A hybrid work through and through, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts revolutionized the concept of "World" music by exploring what it could be rather than preaching what it should be. By wedding African-inspired percussion (sometimes played with found objects such as a frying pan) to Funk-inspired compositions, as well as utilizing a vast array of vocal samples (also groundbreaking), Brian Eno and David Byrne carry out a relentless assault on the fetishistic notion of cultural purity. Whereas previous "Western" attempts to engage the music of other cultures tended to treat these music forms as museum artifacts, Eno & Byrne highlight the fact that all culture is in some sense a mash-up, constantly in conversation with other cultures and therefore perpetually in flux. While this is heresy to preservationists, what it does is open our ears to the limitless possibilities of such conversations. My Life in the Bush of Ghosts was one of the first pop recordings to borrow freely and explicitly from multiple cultural sources in the effort to create something new, something unforeseen. In doing so, it laid the groundwork for, among other things, Paul Simon's next muse and all the Vampire Weekends of the future.
