Justin Adams has played with Robert Plant, Juldeh Camara and many others. He’s spent a lot of his career studying African and Arab music along with all sorts of western blues. He seems to know what he’s talking about and has some nice history to share that helps explain the origins of distortion.
This story starts off a tad slow, but gets real good. It’s not about the usual boring “amps malfunctioned and we wanted more” stuff that every other distortion history covers. This goes a lot further back and outside of the US.
Check it out!