimental music and industrial bands, it wasn’t unheard of to sample devotional music to drive home a thematic point. German producer Michael Cretu took a different route, using the delivery and note patterns of Gregorian chants as textural elements on MCMXC a.D., the 1990 debut of his Enigma project. That decision and this album were touchpoints of growing interest in music under “New Age” and “worldbeat” headings. The modern electronic grooves and breathy vocals even formed a bridge to what would become Eurodance. Enigma also lit a path for the praying to follow: the Angel label’s 1994 Chant album, repackaging recordings of the Benedictine monks of Santo Domingo de Silos, topped out at no. 3 on Billboard and started a trend of chant-filled compilations.

Melodies, rhythms, lyrics, and dances from just outside of England proper exploded in popularity as well. The concept of “Celtic fusion” stretched back at least as far as the fanciful prog-rock of Jethro Tull. In the 1990s, the movement expanded into the caterwauls of Sinead O’Connor and The Cranberries, the ambience of Enya and Afro Celt Sound System, and the bard-like stylings of acts like The Corrs and Canada’s Loreena McKennitt. American bands carried forward the toothless aggression of The Pogues in rap jigs (House of Pain) and in bar rock with traditional instruments (Black 47). And when you fuse tradition to spectacle, you also get things like the very 1990s phenomenon of Riverdance, a Eurovision interlude that turned into a worldwide touring production of Irish step dancing that performs to this day.

At this time, we saw one single artist’s sound birth an entire genre. The 1969 single “Color Him Father” did well for Washington, D.C. soul group The Winstons, even as they broke up the following year. Yet nobody could have predicted what would become of its B-side. A 7-second drum break from “Amen, Brother” would be used as a sample for rap DJs as the 1980s ended, but it was then picked up—and, more importantly, sped up—across the pond to make jungle a thing in the UK rave scene of the early 1990s. Other drum loops besides this “Amen break” would be used in the genre, artists like Roni Size and Reprazent would play the sounds out live, and the drum & bass of today scarcely resembles that of yesteryear beyond the BPM. Still, no decade and no style can claim to have created so much music built on so small a foundation.

We also saw a lot of music get funneled down for the benefit of a single artist. Intent on making one final electronic album after the lackluster rock of Animal Rights, Moby composed a clutch of tracks that leaned heavily on samples of old music, especially from Sounds of the South: A Musical Journey from the Georgia Sea Islands to the Mississippi Delta. This was a 1961 set of field recordings by Smithsonian ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax, capturing blues, hymns, and more from across the Southern crescent. While questions of artist compensation and cultural appropriation may echo louder now in discussions of both Lomax and Moby, in 1999 the Play album grew to occupy all aural space. Half of its tracks were released as singles, it was licensed endlessly for the small and big screen, and its status as the best-selling electronic album surely invited more than a few people to seek out its base sounds well before Johnny Cash and “God’s Gonna Cut You Down” did.

Speaking of both big and small screens, multiple people helped bring New York composer and bandleader Raymond Scott back into America’s musical consciousness in the 1990s. Scott’s combos and big bands were quite edgy for their time in the late 1930s and early 1940s, so he sold his publishing to Warner Bros. in an effort to profit from his work long-term. WB’s music director Carl Stalling would get Scott’s music a wide if unsuspecting audience by adapting it for decades of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies movie shorts featuring Bugs Bunny and his friends. Capitalizing on Gen-X memories of watching these on syndicated TV, legendary compilation producer Hal Willner assembled two sets of Stalling’s music in the ’90s, including some Scott-inspired scores. Music historian Irwin Chusid met Scott and prepared two albums of archival recordings, including 1992’s Reckless Nights and Turkish Twilights that featured original versions of some of the songs Stalling would use. And Canadian illustrator John Kricfalusi would jumpstart a new generation of cartoonists using Scott’s kitschy sounds, this time putting them under scenes in The Ren and Stimpy Show for the Nickelodeon network.

But one of the decade’s best places to consistently witness the anachronism in tying together current art to older inspirations was the early filmography of Quentin Tarantino. Save for a few modern conceits like the occasional on-screen cell phone, from dialogue to wardrobe to props his first three movies feel like they could be mistaken for ones made 20 to 30 years prior. Tarantino is on record as saying he wanted his soundtracks to convey that time-warp as well, so most of the music for Reservoir Dogs (1992), Pulp Fiction (1994), and Jackie Brown (1999) plays like mixtapes pulled right from AM radio. Bobby Womack serenading Jackie Brown as she slides through an airport, The Revels’ sax wailing behind Marsellus and Butch’s capture, Mr. Blonde’s tortuous dance to Stealer’s Wheel—arresting visuals like these defined independent film and a newly independent spirit in film music.

You can find other discrete moments through the 1990s when the very old became new again. We heard the long-embargoed love song history lesson revealed by Buena Vista Social Club, for example, which turned into a film and multiple tours of its component artists. There was also the continuing journey of country music’s aging Highwaymen, which branched off into boutique producers’ AAA-radio passion projects with marquee members like Cash and Willie Nelson. If you’re frustrated by the sameness of the sounds of now, just know that we lived through a time when the sonic excavation of the past yielded many precious gems—when the zeitgeist didn’t always need The Next Big Thing, but instead could use A Recontextualized Good Thing.

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