[by Ken Hunt, London] The Jamaican musician, record producer, DJ and broadcaster died 15 March 2008. Especially during the 1980s he bridged the gap between reggae and punk, notably through his work with The Clash on their 1980 Bankrobber single, the US album Black Market Clash (1980) and their marvellously sprawling, spiky and self-indulgent Sandinista! (1989)
2. 4. 2008 | read more...
[by Ken Hunt, London] The folklorist, folk and ethnic music collector, author, radio broadcaster and producer Henrietta Yurchenco died in Manhattan on 10 December 2007 at the age of 91. She was one of the great links between the racially integrated and progressive-minded US folk scene of the 1930s and 1940s and the folk boom of the 1950s and 1960s, Over the course of her long life in music – the title of her autobiography Around the World in 80 Years (2003) was apt – she was a shaping influence in what people understood by folk music and a kingpin of ethnomusicology and world music.
14. 3. 2008 | read more...
[by Ken Hunt, London] Buddy Miles was best known as a powerhouse drummer, most famously for his work with Jimi Hendrix on Band of Gypsies – the ensemble with bassist Billy Cox – that followed the Jimi Hendrix Experience. It was a short-lived band and the 1970 album, drawing on a New Year’s live set recorded on the cusp of 1969-1970, polarised opinion. The memory most people will have of him was his sound-turned-machine drumming on Machine Gun on Band of Gypsies. Thanks to Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, the sound of helicopter rotor blades…
29. 2. 2008 | read more...
[by Ken Hunt, London] The Australian folklorist, illustrator, author and one of the pioneers of the Australian Folksong Revival Ron Edwards died on 5 January 2008. He wrote and published extensively over his lifetime on folksong, bushcraft, story telling and linguistics. Simply put, he was a hugely important and influential figure for Australian folk music and anthropology. From 1984 until 2007 he was president of the Australian Folklore Society and edited the Australian Folklore Society Journal.
21. 2. 2008 | read more...
[by Ken Hunt, London] A native Californian, the singer and songwriter and one-time member of the Kingston Trio folk group, John Stewart was born in San Diego on 5 September 1939. Stewart’s album California Bloodlines (1969) and Cannons in the Rain (1973) were major additions to a literature of America in song. Major milestones too. His Mother Country typifies the reflective nature of his finest songs. Like the work of the Canadian songwriter Ian Tyson, Mother Country…
27. 1. 2008 | read more...
[by Ken Hunt, London] The Telugu singer, dancer-choreographer and actress Tangutoori Surya Kumari – also rendered Suryakumari – was born in Rajamundry in November 1925. She became part of the Raj-era independence movement against the British that eventually triumphed with the end of colonial rule in 1947. She was a child-actress in Telugu films as early as 1937 when a part was written for her in Vipranarayana. Thereafter she juggled cinematic acting and playback singing roles…
8. 1. 2008 | read more...
[by Ken Hunt, London] Back in the 1960s, our understanding of the world’s varied musical traditions was woefully ignorant by today’s standards. If buying American blues or bluegrass albums was an expensive undertaking involving the adventure of a day’s expedition to nearest big city or crossing fingers or sending money to a mail order specialist, maybe in another country, then tracking down what was then called “International folk” – like Japonese court music – was similar to shopping on the moon. It could take decades to track down some choice morsel.
8. 1. 2008 | read more...
[by Ken Hunt, London] Chanson is often construed as literate song. Even German, the language that brought us Schubert’s Lieder, treats chanson as a class apart from Lied. Just like Czech invokes chanson’s spirit in the phrase Česky Šanson. Chanson offers other species of commentary on the human condition and for one of the finest examples of chanson’s otherness, hearken to the exemplary work of Fran‡ois Béranger. He made his mark as what can only be described as a protest chansonnier.
14. 12. 2007 | read more...
[by Ken Hunt, London] The photographer and technical diver Keith Morris went missing off Alderney, one of the Channel Islands in the English Channel, on 17 June 2005. Born in the South-west London district of Wandsworth on 15 August 1938, he was responsible for some of the most enduring and unwavering images of British and American music
14. 12. 2007 | read more...
[by Ken Hunt, London] Likely as not, few of you reading this will have ever heard of Alain Daniélou. In terms of mystery and influence, Daniélou was among the 20 most influential characters from twentieth-century ethnomusicology and one of the characters who signposted the way into the world music labyrinth. He worked on such consciousness-shaping series and volumes as Anthologie de la Musique de l’Inde for Serge Moreux’ Ducretet-Thomson label, Religious Music of India for Moe Asch’s Folkways label, Folk Music of India for Columbia and the Unesco Anthology of the Orient for Karl Vötterlee’s Bärenreiter Verlag/Musicaphon.
27. 11. 2007 | read more...