Author Archive
[by Ken Hunt, London] As years go, 2015 was one of the finest. Over and over again it plucked some remarkable rabbits out the magician’s hat. It’s stuff like that that keeps me keeping on.
A note on the process when it comes to these decisions. Part of it is to do with whittling. Some ‘holding entries’ logged were gone by the end of the year. Some albums remain here because even though they did not necessarily overwhelm, in the long run they stayed on the play list. An example might be Los Lobos’ Gates of Gold. In their canon it may be a “a fair to middling album” (according to my fRoots review) but I played it so much without making that special connection with the majority of its tracks.
The festival season brought further discoveries, consolidations and winnowings
31. 12. 2015 |
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[by Ken Hunt, London] This month’s collection is a mixture of project-related listening and music listened to just for pleasure. In the latter case that doesn’t happen too often. On 5 July 2015 Shirley Collins celebrated her 80th birthday in London as All in the Downs but I was working in Germany on that date (see below). The assortment includes The 31st of February, Shirley Collins, Bert Jansch, Led Zeppelin, Mita Nag, Brian McNeill, Samira, Scotty Stoneman, Trollmusikken and Rhiannon Giddens
An occasional reminder. Giant Donut Discs is a bequest column. The singer Pete Bellamy granted Ken Hunt, the author’s Swing 51 magazine the concept and column. It was a variation on an idea by the UK-based radio broadcaster, Roy Plomley (pronounced Plum’lee)
15. 12. 2015 |
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[by Ken Hunt, London] “How unseemly it is to follow anyone slavishly,” was ECM’s press release’s free (one suspects) translation for the title track in 2013. Performing Muhlis Akarsu’s Kula Kulluk Yakýîir Mı therefore could be perceived as a pointed choice since he died in a firebombing in 1993 aged 45 or so. He belonged to the Alevćlik (Alevi) sect. Within Islam, Alevism is seen as a Turkish- slash Turkish-diaspora-based Shia sect retaining Sufi colourings. Furthermore, Alevism espouses poetry, music and dance.
Erdal Erzincan plays the bağlama – the long-necked lute or saz anglicised as baglama while Kayhan Kalhor is the project’s kamancheh (spike fiddle) player. As
30. 11. 2015 |
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[by Ken Hunt, London] In 1955 North America’s modern-era fascination with Hindustani music began with the advent of jet travel and the arrival of the sarod maestro Ali Akbar Khan in New York. By then, Shamin Ahmed Khan, born in Baroda, Baroda State (modern-day Gujarat) on 10 September 1938, had already met the musician who would transform his life.
In 1951 he met Ali Akbar Khan’s brother-in-law, Ravi Shankar. Shamim Ahmed belonged to a family of hereditary musicians of the Agra Gharana. A gharana is a school and style of Hindustani classical music historically rooted in a specific place – Agra is in modern-day India’s northern state of Uttar Pradesh. A boyhood bout of typhoid destroyed his singing range. He switched to sitar
31. 10. 2015 |
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[by Ken Hunt, London] One day before her third album Coracle’s official release the Emily Portman Trio performed much of it a good number of songs at a Sunday lunchtime concert at the Riverhouse Arts Centre in Walton-on-Thames. A splendid, characterful venue yards away from the Thames, its barn-like interior is all wooden beams and half-timbered decorations.
It made for a stark backdrop for the Trio. Even with the sun shining outside, it suited Portman’s songs from the womb to the tomb and their proclivity for seeking out dark spaces. In a real sense rather than touring the new album they were touring a triptych of The Glamoury (2010), Hatchling (2012) and Coracle
19. 8. 2015 |
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[by Ken Hunt, London] At the time of the inspirational illustrator Maurice Sendak’s death, obituaries concentrated on his connections with Mozart, Prokofiev, Janáček and suchlike. On the occasion of the death of the US folksinger Jean Ritchie (1922-2015), it is time to remind about his bigger sound palette connections, notably one that coloured his early art. One commission revealed other musical tastes.
Sendak illustrated one of the most important, early books of the US Folk Revival, Jean Ritchie’s Singing Family of the Cumberlands (1955).
8. 6. 2015 |
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[by Martha Hawley, Amsterdam] Roberto Fonseca and Fatoumata Diawara passed through the Netherlands in May 2015, in the company of musicians from Mali and Cuba, stopping at the Music Meeting in Nijmegen, and in Amsterdam’s North Sea Jazz Club, where I heard them. The North Sea Jazz Club is licensed to use the name of the sprawling North Sea Jazz Festival – both maintain a programming policy of jazz with a broad range, including Latin, African, funk, soul and more. The Club prides itself on giving big names the opportunity to perform in a small venue.
Roberto Fonseca and Fatoumata Diawara are well-matched to carry their musical roots forward, both having played with hometown greats
8. 6. 2015 |
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[by Ken Hunt, London] This month’s collection is a mixture of project-related listening and, that luxury, music listened to just for pleasure. In the latter case that doesn’t happen too often. Rojda, Little Feat, Martin Simpson, Andy Cutting & Nancy Kerr, Peggy Seeger, Scarlett O’ & ‘the little big band’, Jackson Browne & David Lindley, Jyotsna Srikanth, The Young Tradition, Kirsty MacColl and Tritonus.
Saliho Û Nûrê – Rojda
It is part of my life plan at least once a year to be introduced to new musical epiphanies, not just musical experiences – true, life-changing epiphanies. It doesn’t happen every year. 2015 seems as if potentially it has already produced one. I listened – as in really, really listened – to Rojda as part of research for a project, TFF Rudolstadt 2015. S
30. 5. 2015 |
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[by Ken Hunt, London] It is a knee-jerk reaction when evoking Belgian song to extol Jacques Brel and his impact on Francophone chanson. But Belgium is a composite nation, with Walloon, Flemish and German populations. When it comes to articulating what it means to be Flemish, one of the giants of contemporary Flemish song and poetry was Wannes van de Velde, who for more than 40 years defined Flemish culture and defied cultural laziness
5. 4. 2015 |
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[by Ken Hunt, London] John Mayer’s impact on hyphenated fusion exceeds calculability. Though the Jazz Café’s ‘Events Brochure’ rebirthed him as Bombayite, Mayer is Calcutta-born. In the 1960s when he and the Jamaican-born saxophonist Joe Harriott combi-doubled their quintets, even more than Don Ellis, they were the defining ensemble shaking (up) the raag and jazz cocktail. Frankly, today’s Indo-Jazz Fusions excels its Sixties namesake – undoubtably helped by today’s availability of information but also because Harriott’s ensemble probably never got raag.
14. 3. 2015 |
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