Grammy Nominee Josh Kun: Al Son de Beno

And more Best Album Notes.

I am an avid reader of liner notes. You can often find me absorbed in the back of an album (or squinting at a photo of one online), looking for leads in the story of a long-departed musician or a recording session about which little seems to be known. Album texts for me make up a research archive of clues to the past, about the music of course, but also the language that people were using at the time that an album was recorded, and what was happening in the studio and on the street. I’m always thrilled when the liner notes are credited, so that I can look up the author’s name, which can lead me to further reading and the kind of arcane details I love to pass on.

When Grammy nominations are published, I go directly to the Best Album Notes category to see who’s nominated and what box sets-with their illustrated booklets-I might have missed in the past months. The first time I wrote some notes, for the five-album The Complete Cuban Jam Sessions set on Craft Recordings, I myself was nominated, for a 2020 Grammy (it was right before the pandemic). I was particularly proud to represent women in the field; I was also the only writer nominated for a recording of Latin music that year. I don’t think I had known that there was an album notes award before. But since then, I’ve been a champion of the category (an honor for music writers and music and history geeks? Hell yeah!) This year’s Grammys are still set to happen in Los Angeles on February 3, with a “renewed sense of purpose,” according to Academy Pres Harvey Mason, to raise funds for relief and honor the firefighters; and maybe just to cheer people up a little. Whether the show goes on in the end or not, the records will still be available for listening to, and the notes for reading.

At the end of this story you’ll find a list of all the 2025 Album Notes author nominees.

Josh Kun wrote the liner notes for the “Original Sontrack” for the compilation of archival songs featured in the movie “Al Son de Beno.” The film, the music and Kun’s

vividly descriptive and also philosophical notes tell the story of Baruj “Beno” Lieberman, the Mexican-born son of Polish Jewish immigrants, and Beno’s “obsessive, maniacal ten-year quest to record the folkloric music of Mexico, this country that was his and not his, to be its sonic topographer and know the land through the songs its people sing.”

Beno founded the Asociación Mexicana de Folklore A.C. in 1963, with others who were dedicated to preserving oral tradition, he set out through the countryside to record the tapestry of acoustic expression known as the Mexican son. Beno Lieberman died by suicide in 1985.

“Beno and his fellow recordists created a sonic republic of their own,” writes Kun. “An old, weird Mexico that they wanted to ensure would never be forgotten…

“…The most famous result of Beno’s collecting is the monumental Antología del Son de Mexico, six albums featuring eight variations of Mexican son [as Kun mentions, a cousin of the Cuban son]…There are over three hours of sones on the anthology, over three hours of violins and harps and strings galore (huapangueras, jaranas, requintos, bajo quintos, guitarras), over three hours of rhymed coplas and decimas, over three hours of voices that crack into otherworldly falsettos, voices that harmonize and call and respond, voices that sound like the earth and the dirt and the dust.”

As Kun explains in his liner notes, the recordings have been recognized by UNESCO for their lasting cultural value, and the tapes of the music that Beno captured on his rambles are archived in the Fonoteca Nacional archives in Mexico City.

“When we listen to the recordings gathered here, we are hearing Trio los Rancheros del Panuco, we are hearing Los Marineros de Apatzingán, but we are also hearing Beno. The way he stood, the way he wore his headphones, the musicians he chose. He was listening for something that led him back to himself.”

Beno’s son Ilán Lieberman directed “Al Son de Beno” (which could be translated various ways, one of them being “To the Beat of Beno”.) He traces Beno’s steps to places where the music and the musicians took him, telling his father’s story through people he met, conversations with family members, and of course music.

The 16-track soundtrack of remastered songs is plump with life. It includes gorgeously spare encounters between guitar and voices, and also music recorded in the sixties at El Pesebre, known as the first folk club in Mexico City, opened by Beno.

Those tracks, writes Kun, are “complete with audience coughs, foot-stomps, and applause, that offer us a rare window into the urban space that Beno made for the rural music that he loved. We hear the stark,waltzing Oaxacan lament of “La Sandunga” in the moment it is shared with the capital crowd, the jerky accordion whirl of “Sube y Baja,” a reminder that Beno liked música norteña too. El Pesebre was a link between Mexican folk music and the folk music of the world, attracting occasional guest visits by international folksingers like Pete Seeger and John Joast.”

Find the full liner notes on Josh Kun’s website. And hear the entire “Al Son de Beno” soundtrack on Spotify.

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The five nominees for the 2025 Grammy Awards in the Album Notes Category are:

“After Midnight,” Tim Brooks, album notes writer (Ford Dabney’s Syncopated Orchestras)

“The Carnegie Hall Concert,” Lauren Du Graf, album notes writer (Alice Coltrane)

“Centennial,” Ricky Riccardi, album notes writer (King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band and Various Artists)

“John Culshaw — The Art of the Producer — The Early Years 1948-55,” Dominic Fyfe, album notes writer (John Culshaw)

“Sontrack Original De La Película ‘Al Son De Beno,’” Josh Kun, album notes writer (Various Artists)

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