Discovering Finnish music, 1971-2024.
26. 6. 2024 | Categories: Articles,Interviews
In Finland, tradition is practiced as a living process and not as a museum exhibit, due to many dozens of creative musicians and educators. One of the first entrepreneurs to bring Finnish music to the world stage was Phillip Page. Already charmed by Finnish LPs as a DJ and record shop manager in the US, he moved from Texas to Helsinki in 1987. Since that time, he worked with artists such as JPP, Maria Kalaniemi, Värttinä, Kimmo Pohjonen and others, introducing them to audiences around the world.
[Petr Dorůžka, Los Angeles, California] Lecture and screening on Frank Zappa and Prague at the Czech Consulate in Los Angeles, 10 May 2024. You might find it strange, that a person from a faraway, non English speaking country, talks about Frank Zappa in his home city Los Angeles. So – I should explain a few things in the next hour, with a help of a documentary film about Zappa’s visit to Prague and his meeting with president Havel. 
[Petr Dorůžka, Praha] How would collectors like Béla Bartók or Leoš Janáček work if they lived today? Endangered traditions that they managed to capture have definitely disappeared in some regions, but they still live elsewhere. Hiram Salsano was born in Agropoli, a seaside resort 120 km south of Naples. Since 2005, she has been visiting rural farms in the interior and recording the songs of the oldest living witnesses.
[Petr Dorůžka, Praha] The ud, one of the most common instruments in the Middle East, is considered to be the forerunner of a whole host of stringed instruments, including the European guitar. Unlike the guitar, it does not have frets and therefore is not limited by European scales. Besides Arab countries, a number of excellent players live in Turkey, Israel or Armenia and, thanks to the migration in recent decades, also in Europe. The instrument has gained respect in jazz thanks to musicians as Anouar Brahem from Tunisia, who records for ECM, or Rabih Abou-Khalil from Lebanon.
[by Ken Hunt, London] Medical stuff prevented me working on Martin Carthy’s biography, Prince Heathen as much as I’d hoped in 2023. In July the first, post-surgery turning-point was getting to experience the Rudolstadt Festival for the first time since Petr Dorùžka and I went together in 2019. The next in late November was Peggy Seeger and me talking as part of the MOTH Club’s all-day event Celebrating 75 Years of Folkways Records. FlorinBondrila_.jpg)
[Petr Dorůžka, Praha] Shaun Williams started to explore East European music as a humanitarian volunteer in Ukraine 15 years ago. Currently he is working on Roma music in his doctoral thesis, and as an accordionist he formed an ensemble with Romanian singer Corina Sîrghi. The full name of their group is Corina Sîrghi și Taraful Jean Americanu.
[by Martha Hawley, Haarlem] The Fira Mediterrània was held in October 2023 for the 26th time, in celebration of Catalan traditional and popular culture, accompanied by performance and artistic contributions from around and across the Mediterranean. The pace of the festival is determined by the topography of its base in the hills north of Barcelona, in Manresa, all on an incline, very appealing to this visitor from the Lowlands.
Intensive treatment for cancer prevented me working much on Prince Heathen – The Age of Carthy and England’s Folksong Revival for most of 2022. I resume work on Martin Carthy’s biography in 2023. The upside was spending much of the year thinking about and challenging what I had already written. 
[by Ken Hunt, London] Another strange year spent thinking, living, breathing and writing about Martin Carthy for Prince Heathen. All I shall say to the subject is Alan Garner’s Treacle Walker came out in 2021 after a fair few years of writing. A quote of Alan’ll probably appear in Prince Heathen as a watchword. Little of the 2021 assembly sounds on the face of it as if it ostensibly anything to do with Martin. Wait. (Much of it doesn’t much of it does.)
Even as she juggles an extensive repertoire and audience expectations, Eddi Reader is the sort of performer who gives one-off performances. Celebrating four decades as a professional musician whether as a name soloist, the lead vocalist in the successful group Fairground Attraction or going back to singing, apparently, with the likes of the Eurythmics and The Waterboys, what she delivers is bespoke and draws on an astoundingly impressive trove of material, traditional, original and covers.
