Giant Donut Discs ® – September 2011
16. 9. 2011 | Rubriky: Articles,Giant Donut Discs
[by Ken Hunt, London] The one has a lot to do with thinking about rhymes, rhythms, mythologies and conversations. The music from Panta Rhei, Ornette Coleman, Dick Gaughan, Pentangle, Traffic, Talking Heads, Márta Sebestyén, Martin Simpson (with Dick Gaughan), Steve Tilston and Aruna Sairam.
Nachts – Panta Rhei
This particular performance isn’t typical of the East German jazz-rock Panta Rhei, lazily rather than waggishly labelled the Chicago of the East. Back in the day they proved to be the birthing ground of many of the most important Ostrock bands with personnel streaming out all over the place. Members went on, for example. to Karat and Lift. Overwhelmingly though, the band’s image was shaped by its two lead vocalists Herbert Dreilich and Veronika Fischer.
Nachts is a Dreilich composition sung by Fischer. It begins with an opening electric guitar statement. Drums with telling cymbal work enter and the instruments fall into place. The arrangement features prominent piano and flute and keyboard washes. The mood created is romantic. Vroni Fischer is singing solo. “Perhaps you also think of me/of hours full of happiness/That I’ll finally come to you/Back to you.”
Nachts translates as ‘nights’ (in its adverbial sense) and is a wistful torch song of longing and imagining a lover’s return or reunion. The song is much anthologised whether on Amiga reissue compilations or the touchy-feely anthology Abendstimmung (‘Evening mood’). It first appeared as the B-side of Panta Rhei’s Hier Wie Nebenan (‘Here like next-door’) (Amiga 4 55 880) in 1972 but was elbowed off the band’s debut LP.
Amiga was the only deal in town and it was a small miracle for any East German rock group to get to record, let alone get an album released. Everything was scrutinised, nothing was left to chance or deemed coincidence when officials wielded their mighty, all-powerful red pens. This is not to say that Nachts is anything subversive but its lyrics could allow the ‘wrong’ sort of interpretation – “Slowly the night passes/A new day is beginning…” Said day is full of sunshine, it continues for the twitchy-pen censor. Long before technology brought in CCTV and surveillance cameras, the German Democratic Republic was a state that never slept for the night had a thousand eyes, paid and volunteer.
It eventually ended up on Panta Rhei’s Die frühen Jahre (‘The Early Years’) LP for Amiga in 1981. On Abendstimmung the argus-eyed will note that their name changed from Panta Rhei (Greek for ‘Everything flows’) to Pantha Rhei. It could have been a proofing error, a dumbing-down or a confusion with Panther. Let’s not speculate, though. It was a mistake, an honest one and nobody wants the inquisition to burst in. From Die frühen Jahre or Abendstimmung etc
Tom Paine’s Bones – Dick Gaughan
Wandering around Lewes in West Sussex, I made not so much a pilgrimage as a visit to the place where Tom Paine, a political polestar by day or night, lived. Looking up at the stout-timbered house on the high street, Graham Moore’s tribute, as sung by Dick Gaughan, kept running through my head.
It lodged in my head for months with its “I will dance to Tom Paine’s bones/Dance to Tom Paine’s bones/Dance in the oldest boots I own/To the rhythm of Tom Paine’s bones…” Then in July Barbara Dane and I had an email exchange, thanks to Leon Rosselson, that touched on Paine. We evoked him as a mutual inspiration. In August Aruna Sairam and I got chatting about the importance of visiting places with an artistic connection. By then, Dick Gaughan’s magnificent interpretation of the song was clearly not going away. From Outlaws & Dreamers (Greentrax CDTRAX 222, 2001)
More information at http://www.dickgaughan.co.uk/
Theme From A Symphony (Variation One) – Ornette Coleman
Dancing In Your Head (A&M Horizon, 1977) was a turning-point in free-form jazz and the reason it made such a strong impression on me, I thought, was Midnight Sunrise, recorded in January 1973 in Jajouka, Morocco. It included the Master Musicians of Jajouka. Midnight Sunrise also connected with Coleman’s two Themes From A Symphony and their harmolodics. (“This means the rhythms, harmonies, and tempos are all equal in relationship and independent melodies at the same time.” When I first encountered it, the album’s three tracks seemed like some gooey, honey-based delectable confectionary with nuts stirred in. Listening back to it, this track proved to be the key. Familiarity can breed new insights. From Dancing In Your Head (Verve 543 519-2, 2000)
I’ve Got A Feeling – Pentangle
One of Pentangle’s finest songs, originally part of their double-LP Sweet Child (1968). From Sweet Child (Sanctuary CMDDD132, 2001)
The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys – Traffic
The post-hit band Traffic incarnation was one of their finest. Their music distilled so much as they crammed all those ideas into their music. This particular song from Steve Winwood and Jim Capaldi from their 1971 album of the same name does wonderful things with tensions. Those tensions apply to both the music and the lyrics. From The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys (Island 314 548 827-2, 2002)
Once In A Lifetime – Talking Heads
And then one thing leads to another. Same as it was. From Sand In The Vaseline (Sire Records 0777 7 80466 2 2, 1992)
Bú-küldöző – Márta Sebestyén
On this album, Márta Sebestyén sings (as well as playing tin-whistle and drum) as part of a trio, with Balázs Szokolay Dongó contributing bagpipes, shepherd’s flutes, fujara, tárogató (Hungary’s indigenous ‘clarinet), saxophone and vocals, and Mátyás Bolya playing koboz (fretless lute) and zithers. This particular suite, Bú-küldöző (‘Sending Off Sorrow’) banishes misfortune so gloriously. It begins with Mikor kend es Laci bátyám… (If You Too, Laci…) into Kecskés tánc (Goat-like Dance) into Ihogtatás (A Rhythmic Yell). A piece of musdic that came out of this August’s conversation with Aruna Sairam. From Nyitva látám mennyeknek kapuját/I Can See the Gates of Heaven (SM 001, 2008)
More information in Hungarian and English at http://sebestyenmarta.hu/
Brother, Can You Spare A Dime? – Martin Simpson
Brother, Can You Spare a Dime? is a song birthed in the Great Depression. Yip Harburg’s lyrics, set to music based on a remembered Russian lullaby by Jay Gorney in 1931 captured the mood of an age. Its title is so economical it is staggering. Rudy Vallée recorded it. Bing Crosby sang it (his was the version I first remember). Tom Waits cut it, though his cover did not do much for me. George Michael included it in his Symphonica tour repertoire, a tour that started at Prague’s State Opera House in late August 2011.
Martin Simpson does this song solo in concert. But albums do not need to be ‘concert captures’. This version showcases Dick Gaughan singing and he is on great blooming marvellous form. The whole construct is a gem to stick on repeat play. . From Purpose + Grace (Topic Records TSCD584, 2011)
More information at http://www.martinsimpson.com/
Ijna (Davy Ji) – Steve Tilston
This concluding track from Steve Tilston’s 2011 album is his tribute to Davy Graham. It’s a piece for solo guitar and it uses the groove and tonalities of Graham’s playing as its launch pad. It’s not a flashy composition. It could have been. It sets out to capture the essence of the man and his guitar playing. The ‘Davy Ji’ in brackets is an Indian suffix connoting respect and, of course, Davy was a great questing individual who loved the Pandora’s box that raga opened up. It coincided with proofing galleys for Davey’s entry in an upcoming supplement to the Oxford Dictionary of National BiographyFrom The Reckoning (Hubris Records HUB 006, 2011)
More information at http://www.stevetilson.com
Kalinga Nartana – Aruna Sairam
There are several accounts of this story. Let’s stick to one of those ‘Once upon a times’. Once upon a time, Kalinga or Kāliyā, a nāga or serpent being, had driven into exile in the River Yumuna and taken up residence at Vrindavan – in the modern-day Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. Garuda, ferocious eagle-kin foe of snakes, had driven him into exile and he was not a happy nāga. He was very cross. However, Garuda could not touch him in Vrindavan because he had riled somebody so royally that he had a workable curse placed on him, ensuring Vrindavan was somewhere he could not go. So there Kalinga – we will stick to his name in this song – was safe in the knowledge that he could spread his foul poison. With 110 hooded heads – imagine a multi-headed king cobra with attitude and then some – Kalinga had venom to share. He decimated the area for leagues around. The local humans were terrified and steered clear of Kalinga’s lair.
One day some children were playing ball and the ball landed in the Yamuna. One boy went in after it and Kalinga rose from his lair at the commotion and wrapped the child in his coils. The child fought back and turned the tables, for it was Krishna. Venom was flying and the child Krishna grew so huge that Kalinga ran out of snake, so to speak, and had to let him go. Then Krishna danced with the weight of the world on Kalinga’s heads and bested him. His life was spared at his wives’ intervention by their worshipping Krishna. Krishna spared him and allowed him to leave, a chastened nâga.
This is the story with which Aruna Sairam concluded her concert at London’s Royal Albert Hall on 27 July 2011. This is a recording on the same thillana – a rhythmic form kin the north’s tarana form from 2002. Kalinga Nartana is by the 18th-Century C.E. composer, Ootukkadu Venkatasubba Iyer – the first part of his name is a typical Karnatic geographical reference, in this case to Oottukkadu, a village near Kumbhakonam in modern-day Tamil Nadu. Aruna Sairam invests it with the sublime. It is phenomenal. From December Season 2002 (Charsur Digital Work Station CDWL067D, 2002)
The image of Aruna Sairam from Darbar 2009 is © Santosh Sidhu/Swing 51 Archives. The copyright of all other images lies with the respective photographers, companies and image-makers.