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Forty tracks. Forty years. One song per year.

Episode 5 of 40 Years of Schoolin’ moves from 1950 to 1989 through gospel testimonies, drum rudiments, home-recorded jug bands, French chanson, spiritual jazz, bluegrass harmonies, devotional electronics, private-press curiosities, dub pressure and late-night melancholy.

Some of these records travelled widely. Others barely escaped the labels, living rooms, churches, studios and cassette decks that produced them. Taken together, they trace another route through recorded music — one built from obsessions, accidents, persistence and the occasional brilliant misjudgement.

One year at a time.

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Forty tracks. Forty years. One song per year.

Episode 4 of 40 Years of Schoolin’ moves from 1950 to 1989 along less obvious routes — Cajun laments, Western swing, early avant-jazz, hi-fi futurism, teenage garage noise, folk pushed to breaking point, dub mutations, post-punk machinery and late-’80s DIY misbehaviour.

These are not canonical histories or greatest-hits shortcuts. Some of these records were widely heard; many barely travelled beyond their region, label, or moment. Taken together, they trace how music kept mutating anyway — through accident, obsession, cheap tape, stubborn belief and the occasional wrong turn that turned out to be right.

One year at a time.

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Forty tracks. Forty years. One song per year, reshuffled again.

Episode 3 moves from 1950 to 1989 by way of honky-tonk confessionals, jump-blues swagger, tape-loop miracles, devotional electronics, dub as architecture, and pop that accidentally invents the future. Some records were global hits, others barely escaped the room they were recorded in — but all of them say something about where music was, and where it was heading.