Sufi Soul The Mystic Music of Islam
[by Ken Hunt, London] The Sufi path is a path of mystic revelation within Islam that refracts its light through a prism of Islam, enabling it to be viewed, by those who are so-minded, as counter-Islamic or as casting a benign light into belief systems as varied as Hinduism, Sikhism, Christianity, Islam and the syncretic faith of the Bauls of Bengal. Capturing that diversity that that conjures in one film is impossible and, wisely, Sufi Soul – The Mystic Music of Islam goes for the heart rather than worrying (about) the extremities. I first saw this documentary at the MOFFOM film festival in Prague in 2005, which its director – and Songlines editor – Simon Broughton also attended for a post-screening director-audience discussion.
25. 10. 2010 | read more...
[by Ken Hunt, London] 2010 marks the 50th anniversary of the publication of Alan Garner’s novel, The Weirdstone of Brisingamen and HarperCollins has duly published a 50th anniversary edition. Hence the excuse to re-publish part of the first part of this interview. Any changes are so that the text conforms to our style guide and to contextualise and clarify matters. There has been no attempt to impose updates on this interview.
[by Ken Hunt, London] “The painting is from a 1984 album I did for Line Records in Germany called “Lose It Tonight”. A song I performed – the first and only time I ever lip-synched a TV show – on Germany’s #1 Pop music program of the 80’s called “MusicLaden”. It was great I met Pat Boone and showed him the way out.” – George Frayne’s lateral thoughts emanating from the Lose It Tonight cover.
[by Ken Hunt, London] As summer slides into mellow fruitfulness, what better batch of lifesavers on a desert island could one wish for than these? Let’s start with Dusty Springfield and her wicked way with telling a delicious tale about forbidden love. You’ll have to look for taboo subjects amongst the choices by Ahmad Sham Sufi Qawwali Group, Little Feat, Martin Carthy & Dave Swarbrick, Ralph McTell, Los Lobos, Joe Ely, Jerry Garcia, Bonnie Dobson and Dave Swarbrick. You might well find one or two sins hidden here.
[by Ken Hunt, London] People’s appreciation of American folk music did not commence with the folk scare of the 1960s and the likes of the Kingston Trio, Peter, Paul and Mary, Joan Baez, Odetta, Buffy Sainte-Marie and Bob Dylan. A generation before them another folk revival, that similarly had no truck with segregation along racial lines, had been under way. Its crop of performers included progressives such as Josh White, Woody Guthrie, Huddie ‘Leadbelly’ Ledbetter and Pete Seeger. Like the next generation, the earlier one wrote new songs in various folk idioms, frequently darts with left-leaning barbs, dosed with class consciousness and social awareness.
[by Ken Hunt, London] This month a raft laden with new provisions landed. It would have been rude not to, as they say, that is, not to have included some. In no particular order, ladies and gentlemen, here’s the Peter Rowan Bluegrass Band, Flora Purim, Jody Stecher and Kate Brislin, Laurie Anderson, Alastair Hulett and Dave Swarbrick, Jenna and Bethany Reid, Bill Kirchen, Wargaren, Annette Pinto and Diva Reka. It’s not entirely new stuff because, as ever, it reflects other work going on during the month.
[by Ken Hunt, London] The Scots Gaelic song tradition had a relatively hard time of it during the twentieth century what with a diminishing mother-tongue population, a massive decline in Gaelic literacy and the steady encroachment of Scots and English. Seonag NicCoinnich, that is, Joan MacKenzie in the English, was one of four daughters born into a community where Gaelic was the first language – in Point on the Isle of Lewis in the Western Isles on 2 September 1929.
[by Ken Hunt, London] In January 1963 Bob Dylan was in Europe, flitting between London and Rome, bankrolled by an appearance as a folksinger in the BBC television drama, Madhouse on Castle Street. In London he fell into the company of, amongst others, the British folksingers Martin Carthy, Bob Davenport and Rory McEwen – like Eric von Schmidt, another exceptional painter, notably in McEwen’s case of botanical subjects – and was reunited with some compatriots, the songwriter and novelist Richard Fariña
[by Ken Hunt, London] More boffo music from the rain-soaked rock, as ever reflecting work streams and passions. Lisa Knapp, John B. Spencer, Béla Fleck, Zakir Hussain and Edgar Meyer, Ökrös with Ági Szalóki, Element of Crime, Toots and the Maytals, Miles Davis, Pentangle, Asha Bhosle and R.D. Burman, and the Kronos Quartet with Alim & Fargana Qasimov are the month’s turn-ons.
[by Ken Hunt, London] “When I met him,” says Mike Heron of the Incredible String Band of Nazir Ali Jairazbhoy, “he was working at the School of Oriental and African Studies, I think. He was teaching there. How I came across him was that [Elektra record producer] Joe Boyd introduced us to odd songs and things and Robin [Williamson] suggested we might have a sitar player on Mad Hatter’s Song. He actually played on Mad Hatter’s Song credited as ‘Soma’ because he asked not to have his name used, I don’t really know why. He probably had some contractual thing going. It says sitar by Soma but it’s actually him.”