[Ken Hunt, London] 2023 into 2024 felt like bursting smiling into sunshine after being under one of the darkest clouds imaginable. In July 2024 I went back to the Rudolstadt Festival. The 2023 Festival had been really important. Santosh and I arrived there a month after being discharged from hospital and six weeks after major surgery. I guess I really needed to get there. I finished dressing and sterilising my operation wound in Berlin-Kreuzberg. Kreuzberg was the first Kiez (‘neighbourhood’) of Berlin where I felt totally at home in and I first visited West Berlin in 1970. Kreuzberg is the first multicultural district of Berlin I’ve encountered and I’ve been going there since the 1990s.
The 2024 Festival was immeasurably better. Shit journey from Prague with delays and missed trains. Thanks for nothing, Deutsche Bahn. We checked in at the festival office and hotel and bee-lined straight to Iva Bittová and Antonín Fajt’s concert at the Stadtkirche (‘town church’).
This year, again, Peter Uhlmann (1950-2018), one of the co-founders of the festival was on my mind. I met him in July 1991, the first year of the festival. He and I got a chance to talk deep and heavy in July 2018. This year his wife Christine and I left the others and walked together to the English elm planted in his memory in the Heinepark. Peter was responsible for the festival’s street music component. Name another festival programming street music. In 1991 Peter focussed my head. Ever after I have paid more attention to street entertainers and buskers. And have dropped coin into hats. The doyen of Cologne’s street musicians, Klaus der Geiger came back in 2024. Naturally, he figures in my Germany chapter in the third edition of the Rough Guide to World Music. If there was one mention of a street musicians in any other chapter in any other volume, I never spotted it. I saw Klaus der Geiger performing in the grounds of the Schillerhaus where Goethe and Schiller supposedly first met.
Anyway, Deutsche Bahn and České dráhy, between them, wrecked returning to Prague by train. Iva Bittová and Antonín Fajt graciously gave us a lift back to Prague. It was a journey filled with talk about Czechoslovak literature, Moravian music, cabbages and kings. Toni got so wrapped up in talk about Kafka and Hašek that he decided to stay in Prague and heard back to Brno by coach. We ate at what I like to call my Prague office, U Zavěšenýho Kafe on Loretánská (formerly Úvoz at the bottom of the hill) Then we took the 22 down to the Franz Kafka Museum. Toni helped me with something bothering me for the Martin Carthy biography. (The work progresses.) I also brought Reiner Stach’s three-volume German-language biography of Kafka back from the festival, thanks to Bernhard Hanneken.
2024 saw me return to reviewing music from the Indo-Pakistani subcontinent. To be honest, post-Covid and post-Brexit, most of my outlets had gone. I came out of retirement for Aruna Sairam’s recital at the Darbar Festival at the Barbican Centre on Sunday, 17 October 2024. And she sang magnificently. Pulse commissioned me to review the concert. I thank them enormously. After the concert we talked at length.
The prospect of one side-commission for 2025 is already exciting me enormously. It would take a great deal to divert me from the Martin Carthy biography. It is special – which is all I can say right now.
New releases aka Playlist
Laurie Anderson / Amelia / Nonesuch Records www.nonesuch.com
Jon Boden & The Remnant Kings / Parlour Ballads / Hudson Records https://hudsonrecords.co.uk
Nikol Bóková Trio / Feathers / Soleil et Pluie www.soleiletpluie.com
Johnny Campbell / True North / (Own Label) Bandcamp https://johnnycampbell.bandcamp.com/
Hlaskontrabas Oktet / Kaleidoscapes / Animal Music https://animalmusic.cz/en
Lankum / Live in Dublin / https://www.roughtrade.com
MichaelAnnJillo / I’ll Give You One More As You Go / Rezound [No website information from Contact michaelannjillocd@gmail.com with details of your address for PayPal information.]
Angeline Morrison / Ophelia / (Own Label) https://angelinemorrisonmusic.bandcamp.com
Mucha Quartet / Štyria hudci/Four Fellow Musicians / Pavian Records www.drhorak.sk
Rachel Newton / Sealladh / Hudson Records https://hudsonrecords.co.uk
Silk Road Ensemble with Rhiannon Giddens /American Railroad / Nonesuch Records www.nonesuch.com
Martin Simpson / Skydancers / Topic Records www.topicrecords.co.uk
Seb Stone / Young Tamlyn’s Away / Scribe Records www.scriberecords.co.uk and www.sebstonefolk.co.uk
Linda Thompson / Proxy Music / Storysound Records http://storysoundrecords.com/
Richard Thompson / Ship To Shore / New West Records https://newwestrecords.com/
Macdara Yeates / Traditional Singing from Dublin / Bandcamp https://macdarayeates.bandcamp.com
Historic releases, reissues and anthologies
Martin Hayes & The Common Ground Ensemble / Peggy’s Dream / 251 Records
Richard Thompson Band / Historic Classic Concert – Live in Nottingham 1986 / The Store For Music www.thestoreformusic.com
Emil Viklický / Za horama, za lesama. Beyond The Mountains, Beyond The Words / Supraphon Music Publishing www.supraphon.com / or available from https://cdmusic.cz/inshop/scripts/search.aspx?q=Za+Horama%2C+Zu+L esama
Events of 2024
Angrusori, featuring Nils Henrik Asheim and Iva Bittová / Grand Junction, St Mary Magdalene’s Church, Paddington / 17 January 2024
Iva Bittová and Antonín Fajt / Stadtkirche, Rudolstadt Festival / 5 July 2024
Klaus der Geiger / Schillerhaus, Rudolstadt Festival / 6 July 2024
Iva Bittová and the Mucha Quartet / Stadtkirche, Rudolstadt Festival / 7 July 2024
Leon Rosselson’s 90th Birthday Bash, The Studio, The Questors Theatre, Ealing / 28 July 2024
Nancy Kerr & James Fagan / TwickFolk, The Cabbage Patch, Twickenham / 29 September 2024
http://www.pulseconnects.com/aruna-sairam-darbar-festival
June Tabor and The Oysterband / Barbican Centre, London / 20 October 2024
Aruna Sairam / Darbar Festival, Barbican Centre, London / 27 October 2024 Nikol Bóková Quartet / Spice Jazz Soho, EFG London Jazz Festival 2024 / 28th Made in Prague Festival, The Crazy Coqs, Brasserie Zédel, Soho / 18 November 2024
Hamilton : An American Musical / Victoria Palace Theatre, London / 23 November 2024
Ten music projects released before 2024. Some new discoveries, some catching up, some revisitings, some music returned to for inspiration and entertaiment.
Angrusori / Live at Tou / Hudson Records, 2020
Nikol Bóková / Expedition / Soleil et Pluie, 2023 www.soleiletpluie.com
Jackson Browne / For Everyman / Elektra/Asylum, 1973
Burd Ellen / Says the never beyond / [own label], 2020, www.burdellen.com
Jerry Garcia All Good Things: Jerry Garcia Studio Sessions / Jerry Garcia Estate and Warners, 2004 out-of-print
Nancy Kerr & James Fagan / An Evening With Nancy Kerr & James Fagan / Little Dish, 2019
Joseph Spence and The Pinder Family / The Spring of Sixty-Five / Rounder, 1992
Škampa Quartet / Kaprál Kaprálová Martinů String Quartets / Radioservis, 2012 www.radioteka.cz
Various / Proměny v čase: Tradiční lidová hudba na Moravě ve 20. století / Transitions in Time – Traditional Folk Music in Moravia in 20th Century / Gnosis, 2001
Top to bottom: Aruna Sairam at the Darbar Festival, 17 October 2024; unknown 6-string amplified zither musician playing dub and reggae at Clapham Junction on 19 December 2024; Angeline Morrison at Cecil Sharp House on 20 October 2022; Iva Bittová with Angrusori on 17 January 2024; David Dorůžka with the Nikol Bóková Quartet on 18 November 2024.
“Such a long, long time to be gone
And a short time to be there.” – ‘Box of Rain’, Phil Lesh (1940-2024)
[by Ken Hunt, London] For many years I was a newspaper obituarist writing for The Guardian, The Independent, The Scotsman, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Times. In addition, I wrote obituaries for many folk magazines. A sample would be Folker in Germany, the EFDSS Journal in the UK, Penguin Eggs in Canada and Sing Out! in the USA.
Since Oxford University Press took over what from 2004 became the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, I have written music-related biographical essays, mainly folk-related, for that massive reference work. I have added more folk-related entries than any individual contributor in the work’s history, including contributors from 1885 to OUP taking over the reins. (It’s laborious but searching the site is easily do-able.) 2024 saw the publication of my entry for the rock musician Spencer Davis: ‘Davies, Spencer David Nelson (known as Spencer Davis) (1939-2020), singer, guitarist, and actor’.
I sometimes miss writing obituaries. Sometimes not. I miss writing them especially when I read ‘list obits’ which don’t capture what made their subject tick and their character. So here are some lives remembered, sometimes with memories, of a number of people who coloured my life.
The musician, activist and co-founder of Paredon Records, Barbara Dane (b.1927) was a huge influence. I was asked to write something about her in October 2024 for my friend Garth Cartwright’s substack. This is a slightly longer version:
“Over decades of interviewing people, many blur into a haze. That never applied to Bernice Johnson Reagon of the all-black female unaccompanied ensemble Sweet Honey in the Rock. It was the only time I can remember the (white) press officer being so intimidated by an act they were publicising they did a runner. They were formidable. Bernice was a complete joy and inspiration to interview. She had seen and done so much. She had been a founding member of the Freedom Singers which the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) had birthed. She had been in the midst of the civil rights struggle during very – neutral word – fraught times.
“In the second half of the Eighties, research started with paper sources. One way or the other. With a season ticket to Collet’s Record Shop on New Oxford Street in London since my teens, it was inevitable that I went there when researching the interview.
“That was how I discovered Paredon Records. They were probably the most politicised record company of the period in the United States. Barbara Dane and her future husband Irwin ‘Izzy’ Silber co-founded the label. They put out Bernice’s Give Your Hands to Struggle. And that was how Barbara Dane, at one remove, came into my life.
“Over the next decades Barbara surfaced again and again. I remember reading a telling review by Young in the book I reviewed. The book’s title is The Conscience of the Folk Revival. It is a collection of Israel Young’s writings. The fourth piece is a review of the 1959 Newport Folk Festival. He wrote: “Barbara Dane then came on with blues and folk tunes. She made a hit by composing a blues, on the spot, about coming to Newport.” Enough said.
“It was decades before Barbara and I spoke. Exactly why and when we wound up talking is hazy now. Damn, she was feisty. She was a hoot and very, very amusing. I remember her talking about her admiration for the English political songwriter Robb Johnson. She positively glowed down the phone when I said we were old friends and drinking companions. To have this woman who was so important for the political song movement singing hosannas about Robb Johnson and Leon Rosselson felt like a fillip. She was indefatigable and inspirational. And at an age when, as they say, ‘she should’ve known better’ she was flamin’ incorrigible.”
The 45s of the Paris-born chanteuse Françoise Hardy (b. 1944) were transfixing. It would be a lie to say she did more for my French than hours of schoolroom lessons and vocabulary tests and conjugating verbs. Her lessons in French popular culture helped to motivate my confidence, though. Beginning with a halting attempt to converse in a Parisian shop, by the end of the Sixties I was chatting to drivers when I hitchhiked through France and Belgium. It was part of the deal to keep them awake. À bientôt, Françoise!
The Hindustani tabla and percussion maestro UstadZakir Hussain Qureshi (b. 1951), born a month before me, had been a presence in my musical life for more than ten years before we met in 1981. A child prodigy, he was taught by his father, Ustad Alla Rakha. Hussain’s parents were of Dogra stock. (They would go into Dogri in front of the children when they wanted to discuss something privately.) His dad belonged to the Punjab gharana (school and style of playing) under the tabla virtuoso Ustad Mian Qadir Baksh of Lahore. His father grounded him in its disciplines.
Zakir began performing in public from a young age: “I did my first show when I was seven, so I must have started at least three years before that. I played off and on from about seven to twelve. Then, when I was about twelve or thirteen, I started my professional career.” He went on to work extensively with many of the greatest exponents of the subcontinent’s two classical music systems.
He went on to perform in a range of non-classical fields, notably with the British guitarist John McLaughlin in Shakti and Remember Shakti and Mickey Hart in a variety of ensembles. He was nominated several times for Grammy Awards. He won five. The first two were for Planet Drum and Global Drum Project with Hart. Three were awarded in the final year of his life, including one for This Moment with Shakti.
The first time Zakir and I spoke was as we walked out into the daylight after an all-nighter. He had performed with his dad and the sarangi maestro Ustad Sultan Khan. He said something like “I hear you’ve interviewed my father and Mickey.” And the conversation kept on.
It was an honour to have known Zakir since we were both 30. He brought “new dimensions of eloquence and muscularity to talking in rhythm” (to quote myself from the Rough Guide to Zakir Hussain CD which I compiled and interviewed him for). No chamchagiri, he was one of the most beautiful people, inside and out, I ever met.
The sarodist Aashish Khan (b. 1939), the son of Ustad Ali Akbar Khan and grandson of Ustad Allauddin Khan was one of the young lions who entered the wider discographical imagination with Young Master of the Sarod, released on the World Pacific label or licensed to Liberty. He had the validation of Alla Rakha on tabla. Thanks to his father and his uncle Ravi Shankar, Khan came within George Harrison’s orbit. He appears on Wonderwall Music (1968) and an LP Jugalbandi (1973) on Elektra co-credited to John Barham and Aashish Khan (inevitably) with tabla accompaniment by Zakir Hussain. From talking to him on two occasions, I felt that he was a strangely mixed up fellow. I did not warm to him.
The death of Phil Lesh (b. 1940), the bassist-composer of the Grateful Dead (1965-1995) hit hard. His wide range of musical interests made him a dream interview subject.
Francis McPeake (b. 1942) was a doyen of the uilleann pipes and part of the Northern Irish McPeake dynasty. He was called Francis III for ease of reference. The influence of the McPeakes of Belfast was far-reaching. Their repertoire and performances touched Dylan and the Beatles, Van Morrison and the Byrds.
Ram Narayan (b. 1927) (other spellings of his surname are available) was the first sarangi maestro to elevate the instrument to the concert dais. I regret that I never saw him perform live. That was because he played an enormous part in my Hindustani education. He lit the blue touch-paper to a lifelong love of sarangi in its Hindustani classical, folk, Bombay film industry and qawwali manifestations.
Paredon Records was, as I wrote in the context of Barbara Dane, an important stepping stone in the exploration of the roots of Sweet Honey in the Rock. Their co-founder, the vocalist Bernice Johnson Reagon (b. 1942) was a Civil Rights activist and scholar. Re-reading our Swing 51 also cast me back to Sweet Honey’s ground-breaking role in placing Deaf politics and activism in their music. The feminist and lesbian music scene championed signing in their concerts.
Happy Traum (b.1938), another Swing 51 (Dark Star and Californian folk magazine Folk Scene) interviewee, was a folk musician whose music affected me deeply. The concerts that the Woodstock Mountains Review, of which he was a member, did in Britain in 1981 were real events. He and his wife, Jane also introduced me to Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky. They came to their hotel, fresh and excited from making a pilgrimage to a site of Blakean interest somewhere in, I seem to recall, Dorset. Ginsberg signed the Happy and Artie Traum LP I had with me which he had written the liner dedication for. Kismet. (Ginsberg and I did a number of interviews in subsequent years. One appeared in Mojo with Ginsberg’s early praise for Beck’s ‘Loser’ filleted out. A signed photo of Ginsberg dated “6/18/90” looks down on me on the office wall.) Happy and I kept in touch. He assisted me when I wrote the obituary of his brother Artie Traum for the Guardian in July 2008.
Happy and I resumed our public conversation in interview form in 2018 when I brought him and his old friend from the Greenwich Village days, Bonnie Dobson together for a chinwag for an end-of-life article for fRoots. Afterwards we went for a meal and it was a completely joyous occasion. At his Cecil Sharp House Q&A, asked about him ever distilling this life in print. Perhaps in an ‘Autobiography’ like Dylan’s Chronicles. He replied along the lines of the previous day. “A lot of people – including Jane – have been after me to do it. A couple of people have wanted to do it with me, to be my co-author, that kind of thing. I do have memories but I don’t know if I have enough to really fill out a book and I don’t know if my story is enough to interest people.” It would have and let’s hope he did get something down.
The bluegrass mandolinist Frank Wakefield (b.1934) was one of my wilder interviews. This was thanks to his idiosyncratic style of speech which translated badly to the printed page.
I didn’t learn of the death of Fun-Da-Mental’s Dave Watts in October on Tenerife, Spain until December. Dubbed rather imprecisely the “Asian Public Enemy”, they were ferocious. Aki Nawaz aka Propa-Gandhi had co-founded Fun-Da-Mental in 1991. In solidarity Dave Watts took the stage name Impi-D when he joined. Together they were at the group’s core.
I programmed Fun-Da-Mental as part of the 1997 Rudolstadt Festival in Germany. Back then it was Tanz&FolkFest Rudolstadt, a dance and folk festival. One of the 1997 festival’s Schwerpunkte (focuses) was the year’s regional one commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of India’s self-rule with music and wider arts. 1947 also marked Pakistani Independence from Britain. Enter Fun—Da-Mental.
The raw power of their performance was something else. Watching the reaction to them only felt like a vindication much later once the mushroom cloud had blown away. It polarised. The figurativejout ‘old folks’ were bewildered or shocked. The younger audience was ecstatic and got them. In 2015 the festival produced a limited edition 25th anniversary triple LP set. Fund-Da-Mental’s ‘Ja Sha Taan’ closed Side E. The track had been picked to represent 1997. According to the liner notes, for some, they were Żzu laut, zu roh, einfach unpassend für ein braves Folkfest® (‘too loud, too raw, simply unsuitable for a decent folk festival’). Non, je ne regrette rien. Fun-Da-Mental and its hip hop and sampling bump-started the festival into future worlds. At one point on the way to interviewing Dave I bumped into a friend by the name of Michael Ince in Notting Hill. They were both of British-Bajan (Barbados) stock. Seemed natural to ask Michael if he fancied tagging along. Such a great chinwag. Do get in touch, Michael, if you read this.
Two close friends died in 2024. Chris and Paul were a gay couple. While I was working in Leeds in 1993, I lived with them in Wheldrake, a village 11 km south-east of York. Chris England died in April and Paul Durose in December.
“The dead don’t die. They look on and help.” – D. H. Lawrence, The Letters of D. H. Lawrence: Volume 3, October 1916-June 1921 (1984)
[by Ken Hunt, London] Traditional folk tunes have long leached into classical composition. In Central Europe in the times before many nations gained independence, music stoked senses of cultural identity and aspirations of nationhood. The polyvalent artist Iva Bittová came out of the Communist-era, Czechoslovak alternative theatre scene. She is a violin-vocal virtuosa, a Bachelor of Music, and an acclaimed film actor. She is of mixed Moravian, Slovak, Hungarian and Roma stock. The Mucha Quartet came together at the Conservatory in Bratislava, the capital of the Slovak Republic, in 2003.
This bespoke Rudolstadt Festival performance took place in the Stadtkirche, the town’s baroque church and the programme of mixed Moravian and Slovak folksongs for voice and string quartet. It transported. At its heart were works by the Moravian composer-collector, Leoš Janáček (1854-1928) and his benchmark folksong collection Moravská lidová poezie v písních (Moravian Folk Poetry in Songs), and the Hungarian composer-collector, Béla Bartók (1881-1945) and his Slovenské spevy (Slovak Songs).
One of our age’s most versatile and incomparable voices, fittingly Bittová went vocally from bird cheeps to her operatic, rafter-raising mezzo range. In this recital she never touched the violin.) The surprise sprung, for me, were the Mucha Quartet’s ‘solo’ interludes. They were the Slovak composers Eugen Suchon (1908-1993) and Alexander Moyzes (1906-1984). Personal highlights were the Suchon folksong settings for quartet, especially the joyous ‘Pod Anicka, podze za mna’ (‘Be my bride, Annie’) and ‘Husicky popolavé’ (‘Little Grey Geese’).
It was a concert which seared itself into the imagination. It met with a rapturous reception. It was recorded for the European Broadcasting Union.
[Petr Dorùžka, Krems, Austria] Music enterpreneur Ankur Malhotra explains: The reason is favoritism and classism. There are millions spent by billionaires on weddings rather than be used to support the musicians via grant systems.
Malhotra represents some of the best Indian folk and roots musicians who perform on major festivals worldwide. Barmer Boys play spiritual Hindi and Muslim songs from the Rajasthani desert. 77-year-old Lakha Khan is the last living sarangi violin master. His music ranges from ragas to Sufi chants and epic chants. Decades ago, the virtuoso violinist Yehudi Menuhin was one of the first Western supporters of Indian music. He declared that the dark and hypnotic tone of the sarangi is “the very soul of Indian feeling and thought”.
Indian music has been explored step by step by the West during the past 70 years. On his travels, Menuhin discovered two greats of classical music, Ali Akbar Khan and Ravi Shankar. He presented Khan in 1955 at the New York Museum of Modern Art. Shankar was touring in the West since 1956, in 1960 he gave a concert at the Prague Spring festival, and four years later at the Woodstock festival. Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan from Pakistan took qawwali sufi chants to Womad festival in 1985, thanks to Peter Gabriel.
However, music from the Indian subcontinent is still unknown in its full range. Yet, there are many cases when it flows to the West under favorable conditions. But when a Western listener travels to India as a cultural tourist, leftovers of colonial mentality reappear. Malhotra also explains this contradiction. The interview took place during the Glatt und Verkehrt festival in Krems on the Danube in Austria.
How many professions do you have?
It depends on the time of day and what needs to be done. I am a mechanical engineer, I have an MBA degree, I have also worked in robotics, with aircraft engines, and children with dyslexia. But music has been more than a hobby for me since childhood. As a student, I made mixtapes for friends, later I became a radio host and DJ on American radio (WORT 89.9FM). I have worked in various capacities for my artists as producer, video director, sound engineer, photographer, mastering, cutting dub plates, websites, tour management, PR and marketing. Yes, I do have many professions.
So you started your career as an engineer?
I graduated from R.V. College of Engineering in Bangalore in South India, majoring in Mechanical Engineering. Then two years of software programming. And at the same time, I was making my way towards the music. I lived half in India, half in the US for the past two decades.
What kind of music did you prefere?
I was interested in blues, psychedelia. And Indian classical music too. When I was studying business in the US, I saw Bob Dylan and Neil Young for the first time. I started volunteered for a festival in Madison, Wisconsin. It was then that I noticed how many places in the world music comes from, but India was missing. That has no logic, because today it is the most populous country in the world. Our culture has a centuries-long history of music. I asked: can I do anything about it?
But Ravi Shankar played at Woodstock. George Harrison introduced Indian music to rock audiences. And then there was Shakti and other fusion bands.
That’s a tiny fraction. What about Indian folk music? Master players from the countryside also have a lot to offer. I was figuring out how to start, how to shape the identity of an artist. But first you need to record the music.
So you made field recordings? In Rajasthan, the birthplace of the European Roma?
Yes, that’s how I started working with some of the legendary folk masters from Rajasthan, also recorded their biographies, presented them at concerts. Musicians from all across Western Rajasthan and Kutch in Gujarat. By the way, Indian music is unimaginably diverse, and just in this relatively small zone of India (still larger than many Western European countries combined!) there was so much musical diversity to be found. Then we also have black communities, originally from East Africa, the Sidis based in Kutch.
Were their ancestors brought there as slaves?
Some were slaves, some came as traders, others as sailors, and as travelers. Exchange between India and East Africa has been going on for centuries.
For field recordings you need financial support. Could you apply for any government funding?
I took it as a labor of love. I was motivated by my love for music. There were some mentors who donated funds and some used equipment (Sony cassette recorder).
Have you been investing your savings?
I had minimal savings from my start up world and those all went into the business I co-founded (Amarrass Records). We struggled on extremely low budgets for a few years, but eventually I had to come up with some kind of sustainability plan.
How did you plan the next step? Licence field recordings to record labels, radio stations, academic archives?
Private stations in India are interested in commercial stuff, Bollywood. And as far as archives are concerned, my work was not meant to be an academic exercise. I wanted the music to bring joy to audiences. I wanted the music to create a lasting impression. I wanted the audiences to know the musicians name, know their music and their art. Those musicians knew nothing about distribution and show business, but they needed someone to get them out into the world. In Madison, Wisconsin, I was connected with one of the oldest community stations, WORT 89.9 FM, and in 2013, on my first US tour, we recorded in the studio with musicians. Later we got airplay and support from European stations like Funkhaus Europa, BBC, and more.
The 20th century had several milestones when Indian music came entered the Western world. Yehudi Menuhin introduced two giants of Indian classical music, Ravi Shankar and Ali Akbar Khan, to international audiences. George Harrison popularized the sitar. And in Britain, a modern version of the traditional bhangra music emerged, originally played in Punjab to celebrate the successfully harvested crops.
I would elaborate further. Menuhin, for example, played with the South Indian classical violinist L. Subramanian in the USSR in the early 1980s. When I was growing up in Delhi, I used to listen to an L. Subramanian cassette recording with the jazz violinist Stéphane Grappelli (Conversations). All these were key artists and opened the world’s ears to Indian music. Then, when modern bhangra emerged in the Indian diaspora in the 1980s, Indian music merged with hip hop.
How do Punjabi Indians really feel about British bhangra?
For example, Apache Indian, a British artist with Indian roots, had a big hit in India in the 1980s, which was made possible the multinational music television company MTV. But there are other connections. The Indian market was also penetrated by the Algerian rai singer Khaled. We played with Barmer Boys in Berlin (Wassermusik 2017) when Khaled was performing there. They performed their version of Khaled’s big hit Diddi, and he invited the Barmer Boys on stage. When Vieux Farka Touré (guitarist from Mali and son of the late Ali Farka Touré) came to India, he jammed with musicians from Rajasthan. Malian kora virtuoso, Madou Sidiki Diabaté, has performed with Lakha Khan. They could not talk to each other, but wonderful sound colors flowed from their instruments. Together they played 48 strings, 21 on kora, 27 on sarangi.
The kora, sounding like a European harp, is relatively familiar in the West, unlike the sarangi.
The sarangi, like the sitar and other Indian instruments, has three sets of strings: melodic, sympathetic, which provide additional color, and drone. The melodic ones are made of goat’s intestine, and the others are made of steel and bronze. It’s a notoriously difficult instrument to master and while the sound of the sarangi is omnipresent in a lot of classic Bollywood, the master musicians and luthiers who make this folk instruments are disappearing.
And that’s why the instrument is so hard to tune. When the temperature changes, does each of those strings go out of tune differently?
Yes, but at the same time, that is the beauty of the instrument. It’s sound has such a wide range of overtones. One single instrument creates amazing layers of sound.
But, because of that complicated tuning, the sarangi as an accompanying instrument is gradually being displaced by Indian harmonium, and becoming the most endangered species in the world of Indian instruments?
Lahka Khan is the seventh generation of master players in his family, a recipient of the India’s highest honor, the Padma Shri Award. No wonder he looks down on the harmonium. You can play any note on the sarangi. It has no frets, whereas on the harmonium only notes corresponding to the keys can played. According to Lakha Khan, “you don’t even need any master skills to play the harmonium”. When I first met Lakha, he told me a story. His father told him before he died that if the sarangi continues to be played in the family, his name would be preserved in the memory of India. Each player is expanding his skills through his whole life and sacrifices everything for the instrument.
How do India-Pakistan relations work in culture?
There is no cross-border exchange, a completely absurd situation. The two countries are united by the same culture, but the governments do not allow the union, and music to be practiced. Meetings take place in third countries. Two years ago, we performed at the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto, and there were some beautiful moments. A master player from India and a qawwali singer from Pakistan were next to each other on the big stage.
Here in Austria, Lakha Khan performed this morning at an early concert as part of the festival. How did it go?
At 7 o’clock, he played morning ragas in the garden of the monastery. We named that concert the Awakening of the Gods, because unlike humans, they are not lazy and get up at sunrise. Specifically, we evoked the gods Rama, Krishna and Shiva. The second morning was a Sufi affair invoking the majesty of Allah’s creations. It was sold out. We did a similar concert at the Roskilde festival in Denmark.
If you are presenting Indian music to the world audiences, is there any chance for financial support?
In theory, this can work on two levels in India. In the philanthropic, private sector where you have patrons, and also on the state level. But neither works in music of my artists. For example, the Indian government offers programs where an artist gets a grant to perform in a concert to celebrate the Independence Day. So, the whole event is based on a routine, while the artist himself, the musical content, the creative part, are neglected by the officials. All that remains is to look for support through private initiatives.
On the other side, South Korea has a well-thought-out grant system which is more functional than in some European countries. The music of a country whose population is 30 times smaller than India’s is heard far more often at world festivals. Isn’t that an example Indian institutions should follow?
Korea is an exceptional example. It works similarly in Canada and in Scandinavia. There you can get a grant of 10,000 Euros. You will record an album with that money. Indians have a lot to learn, especially if they can spend hundreds of millions on a wedding. At the same time, such money could dramatically change the image of Indian music in the world.
Hundreds of millions of rupees?
No, dollars. This is only possible because in India the dividing line between the government and corporate structures is somewhat blurred.
Thanks to corruption?
This is the first cause, the second is nepotism.
Nepotism, can you explain that?
That is the hidden structure. Who do you know, how well you get along with them, what contacts do you have. This determines your market value. And according to the list of acquaintances, your further destiny.
Which is strongly reminiscent of the unfortunate Indian caste system.
Exactly. A number of caste prejudices are so deeply rooted in society that they penetrate into the economic sphere as well. So, your place on the social ladder is all ruled by caste. And that also determines if you get invited to the party.
Have you had the opportunity to play at someone’s wedding with a band?
Yes, a couple of times in India. It happened in the diaspora, but also with the Barmer Boys in Denmark.
But a proper Indian wedding takes more than one day.
It depends on the region, sometimes even a week. They often invite more bands.
Can you put this to European perspective? In my country, it happens that a band from the Balkans cancels a concert at a festival when they receive a more lucrative wedding offer. Does that mean, that one wedding is equal to, say, five times a fee from a big festival like Roskilde?
Yes, depending on how wealthy the wedding party’s families are, the fees can be enormous sums.
Any example?
In July 2024, the son of multi-billionaire Ambani got married. The cost was 200 million dollars. Imagine someone like Rihanna among the guests. Her fee is 5 million. Mark Zuckerberg gave the newlyweds a private jet as a wedding present. Mukesh Ambani is the richest man in Asia. The status of the local airport was shifted to international. Just temporarily because of the wedding. That is the definition of nepotism. When you are a wealthy business executive in India, you can change the rules whenever it suits you.
When you play a wedding as a musician, you receive a fee according to the contract. The other part is the bills that the guests stick on the foreheads of musicians to play their favorite songs. How much does this make?
Sometimes more than the contract itself. They also attach banknotes to the musicians’ clothes, and make sure that everyone else sees it.
In India, you also have festivals whose program curators are experts from Europe. For foreigners who come to the festivals as cultural tourists, their names may be a guarantee of quality, but if you look at it from the point of view of an Indian, aren’t they missing something?
These festivals take place in historical forts, palaces, i.e. places that are not easily accessible to the ordinary Indian. A certain exclusivity is created, the event is expensive for the local listener. Besides tourists, these festivals are aimed at the local elite. I see it as segregation. Behind the scenes there are separate spaces for players of different importance. Organizers insist on their own prices, fees are often at the level of a pittance.
So, while the colonial mentality has died out in Europe, it does persist in the business European are doing in India?
Organizers circumvent the rules, considered as good manners in the industry. The musician’s manager also functions as a protection for the artist from unfair practices, but some of these presenters go directly to the artist and reduce the fee to minimum. The artist does not have the training to defend his interests. It’s a completely different approach than the festivals we play at here in Europe, which are aimed at the widest audience. Which is much more in line with my priorities. In this way, more permanent ties are created, important for the music community.
There is a large Indian diaspora in Britain and elsewhere. To what extent are those immigrants part of your audience?
It may sound surprising, but it is not. For example, in New York or Toronto, where the diaspora is very strong, we did not see many Indians in the audience.
In India, you have classical music, ghazal love songs considered as “semiclassical”, Bollywood music, spiritual chants. In Europe the line between classical and popular music is still rigid. How does it work in India?
Classical players look down on folk musicians. Lakha Khan, who comes from a folk music background, sees it this way: Yes, the classical players have to follow all these rules, but we have freedom. We can move across genres, we can play what a classic player is not allowed.
Would they invite him to a classical music festival in India?
Rather not. The Government of India has formalized this concept and made rules. There is an Indian Council for Cultural Relations and classical players get paid four times as much as folk musicians. The system is hierarchical, so even an inferior classical player is better off than a master folk musician.
A unique opportunity for artists to break out to international festivals is the annual Womex conference and showcase festival. You and the Barmer Boys were lucky to be selected but then cancelled. Why?
The reason was health problems. Lead singer Manga needed major heart surgery. He was only 49, like me. But when you work in India with rural artists, access to medical care and how to pay for it are highly complicated issues. And besides, these artists have no education. Manga is illiterate, his passport has a fingerprint instead of a signature. Science, medicine, that is a distant world for him. He escaped from that hospital and sought refuge in a Sufi shrine. There he recited prayers in the hope that he would be healed before the doctors.
(Unfortunately, Manga died in September 2024, 5 weeks after this interview).
In the case of Lakha Khan, does the term “last living master” have a different meaning in India than, ?say, among American bluesmen?
For one thing, yes. In India, so much work is still needed, so that the awareness of that music, its meaning, penetrates into public opinion, and into the institutions that can support it. For example, few people in India know who Lakha Khan is. But there are more people in the world today who have an idea about his talent.
Denis Péan is the guiding spirit of the French group Lo’Jo. In October, the band presents their new album Feuilles Fauves on tour, including a Prague concert.
[Petr Dorůžka, Praha] After 42 years and 14 albums, Lo’Jo still sound like a group of visionaries from another world. Their roots go back to the punk rock era, but you can’t hear it in their music. Also, Lo’Jo is untouched by French musical stereotypes. If you hear a chanson track, it’s shifted into a distorted Tom Waits perspective. Musically, Lo’Jo was inspired by trumpeter Don Cherry, psychedelia, experimental music by groups like Magma, African genres, but these influences are more ideological than stylistic. The group’s sound cannot be described using routine clichés, everything here works differently. But one thing grabs you right away: the voices of two North African singers, the El Mourid sisters. They are playful, affectionate, sensual and yet laconic. They create the perfect counterweight to the narrative vocals of Denis Péan. The female voices frame the band’s sound perfectly, but unfortunately to the listener, they often quickly disappear, leading the Guardian critic Robin Denselow to note: “The only disappointment is that the sisters aren’t given a larger role. They provide some gloriously edgy backing.” However, it is up to the painter to use the chosen color only sparingly and thereby add meaning to it.
Denis Péan accompanies himself on the Indian harmonium, an instrument that deserves separate study. Nico, the female singer on the Velvet Underground’s first album, was responsible for the parallel life of the Indian harmonium in the West.
Denis and I have been preparing for the following interview since spring 2024. When I identified his face in the audience at the Babel Music festival in Marseille at the end of March, he confirmed that the interview would take place, but by email. I agreed, knowing that email conversations lacked interaction, which this time was balanced by the content. Péan answered laconically, but the group’s history offers stories that, like the “butterfly effect”, had a deep impact on later musical development. The crucial link was the connection between Lo’Jo and the then-unknown Justin Adams. He became their producer 5 years before he became famous as Robert Plant’s guitarist. Adams clarified this little-known story when he performed at the Respect festival in Prague in June 2024. Late 1990’s, Lo’Jo were invited to a concert in Bamako, the capital of Mali, and logically took Adams, their producer, with them. In Bamako, they were contacted by a person who introduced them to the Tinariwen, a group of desert nomads playing electric guitars. Both Lo’Jo and Adams were fascinated by their music. The resulting event was the first edition of the Festival au Désert near the border with Algeria, which took place in January 2001. The Prime Minister of Mali, four ambassadors, and representatives of the UN visited. Government Toyotas welcomed the nomadic Touaregs on camels. Later in summer, the first album by Tinariwen was released, with Lo’Jo and Adams participating. Not many people remember now, that the phenomenon of “desert blues” was partly invented by a French band who refuse to be fashionable.
What kind of music did you grow up with?
My parents weren’t interested in the arts. We didn’t have music in the family’s house.
Also, there was no traditional music in my native area. My education was silence. When I became a teenager, an older guy in my village gave me my first musical initiation with seventies Anglophone psychedelic music.
You played a bassoon in the old days – what made you choose such an unusual instrument?
Because of the introduction of Le Sacre du Printemps by Stravinsky and the Vivaldi Concerto for bassoon.
And when did you pick up an Indian harmonium? The best known artist who used that instrument was Nico. Is any influence from her?
I saw Nico solo in concert with Indian harmonium at the end of the seventies, but I began to play this instrument when I met Indian musicians from Rajasthan.
How did Don Cherry influence you? What did you ask him after his concert in Théatre d’Angers in 1978 ?
In my native town Angers, we had a cultural centre where jazz musicians performed. I had a chance to listen to Carla Bley, Miles Davis, Art Ensemble of Chicago, Lounge Lizards, etc. I became addicted to Afro-American culture, not only to music to but also to thoughts about politics, slave history and civic rights. When I met Don Cherry, I was so shy, but I felt we shared the same soul and I think he was a visionary and that he felt this too. Don was a pioneer in the way he mixed jazz with traditional Indian, African and European sounds.
How many languages do you speak?
I’m specifically very interested in French literature and poetry, but I compose some songs in Spanish, English or Creole.
And how many languages can you understand at a limited level?
I feel close too to the Creole language of the Réunion Island. It sounds very rhythmical and musical, it’s a very creative form of a new language of survival for the slaves.
I used to write songs (especially girls’ chorus) with an imaginary “Lo’jo” language made of sounds more than meaning.
If I remember well, in the past you made a song in Wolof. Was it more an adventure or a project based on linguistic research?
Yes, and pther songs in the Dogon language or Lingala. That adventure in Africa gave us something very precious about music, humanity and philosophy.
We’ve met at Babel Music. Did any of the bands impress you? My favourites were: Belugueta (Occitania) and Sanam (Lebanon).
I liked the very emotional Palestinian singer Christine Zayed, also Belugueta. And Alostmen were so powerful.
Do the Lo’Jo members still live in a common house outside Angers, in the French countryside? How many people with family members in total?
We were around fifteen people living in the Lo’jo house where we received many musicians coming from all around the world, especially from West Africa and the Indian Ocean.
Once you said: I go to prisons, psychiatric hospitals, to the schools where I play. So Lo’Jo did a concert in Frenchprison, like Johnny Cash in Folsom Prison?
Yes, we play in prisons, but my most emotional musical experience was playing for babies in a centre for orphaned children. Unusual places to play in are a challenge for creativity.
The style of your music is not exactly French chanson, yet there are some common links: focus on the lyrics, deep yet hidden emotionality, and a high level of sophistication. Were you influenced by any chanson singers?
Not really, I have respect for different artists, but I follow my own way and experiment my own form of language and singing.
Often Tom Waits is mentioned as a related artist. Can you comment on this?
People have their own references, it’s possible that a Russian guy will compare me to Vladimir Vysotsky or an African guy to Boubacar Traoré.
Tell me about the books you write. Was any of them translated?
It’s poetry, my experience of life, games with language, the esoteric perspective, musical flow. There’s no translation, except for some songs. It’s perhaps very difficult to translate.
Justin Adams produced some of your albums, years before he became famous as Robert Plant’s guitarist.How did you find him? Or was it the other way?
In the early nineties, when our album Fils de Zamal came out, the artistic director of the label was Andy Morgan, a friend of Justin – they played together in their first punk group when they were teenagers. Andy wanted us to meet Justin, who was just out of a painful break-up with the musician Jah Wobble and wanted to bounce back from it by producing albums. Years later, Andy became the first English manager of Tinariwen.
Actually, one of the major points in Lo’Jo’s biography was the meeting with Tinariwen. Do you remember how it happened?
Lo’jo organized the Festival au Désert at the beginning of the century, in the little town called Kidal. We’ve met the musicians of the legendary band Tinariwen, and we recorded their first album Radio Tisdas Sessions in a dusty radio station. We introduced the band in Europe and the United States. We became great friends and still are now.
What was the main quality of the band you liked?
The lyrics, I took part of a translation team for the album Aman Iman. The hypnotic power of rhythm, the sensual atmosphere of sound.
Justin Adams was also involved. Did you introduce the band to him, or was it the other way?
Before this festival, Justin was the artistic producer for 2 albums of Lo’jo and we even brought him with us to Mali. We met Tinariwen together in the Adrar of Ifoghas, near to Kidal in north Mali at the end of 2000. You toured France with them in 1998, and 3 years later you helped them to create the Festival au Désert. How did you find the funding?And did you investyour own money, or just your time and energy?
Lo’jo produced the festival. We carried sound and light equipment from France.
We had some financial help coming from the famous French street theatre festival “Châlon dans la rue”. It was a crazy improvisation.
The name Lo’Jo sounds great in English and in French too. Maybe that is the definition of what these 2 languages have in common. Or maybe you have another explanation?
If I spoke Arabic or Czech, I would write songs in Arabic or Czech.
Your new album is called Feuilles Fauves. Can you explain the name for non-French speakers? I tried and got this: Leaves gone wild. Is this close to what you mean?
“Feuilles” is the vegetal part: leaves, also for humans, the piece of paper to write on. “Fauves” is the animal part, also the wild part of human.
The singers Yamina and Nadia Nid El Mourid are rather Berber, or Kabyle, than Arab?Are they from the Algerian Sahara or Atlas mountains?
Their parents came from the Atlas mountains, the Algerian side from the mother and the Moroccan part from the father. They are Kabyle/Berber, not Arab.
Robin Denselow in The Guardiancalls for more space for Yamina and Nadia. Can you imagine them as solo singers with Denis Péan providing background harmonies?
That’s exactly the case on this new album.
For The Quietusyou said: “I was obsessed with not trying to be fashionable, I didn’t want to do what other people were doing.”15 years before that, Magma took a similar path, in ideas, yet in a very different style. Did you listen to Magma before starting Lo’Jo?
When I was a teenager, I saw Magma in concert. It was a very deep experience for me. There’s nothing similar to Magma.
A long talk with Phillip Page, who took Värttinä, JPP and Kimmo Pohjonen around the globe.
[Petr Dorůžka, Praha] Finland is musically one of the most diverse regions of Europe. The country of five and a half million offers tricky rhythms from Karelia, Sami joik, high energy dance tunes of pelimanni fiddlers, Finnish tango, runo songs from the Kalevala epic and of course music of Finland’s two national instruments, accordion and kantele. In Finland, tradition is practiced as a living process and not as a museum exhibit, due to many dozens of creative musicians and educators. The crucial move in updating Finnish folk music to modern times was made in 1983, when Heikki Laitinen (* 1943) started the Folk Music Department at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki. 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.
What kind of music were you growing up with? And did you get any kind of musical education?
I was not a musician although I studied music in school for about ten years, sang in choirs, dabbled at piano and was in two bands. Beatles and Beach Boys were the first bands that changed / shaped my life. The adventure, the songwriting/compositions, vocals, harmonies, arrangements, the innovation. My favorites in my formative years late 60s – early 70s: George Harrison – Wonderwall (1968: dreamy trippy soundtrack featuring Shivkumar Sharma and numerous Indian musicians plus Eric Clapton, probably the most brain expanding influential album of my life), Spirit’s groundbreaking first album (1968), Van Dyke Parks – Song Cycle, Beach Boys – Smiley Smile, Györgi Ligeti, Apple Records, Freddie Hubbard / İlhan Mimaroğlu – Song of Songmy LP, Bee Gees, Stones – Satanic Majesties, Bowie, Genesis, Van der Graaf Generator, Egg, Gentle Giant, K Crimson, Amon Düül II, Gong, Strawbs, Shirley & Dolly Collins, Wigwam, Pekka Pohjola, Jukka Tolonen, Zamla/Lars Hollmer, Supersister. Anything from anywhere that was different and adventurous, composition based. I was seeking and buying records full time. The local record shop called me Captain Record.
How did you start your professional career?
September 1, 1971 at a regional record distributor and managing the number one alternative record shop in Houston TX. Soon I was an FM radio DJ doing weekly six-hour shows playing all the best underground European and American records. I wrote LP reviews for local music magazine The Lamb. I was import buyer/manager and starting team member at Cactus Records, Houston, the first giant record mega-store in Texas and ran a distributor of UK and European import LPs
In Texas. One major event was in 1975, meeting David Crosby and Graham Nash who turned me onto the 1966 Nonesuch Records album Music of Bulgaria by Phillipe Koutev. That amazing album opened up a whole new world.
The Nonesuch album was one of the most overlooked records in history, released twenty years before the British label 4AD sold 100 000 copies of Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares album that made Bulgarian choirs popular worldwide.
That is correct. After the Indian music of George Harrison – Wonderwall, the Bulgarian LP was my second introduction and ear-opening exciting path of exploration into non-western classical and folk musics. “Theodora Is Dozing” was / is an incredible introduction to the genius of Philippe Koutev. Of course, on my first trip to Bulgaria in 1985 I bought a pile of Balkanton LPs.
From Cactus in Texas I went to JEM Records, New Jersey in 1977, managing the Visa Records label, releasing albums by and doing national FM radio promotion for National Health, Peter Hammill, Patrick Moraz, Shirley Collins and others. Then to Virgin Records America in NYC 1980-82 doing national FM radio promotion, mainly for XTC plus Motors, Fingerprintz, The Ruts etc.In 1982, my good friend Louis Karp and I conceived, created and opened Waterloo Records in Austin, TX. I simultaneously did regional US sales for Important Records distributor, including Texas promotion/tour press for Metallica – Kill ‘Em All LP.
What was the most impressive concert of that era you remember?
Genesis – The Lamb, Houston Texas, 1975 and The Shirts at the Bottom Line, NYC, 1978
And, how did you discover music of Finland?
In 1971 in a Houston record shop, my music seeking antenna found the album: Wigwam – Tombstone Valentine, double LP on Verve Forecast label. That was a life changing event.
It was produced by Los Angeles musician, producer Kim Fowley, who also worked with many L. A. artists including Frank Zappa and produced Feelin’ Reelin’ Squeelin’, the B-side of the first Soft Machine single.
Yes, Fowley produced the Wigwam album and apparently he organized the Verve deal. I am not sure who decided to make it a double LP in USA (with non-Wigwam tracks) but it was a brilliant move. The cover, band name, album title, were like nothing I had ever seen and the album instantly “spoke” to me, like a zap from another dimension: “Enter this new world. Buy Me Now”. Of course I obeyed and playing the album at home, the first song was beyond anything I had ever heard or experienced, as was the entire album.
Inside the music business, I dived deeper into Finnish music, and went to Finland in 1983, ’84, ’85 see and hear for myself and when back in Austin Texas began importing Finnish LPs into USA via my company Suomi Sounds selling by mail order and at Waterloo Records.
At which point did you decide to settle down in Helsinki?
In 1987 I went to Kaustinen Festival, Finland and instantly was blown away by the band JPP and the festival. Another life changer and I instantly knew I had to stay. Helsinki became my base and I spent all my time in Digelius Music shop and mail order company, my main Finnish connection since 1974. I was an employee and in fact co-conceptualist with owner, Ilkka “Emu” Lehtinen.
The name of the band that changed your life, JPP, is short for Järvelän Pikkupelimannit, “Little Fiddlers of Järvelä”. At that time they were, and still are, a family band of relatives featuring master fiddlers, playing high energy dance music typical for their home region.
I had been importing their first two LPs into USA via my company Suomi Sounds 1985-87. Four fiddlers (three were of the Järvelä clan) plus Timo Alakotila on harmonium plus double bass. They were amazingly innovative, mixing trad folk tunes plus original compositions and arrangements with distinctive melodic and harmonic twists that I had never heard. Way beyond folk music, they were a miniature orchestra playing, composing and arranging in a totally new and distinctive way. Timo Alakotila was for me a genius composer up there with Brian Wilson, Sibelius and Benny Andersson.
After moving to Helsinki, what were the next bands that caught your attention?
Seeing Maria Kalaniemi’s first solo show in Helsinki was magical. As an accordion player and composer, she was so special, different, original. A serious player / composer opening ears and hearts of all who heard her. Immediately I knew I wanted to work with her. I also started working with Värttinä in 1993 organizing press, radio and extra gigs around their SXSW Austin showcase, then licensed the Seleniko CD to USA and made several US tours plus international tours and licensing.
Värttinä’s Seleniko album (1992), produced by Womex co-founder Ben Mandelson, reached the top of the European World Music radio charts, and remained there for 3 months. Wasn’t that the crucial era for both you and Finnish bands?
Indeed it was an important time for all Finnish music folk music and contemporary folk music artists. In 1993, I brought all three: Maria, JPP and Värttinä, to Rudolstadt Festival in Germany, followed by more gigs and tours and licensing in Europe, USA and later Japan.
Rudolstadt at that time had budget similar to Womad in the UK and was very influential. Finnish music was breaking through but from the mainstream view, it was so far away from the music that makes money. Did you have a vision that working in this area would help to pay your bills?
Well, my expenses were low: cheap rent and sharing flats with friends, my office was inside Digelius. My main vision was that these artists were truly brilliant and had great chance for international attention, work and success. My goal was to help make that happen.
How did the business plan of Digelius music start? In a garage, like Google decades later?
Digelius started in Helsinki in 1971, same year that I began in the music business in Texas. Digelius began as a tiny electronics shop and quickly became a jazz shop, importing jazz and all kinds of LPs from USA, UK, Europe etc. “Emu” Lehtinen was the expert who turned Helsinki onto exceptional music of all kinds. When I joined, jazz was the biggest genre for Digelius and we promptly decided to expand into worldly musics, avant garde/experimental, etc. Not much later we moved from the tiny shop to the much larger, highly visible corner space at Viiskulma (Five Corners).
You could find similar cases in other places at that time. Sterns in London, later one of the most important labels focused on African music, started as radio shop. Was there any exchange between these emerging independent labels/distributors?
I am not sure if Emu had been buying from Sterns before I arrived or if I initiated that. We had steady business with Sterns importing and exporting for many years. We were importing LPs and CDs from around the world including large and small companies and distributors. We also bought direct from artists. We imported LPs / CDs from Japan plus LPs from EMI Pakistan and EMI India. Exports of Finnish music were to international partners in many countries: UK, Europe, Japan, USA. I also ran the Digelius international mail order business, selling folky ethnical worldly and other musics to individual buyers worldwide. As regards other players: Tapio Korjus was established for many years with his successful Rockadillo Records and Agency. Martti Heikkinen was importing from Rounder Records and others.
Years later, in 2019, it was Tapio who co-organized the first Finnish Womex in Tampere. In the Digelius era, people were still buying CDs, and producers could invest money into projects like Buena Vista. How profitable was your work at Digelius?
Profitable? Well we stayed afloat but there were periods when Emu and I both did not take salary. We kept it going somehow.
So in these periods you just lived off your savings?
I had commissions from gigs and CD license deals from my Hoedown Arts management company plus I was DJ
on Finnish national radio YLE doing weekly two-hour shifts for four years (which fortunately paid very well!). My program Worlds Away was very eclectic
Was it in English? Was it the only English music show on YLE?
John Peel and I had the only two English language programs on YLE.
How did promotion work, how did airplay help to sell your CDs? There were some important like-minded partners around the globe. World Music Charts across the whole Europe, Cliff Furnald with his RootsWorld magazine and radio in USA, fRootsmagazine in London.
As regards my management work, all these and many others were in my regular contact list. Sending CDs, press releases etc. Radio airplay definitely helped draw attention and of course World Music Charts was vital, especially as so many Finnish albums entered the Top Ten. fRoots and Songlines gave us positive reviews on a regular basis. Those things plus touring generated significant interest, fanbase, CD sales.
While attracting new audiences, was there any turning point?
Kimmo Pohjonen at Womex Berlin 1999. A life changing event for him and me. His career took off from that one amazing gig.
Any travel stories?
One of the main reasons I wanted to represent artists was so I could see them on stage as often as possible. There are so many great stories. The best was seeing audiences go apeshit at the concerts. Värttinä at Club Quattro, Tokyo. Phenomenal. Kimmo at Womex. Wow. One big challenge was with JPP: getting Timo Alakotila’s 100 year old / 88kg harmonium on the plane as checked baggage with no costs. We succeeded every time except one!
The two decades, between 1990 and 2010, that was the most important time of discovering unknown musical territories. The French producer and festival director Christian Mousset was exploring music of Mali, Madagascar, La Reunion. Francis Falceto started the Éthiopiques CD series mapping music of Ethiopia. Both of them received Womex awards for lifetime achievement in years 2009 and 2011. Did you get any recognition from the Finnish authorities for your work?
Yes I think I received three awards: one from Kaustinen Festival and two from Music & Media convention.
How is your life now? How did your work with JPP, Maria, Värttinä, Kimmo evolve during the past decades? Don’t you miss seeing audiences go apeshit?
Management work evolved into exciting projects such as director of Värttinä’s – Ilmatar album which led to the Lord of the Rings musical with Värttinä as co-composers and then the Miero album with Real World. With Maria the highlight was Accordion Tribe with ten years of touring and three albums (including working with Lars Hollmer, now sadly passed on). For Kimmo: Uniko with Kronos Quartet was a high point plus mainly KTU with Pat Mastelotto and Trey Gunn. With JPP, co-ordinating the String Tease album was a rewarding project,
bringing in Väsen as special guests. Hoedown Arts evolved until 2016 when I moved to countryside where peace and nature quickly became priority. Of course, I still seek, explore, buy and listen to music daily with the same ravenous appetite. The hectic work schedule is now greatly reduced to minimal but yes I do miss the gigs with the wild audiences.
Is there still new music to be discovered? Can you relate to what the young generation is listening now?
There is an incredibly vast amount of new and old music of all kinds to be discovered, going back one hundred years to the present, from all around the world. Every day is a new opportunity to find something exciting. As regards the “younger generation”, the current mainstream music is not to my taste but fortunately many thousands of people, from teens to eighties are still making music outside the mainstream and much if it very adventurous and thrilling. One must dig deep to find it but thankfully we have internet. I still buy many albums per week and my daily joy is discovering something old or new, not previously known or heard and listening at home or out and about on one of my ten iPods.
What kind of work do you do now?Maybe you should teach management at Sibelius Academy?
I do very little work from past projects but there is the new project with Timo Alakotila and Japanese accordionist Yuka Fujino. I introduced them to each other in Tokyo in 2022 during Timo’s Nordic Women tour. They recorded their piano / accordion album Seiras in Helsinki in summer 2023. A gorgeous, exquisite dreamwork from two like-minded composers / players.
On the subject of Timo Alakotila: harmonium is an instrument almost forgotten elsewhere, but maybe Finland is country with most harmoniums per 100 bands, is there a reason?
Timo can answer that. Somehow the harmonium became an important part of Finnish folk music tradition. Which is good, that being my second favourite instrument.
Besides Finnish music, did you develop also affection for Finnish countryside, language?
Finnish nature is beautiful, peaceful, re-energizing and spiritually very important for Finnish people and it is an importantpart of their character. I am fortunate to be able to experience this in balance with the world of music.
The Uniko project was originally commissioned by the Kronos Quartet in 2003. In 2011 you were in Prague at Strings of Autumn festival where Uniko was performed by Kimmo Pohjonen, Samuli Kosminen and the Proton String Quartet. Would you like to share memories of the concert?
Yes, that was a big and memorable event. The Uniko music is so powerful, the audience felt the full force of the work and responded with incredible gusto. It was one of those experiences that made my work so fulfilling, not to mention the artists feeling the same way. Yes, a magnificent occasion. Uniko in fact continues to the new decade, as performed with Tallinn Chamber Orchestra in 2022.
Your latest project is the album Seiras,recorded by pianist Timo Alakotila and accordionist Yuka Fujino. In the press release you wrote: “Timo and Yuka met in Tokyo in 2022 and began discussions about collaboration based on mutually aligned attitudes towards the art of composition”. Can you specify these “mutually aligned attitudes”?
Melody is the main focus in the musics of both artists. They hold that to be the highest form of communication and expression. They are true “melodists”. Harmonies and arrangements and performance are vital as well but melody is the basis for their work. Their styles are quite similar. For example, Yuka’s piece “Nanohana” sounds and feels like it could have been composed by Timo.
The project also can be seen as a creative musical puzzle. While accordion is considered a Finnish national instrument, here it is played by Japanese lady. You plan a Japanese tour, will the Japanese react in a different way than you expect Finnish audiences to react?
There are actually quite a few female accordionists in Japan, as well, there are very many in Finland. Female Japanese
accordionists are performing, recording and releasing CDs. Japanese audiences are well aware of the prominent female accordionists. Yuka is very busy and Maria Kalaniemi has performed there several times. Japanese audiences feel the emotion of the instrument and have great respect for it, same as in Finland. I think female accordionists have a special understanding and deep relationship with their instrument. Certainly that is the case with Maria Kalaniemi and Yuka Fujino. The April 2024 Japanese tour with Timo and Yuka is organized by Yuka and we are hoping they will perform in Finland in summer 2025.
Further information on artists mentioned in the interview
Lecture and screening on Frank Zappa and Prague at the Czech Consulate in Los Angeles, 10 May 2024.
[Petr Dorůžka, Los Angeles, California] You might find it strange, that a person from a far away, 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.
The main points are:
— how Frank Zappa managed to gain such a strong following in my home country, former Czechoslovakia,
— how his music broke through all European cultural and language barriers,
— and also, how one of his songs inspired the name of the most celebrated local underground band, the Plastic People of Universe.
There is actually a book on this topic, including history of the Czech Underground movement and also Frank Zappa visit in Prague, written by Joe Yanosik in New York – more about this later.
Czech underground was very different from what used to be called underground here. Playing in an underground band in a communist country meant you risked your freedom, many musicians or concert organizers ended up in jail, as well did people who copied forbidden books on their typewriters. Underground poets, writers were in jail, one of them was the future president Václav Havel, whom Zappa was meeting during his visit in Prague in January 1990.
But first let me explain how I became part of this amazing story. Yes, I spent the first 41 years in a communist country under a dictatorship rule, and that meant, not just political, but a cultural struggle. I was 18 when artists like Bob Dylan, the Beatles, and of course Frank Zappa released their most important albums. Yes, they were never sold officially in Czechoslovakia, but also, they were never forbidden to be brought in, if you were lucky enough to buy them abroad. On the other hand, smuggling books by the dissident writers, both living in exile or in Czechoslovakia, was punished as a crime.
To Czech listeners, Frank Zappa’s music sounded like the perfect cure in these dark times, and also as a guiding light. It showed the Czechs how to raise your voice against establishment, against the political rules, hardline Communist apparatchiks: that was the word used for the ruling Communist party members.
Frank Zappa was born in Baltimore, but he started his career here, in Los Angeles, in the mid 60’s, in the era of free love, psychedelic music, and the hippies, but he was not part of any trend, actually he was very critical about people following trends rather than questioning them.
His songs were a biting satire against American authorities, hypocrisy and double standards. The Czech and Slovak listeners understood it as a universal statement, so they easily adapted all these hidden messages to their own situation. You can suppose, that most of them didn’t understand the English lyrics, but by their instinct they knew well how Zappa was breaking the rules, how he was using the non-musical sounds as a provocation, and of course how he and his musicians were dressing up… their long hair was a much more extreme statement than the cute haircuts set by the Beatles.
I was lucky that I had access to Frank Zappa’s recordings through my foreign friends, also I knew English, my mother was a language teacher, so I found Zappa’s lyrics fascinating, but there was no way I could start a radio show on Czechoslovak radio and play the songs. That was possible only 20 years later after the fall of Iron Curtain and communist rule. But there were other ways: you could travel around the country and play music in clubs, just for listening, not dancing, to likeminded youngsters searching for music close to their own feelings. Play the music and explain what it is about. It felt like a conspiracy, you could see the risk, but also you were rewarded by feeing of victory over this political monster, ruling with brute force and no brains. This battlefield was known as “the gray zone” – things that were not exactly forbidden, but also not directly banned, unless somebody complains. And in this grey zone it was also possible to publish books, that official publishing houses were not allowed to print. Zappa became a hot topic in the Czech grey zone. Also, during the 1970’s, Zappa’s band was the best live act, reaching far beyond the rock boundaries. So I asked my colleague, who was organising these semi-underground listening sessions: can we do a book on Frank Zappa? Yes we can, but we do not know how this will end up. For example, members of a similar activist group, The Jazz Section, ended up in jail. Also, you should know that things were much more complicated, far beyond common logic. For example, the leader of The Jazz Section, as revealed years later, was a secret police informer.
So, I started to work on the book, and it was very simple to find the right name: the key word was Šuplík, which means Drawer. If you were writing a book controversial enough, that finally will not be published, it stayed in your drawer. In the communist times, we had a plenty of drawer writers. So my book was titled A Drawerful of Zappa and was published for the first time in 1984 as a handout for education only, not to be sold to public. Yes, only registered members of the activist semi-underground conspiracy club could buy it. Later it was translated into Slovak and published twice in free Czechoslovakia. This is the first freely published edition, which stays here in the library of the Consulate.
And now from 1984 fast forward 6 years later. After Russian Perestroika, former East Block countries are set free. On New Years Eve the radio announces, that after 41 years of dictatorship, Vaclav Havel is elected as a president. On January 3, 1990, Frank Zappa arrives at Prague airport, now Vaclav Havel Airport, without his band, but with an American TV crew. He arrives from Moscow, to make a film and build bridges between American entrepreneurs and the former Communist countries. To his great surprise, he is a celebrity in Prague: Czech TV plans to shoot a documentary about his visit, and because of my book, they hire me as an interpreter. It’s a dream come true not just for me, but for another 2 and a half thousand of his Czech fans waiting at the airport. It’s a morning full of surprises: the US ambassador at that time, Shirley Temple, the former actress, admits she has never heard his music.
Let’s see the first part of the movie: besides Zappa you will see organizers of his visit, 2 young Czech men living in Austria, later we shall get in detail, Michael Kocáb, the musician, who participated in organizing his visit, and other interpreters working for him, I am the one with glasses. Also you will notice that Zappa was a heavy smoker, unfortunately.
Comments to the screening
5:11 Mikoláš Chadima, a underground musician, explains: We played Frank Zappa’s music with my previous band, and I can remember, when the secret police arrested us and we were beaten up during interrogation, the officer screamed at me: “I shall beat this Frank Zappa stuff out of you!”
6:00 It’s well known fact, that rock and roll and electric guitar helped to overthrow the communist rule. Rock and roll, like jazz one generation before, was the voice of freedom, that bravely opposed the fake culture forced on the public by state propaganda, like Russian over stylized folk music that sounded like a bad operetta. BTW, it was in Frank Zappa’s late 70’s triple album Joe’s Garage, where Zappa describes an imaginary country, where all electric guitars are banned. His Czech fans knew that kind of situation very well, when the local rock singers were periodically banned from performing live or on TV or both.
Zappa’s Prague visit was initiated by two Czech citizens who were forced by the Soviet invasion in 1968 to move to exile to Austria: Gogo Krampota and Karel Kocour Havelka. 8 years earlier, in June 1982, they succeeded to track down Zappa in his secret hotel, did a short interview, and Zappa gave them a written message for the Czech people: Communism does not work.
Another important story: on the screen, soon we shall see Zappa meeting president Václav Havel. Together, they had a plan: Havel appointed Frank Zappa as “Special Ambassador to the West on Trade, Culture and Tourism.” But for the US government, Zappa was “persona non grata” for a very serious reason. In 1986, Zappa was an outspoken critic of the activities of the American right wing and its efforts to censor rock and roll. The pro-censorship movement was led by Tipper Gore, wife of Al Gore, Clinton’s Vice-President, and Secretary of State James Baker’s wife Susan. So, James Baker’s response was: “You can do business with the United States or you can do business with Frank Zappa.”
12.30 Jazz flutist Jiří Stivín is praising Zappa but disappointed the US Ambassador didn’t know him .. and following part is meeting with the Prague underground artists in Hotel Krivaň, a legendary building close to collapse, thus a very stylish place for the sweet end of communist era. That was highlight of his visit. He was performing with Pulnoc, Midnight in translation, a band formed by some of the Plastic People members.
21.10 meeting with the Minister of Culture ..”Zappa is a fierce critic of his own society, that is something that we have to learn.”
28.10 President Havel talking at the General Assembly of Czechoslovakia, Frank Zappa listening.
For further information, I strongly recommend an excellent book in English, written by Joe Yanosik, a historian of the Czech Underground movement living in New York: A Consumer Guide to THE PLASTIC PEOPLE OF THE UNIVERSE – see this link.
Thanks for making Frank Zappa’s visit to Prague possible, most valuable information during the decades and endless support
– to my friend Gogo Krampota
For fifteen years she studied rural songs south of Naples. Her album Bucolica is one of the best roots recordings of 2023.
[Petr Dorůžka, Praha] How would collectors like Béla Bartók or Leoš Janáček work if they lived today? Endangered traditions 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.
It is easy to find parallels of her work in a wider context. The American folklorist Alan Lomax is known primarily for the recordings of black bluesmen from the south of the United States, but his later collecting work in Europe, including Italy, was no less important. On his Italian expedition he worked with Diego Carpitella, a professor of ethnomusicology who was nine years his junior. Lomax discovered that Italian regional music was at least as varied as American music due to its geographical distribution. “Strange as it is,” he wrote, “true Italian folk music is unknown even to the Italian population, not to mention the rest of the world.” When he and Carpitella toured the countryside, they were often greeted by the local mayor, unaware that the collectors would try to escape the authorities as quickly as possible to contact the local janitor or cleaner, who would more likely lead them to the real source. In his diary, Lomax writes: “Day after day I encountered ancient and completely unknown styles. I began to understand how the enlightened people of the Renaissance felt when they discovered these buried and hidden treasures of Greek and Roman antiquity.” This is just to explain that the Italian musical heritage has a centuries-tested endurance, and it is therefore not surprising that Hiram Salsano, 60 years after Lomax, still had something to discover. She transformed the results of her research into her album Bucolica, which attracted the attention of specialized world critics in 2023. You can see the whole survey on her own website https://www.hiramsalsano.com/home-page/press,
read the detailed Andrew Cronshaw’s review here https://www.rootsworld.com/reviews/salsano-23.shtml and
Ciro De Rosa’s interview here https://www.blogfoolk.com/2023/06/hiram-salsano-bucolica-autoprodotto-2023.html.
In October 2023, the singer won the International Jury Prize at the Premio Andrea Parodi competition in Sardinia.
In recent years, Italian music has become better known thanks to pizzica, the tambourine driven rhythm from Salento. What kind of secrets do we find in music from Campania?
Traditional music from Campania retains several peculiarities. One is a rather personal use of the voice. Voices in Campania are articulate, rich in melismas, and do not refer to the tonal system but to the modal system. Melodies are enriched with microtones that would not be possible to reproduce even with western notation methods. Among the instruments, the most common is the chitarra battente, that is, the guitar used as percussion, the shawm, tambourines, accordion and bagpipes.
If we go back in history, did polyphony exist in Campania? How is the local tarantella similar to or different from the Salento pizzica?
There was and is polyphony in Campania, which is still alive today. We find devotional songs, work songs, songs of departure, songs of distance, and love songs in various areas of Campania where they are still sung in several voices. For example, one type of our traditional songs is called “alla longa”, with two voices that go into polyphony and meet in unison in the final note. Local tarantellas are certainly related to the pizzica and other forms of tarantella found throughout southern Italy.The tarantellas present in the various regions are all different. There are cases in which several ways of playing the tarantella have developed in the same region. For example, in Campania, the tarantellas of Avellino (Montemarano) are different from those of Cilento.
An important part of the story is when Alan Lomax explored Italian music with Diego Carpitella. Did they make recordings in Campania?
In 1954, Lomax’s expedition investigated all the regions of Italy. In his passage through Campania he collected interesting testimonies. Some tracks recorded in Campania were used as the soundtrack for the film Il Decamerone by Pier Paolo Pasolini. The track ‘Cicci’ on my album is based, among other things, on a recording by Lomax, a drum track collected in Pagani (Salerno), where the rhythmic session is performed by voices instead of the drum.
Campania is probably the only Italian region whose name is not taken from a specific place but has a more general meaning: campo is a field, campagna is countryside. Is there a real story behind this? And is Campania more ‘rural’ than neighbour regions like Basilicata or Calabria?
Surely a historian or scholar could tell us more. In general, the word Campania indicates a flat and fertile area, Campania felix, the ancient territory of Capua in Roman times. Today, Campania is a very urbanized region, even though it retains large green and rural areas, Cilento being one of them. We find a ‘Lucanian’ culture linked to the ancient borders, and we still find a lot in common with Basilicata and northern Calabria.
You have called your CD Bucolica. Would the translation be very close to the word ‘rural’?
The name Bucolica derives from the adjective bucolic, i.e., pastoral, which I then transformed into feminine. I chose this name because it anticipated the concept of music from southern Italy that I wanted to express.
You studied at the Goetheanum, was that in Switzerland?
Yes, I studied at the Euritmeum Zuccoli of the Goetheanum in Dornach, Switzerland. I took a course in eurythmy, an art of movement devised by Rudolf Steiner at the beginning of the 20th century.
Is it a university focused on anthropology? What did you learn there?
Actually, it is a university focused on anthroposophy, a different discipline from anthropology. In short, you could say that the former studies everything about man not only in the visible aspect (physical) but also in the invisible aspect ;(spirit, soul) the latter, on the other hand, studies everything about man in terms of visible traces, morphology, psychology, etc.
I learned a lot especially in relation to the movement of the body related to the rhythm and harmony of the human being connected to the natural and cosmic elements.
Did you study singing? Or did you simply learn from folk singers?
For several years I studied singing and the ways of musical expression just by listening to various traditional singers. Then I decided to study some basic singing practices such as breathing, emission, intonation, and so on, applying this knowledge to what I was listening to and trying to reproduce.
What is the most important local instrument in Campania?
In the Neapolitan area, the main instrument is the ‘o Tammurre, a frame drum with a diameter of 35 to 45 cm. It is a wooden hoop with a goat skin and tin rattles. It has a different shape from the current tambourines used for the pizzica in Salento. Each player chooses the diameter that is most comfortable for him.
How did you carry out your research? Did you travel with a tape recorder and visit families?
We went to look for elders who possessed knowledge not only in music but also in agriculture and, above all, in humans. They passed on values and songs that we tried to learn. Our research was related to practice and not to the acquisition of material to fill an archive. We wanted to learn from them. We recorded on a Panasonic minidisk.
The Cilento region is known for its beaches and tourist crowds. It is surprising that unknown musical tradition still survives in the area. Where exactly did you find your sources?
My research was based on two areas of personal experience: the Lattari Mountains, an area on the border between the Gulf of Naples and the Gulf of Salerno, and the Alburni Mountains, which lie at the gateway to the current Cilento Park. For the Monti Lattari, I investigated the municipalities of Agerola, Pimonte, Castellammare di Stabia, Gragnano, and Sant’Antonio Abate, listening to work songs, devotional songs, and dance songs, i.e., those sung to the rhythm of the drum.
In the Alburni area, in the province of Salerno, in the municipalities of Postiglione, Sicignano, Castelcivita, Corleto Monforte, and so on, I listened to tarantellas, serenades, devotional songs, extended songs, and lullabies.
In each area, I attended festivals and tried to get to know and get in touch with individual performers who were still tied to their native musical repertoires.
How old were the singers you worked with?
The research and learning phase for me started in 2005. I met singers and performers of various ages, born between 1930 and 1960, and each of them left a great testimony to the passage of these musical elements. The older the singers were, the more songs related to the agricultural and pastoral world they knew and remembered.
Were they above all ‘grandmothers’, the last living masters of popular song?
Women knew and handed down their songs, often different from those ;of men. The context changed women often sang in private, for their families, for their children, for their grandchildren, or they accompanied themselves at work. In public, they sang mostly devotional songs. Men, on the other hand, sang not only at work but also at times of public celebration. The women knew a rich repertoire of lullabies, songs dedicated to the various tasks they performed in the countryside, prayers, fairy tales, etc. For example, I also learned a lot from my grandmother, who used to entertain us with her songs and stories during childhood.
Who was the oldest?
As I said before, the oldest was probably born in 1930. In some cases, they only knew how to write ;their first and last name in other cases, they had gone to school up to the third or fifth grade and applied themselves to writing and reading small things.
Did you have to use any ‘tricks’ to get them to sing for you?
Absolutely not, just ask if they knew any songs from the past and they would start singing and remembering. Except on one occasion when the singer could not remember a work song and so had to perform the task to sing and remember, showing that the gesture was related to the melody of the song. Otherwise, they had a great desire to be heard.
Do you remember any funny stories?
Actually, fun was always guaranteed. Along with songs, these farmers and workers had a great sense of humor, and every opportunity was good for joking and playing. Moreover, their stories were really adventurous.
Let us now talk about Naples. The city’s best-known style is the Neapolitan song. Enrico Caruso is known as one of the masters of the genre. But probably this tradition evolved from peasant roots?
Of course the world of cultured city music has always had exchanges and encounters with the music of the countryside. The great performers and writers have always drawn on the indigenous ;musical repertoires for their compositions the song ‘Fenesta ca lucive’, also sung by Caruso, is an example of how a text originally a funeral lamentation then becomes a classical opera.
During your research, did you find anything that could be recognized as the ‘roots’ of opera music or of Neapolitan song?
Certainly there is a type of cultured popular theater, often performed by folk artists, that has evolved over time.
The Neapolitan singer, director and ethnomusicologist Roberto De Simone, now almost 90, is a specialist in this field.
Since the folk revival in 1960’s, Maestro De Simone’s compositions have brought stories, music, and images belonging to the popular world onto the stage.
One of the streets in Agropoli, where you were born, was in 2008 named after Frank Zappa. Have you, or your musicians, ever listened to Zappa?
I had a very broad musical education Frank Zappa was listened to by my parents and remains in my memories.
At your competition concert of the Premio Andrea Parodi, I’ve heard a little twist in your voice, that sounded like throat singing from Mongolia. Did you study this technique?
You’ve heard right. I was enchanted by Asian throat singing, I started studying it with a colleague, he is a student of the world-famous, originally ??Vietnameseof master Trn Quang Hi. I’m just at the beginning so far, in this truly fascinating technique.
The competition, in which you won the international jury prize, is dedicated to the legacy of the late singer Andrea Parodi. According to the rules, each of the finalists does a coverversion of one of his songs. Which is not just a tribute to his legacy, but a test of creativity to add something extra to a well known song. You accompanied yourself on a rattle, a child’s toy. This was not meant as a joke or provocation, the result was a truly spiritual experience. What was the song about?
I chose Stabat Mater by Parodi, it is a religious song from the Holy Week that precedes Easter. In my home territory there is a strong tradition of Easter songs. I love laments and dirges, it is a genre close to my sensibility. So I have tried to make the piece in the spirit of my nature, adding elements from the Cilento and Sardinia, Andrea’s home region. The wooden thing that I used as a percussion instrument is called ‘zerra’ in our country, it was played at Easter processions. The reason? The church bells are tied at that time, so they don’t ring to commemorate Christ’s death. On the streets you only hear ‘zerre’ [plural of ‘zerra’] and singing liturgical hymns.
Amsterdam-based ud player Mehmet Polat studied Indian and Turkish music. He makes music with both Turkish and Western players
[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.
In addition to its musical role, the instrument also functions as a cultural symbol, linking the Middle Eastern traditions with Western genres like jazz, flamenco or acoustic music. Mehmet Polat’s music draws inspiration from this ever-changing area. His concerts are an exceptional experience. Polat and his bandmates lead their audience to the open musical landscape, where the art of listening to others is the rule, rather than promoting one’s ego.
Polat recorded his latest album, Embodied Poetry, with Bulgarian drummer Martin Hafizi, Dutch pianist Mike Roelofs, bassist Daniel van Huffelen, and guest players on trumpet [Gijs Levelt], duduk [Vardan Hovanissian] and ney [Şükrü Kirtiş].
Mostly with Turkish Alevi music and folk music at home and in my village. My father had a beautiful voice, a great musical memory, all my siblings and cousins were highly musical. I started playing Turkish baglama when I was around 5 years old. I continued till my age of 18, and then switching to ud.
What kind of Western pop music influenced you?
I was listening to Turkish pop music on TV and radio, and I have never been an active listener of Western pop music. Inactively I was hearing it everywhere.
Was there any formative moment in your youth that changed your view on art and music?
When I was 18, I saw a 12-year-old boy playing Paganini caprices. This gave me an amazing motivation to work harder.
Do you come from a musical family?
My brothers play Turkish baglama, my mother and father sing. I was the first one from my family who chose music as a profession, studied in the conservatories and performed internationally. My niece Fazilet Polat has followed my path. She plays Western classical music on flute, she plays in the Istanbul Opera Orchestra.
Were you born in the Netherlands or in Turkey? How and for what reason did your family moved to Europe?
I was born and raised in a village in suburbs of Urfa, Turkey in 1980’s. In 1998 I moved to Istanbul for my studies, in 2007 I have moved to the Netherlands. I came to the Netherlands for studying master degree at Rotterdam Conservatory’s Indian Music department. Since then I have been living here in Amsterdam.
At Rotterdam Conservatory, what made you choose Indian music?
Initially recordings of Ravi Shankar, Hariprasad Chaurasia, Zakir Hussein, Shakti. This music was the first reason why I wanted to learn Indian Music, it was so familiar but also different.
During your studies at the Rotterdam Conservatory, were you playing Indian music on the ud, or some Indian instrument?
Yes I was learning it on the ud. There were more students who were learning on sax or even darbuka.
Your latest album is called Embodied Poetry. Interpretations of the title can be diverse. I read it as “stories stored in our physical bodies”. Maybe you have a more personal explanation?
I see this album as an outcome of lots of stories about life experiences that came to my life as birth, death, survival, love, struggle, balance, perseverance and motivation for going on, diverse emotions and lessons (both life and for artistic development: I have followed jazz lessons by guitarist Mark Tuinstra, I have learned jazz standards, jazz timing, improvising on chords etc.).
You explain that 2 pieces are directly based on Indian ragas, Yaman and Charukeshi. Can you explain why did you choose these two? Just because of the musical content, or also because the emotional level, time-of-day they are related to?
I love those ragas, both because or their musical content and also they are part of my emotional world. I can relate them, they can speak out my inner world through my melodies and ud.
Do you consider Turkey as your second home? Do you travel there often to explore your roots?
Initially yes, Turkey could be my second home, but social, cultural and economic obstacles withhold me somehow. Anyhow approximately once in a year I go visit my family. I’d love to perform there as well. About my roots, I think I have brought them with me to Amsterdam. Every phrase I play sounds a bit Turkish to me. Even I find it good to get disconnected from my roots, for opening up for new cultures. I am not afraid of that.
How did you study music, at school? Or did you also have a private teacher?
I have started with Turkish baglama at the age of 5, I have learnt it from my brothers and other players in my village. After that till my conservatory years I had various private teachers and courses.
The Netherlands is known for it’s advanced educational system in non-Western musics, was this helpful?
I have studied at CODARTS, it was super helpful for me. Next to my studies in Indian music, I could also interact with musicians from Latin, flamenco and even tango departments.
Do you remember your first public performance?
I was 7 years old, playing Turkish baglama and singing at a national day (23 April) celebration at my school.
Once you told me you are Alevi. What does this mean to you, in a practical way, and in a spiritual way?
Coming from an Alevi village and family has helped me to get a humanistic perspective, respecting others, gender equality, secularism, being open minded in life and opening ourselves up for art forms as music, poetry and dance. I am grateful for this. But further now I live just a secular life without any spiritual feeling or belonging any group of beliefs.
Is Polat common name between Alevis? I am asking this, because the previous interview in the magazine was with Meral Polat, so some readers will be curious if there is any relation.
Polat means ‘steel’ in Turkish, Persian and Arabic. It’s originally a Persian word. So written Polat is one of the most common surnames or names in Turkey. Meral is a friend of mine but we are not related. Just a beautiful coincidence.
I suppose there is a large Turkish Gastarbeiter diaspora in Netherlands and even bigger in Germany. But do these people come to see Mehmet Polat concert? If not, what do they listen to?
A small percentage of gastarbeider diaspora come to my concerts here. Those are usually from Kurdish, Alevi or other minority groups, or their grandchildren. A small group of the diaspora has become world citizens, left thinking, open minded and don’t belong to any ethnic of religious group. They also come to my concerts.
But unfortunately more than 60% of the diaspora here watches only Turkish TV and get their cultural and political inputs from there.
Your label is Aftab – does it have a meaning? Is it a common name in Muslim world, any relation to the Pakistani singer Arooj Aftab?
Aftab means ‘sun’ in Persian. I love it. By living in Netherlands I am missing the presence of the sun sometimes for weeks.
How difficult it is to survive with music that is NOT mainstream, and is also NOT part of any widely accepted genre like jazz?
It’s true that it’s not an easy task, it requires some extra work to help the audience listen and feel & understand it. And at the end it’s my responsibility to get my music heard, by audience. In bigger cities we usually have audience for my ‘multicultural jazz’ music. Recently, on June 22 2023, we have played in Bimhuis. Although it was a Thursday evening on summer, the hall was full.
But also you do other things, a programme called Heimwee naar vertewith Joke Hermsen and Maryana Golovchenko.
This show is about homesickness. Amazing philosopher Joke Hermsen has initiated this project. The project has started with Joke’s new book ‘Onder een andere hemel’ (under a different sky). Myself and the great Ukrainian singer Maryana Golovchenko will make music about the subjects, Joke will combine her lecture with our music.
Do you have any concerts in the Middle East, Turkey, Morocco, Israel?
I have been in Morocco, Egypt, Jordan and Turkey for concerts. And I would love to go there again and discover other countries from the region.
Have you ever worked with a singer? Any recordings?
Yes I did. Aynur, Mikail Aslan, Cemil Qocgiri, Mircan Kaya, Flip Noorman, Naomi Inez, Karima el Fillali. I am also teaching a Classical Turkish Music Choir in Amsterdam. Check these links
Ottoman Music was well developed in the court. Next to its artistic aesthetic it was also used for healing people.
How much it was improvised?
Ottoman Music was based mainly on makams (a concept of melodicity which is based on tonality and certain route/rules the melodies must follow). Most known makam improvisations are called ‘taksim’ and ‘meyan’. Taksim is a free improvisation with or without any accompaniment. Meyan is a melodic or rhythmical improvisation on an ongoing groove during the pieces.
There was just 1 melodic voice and no harmony, like in Indian music?
Exactly.
Did the genre evolve continually until present time, or was there some turning point when the Ottoman rule ended, that is seen like the end of the “classical” period?
Song forms and instrumental forms are still being composed, performed and listened. But classical forms (for example beste, yuruk semai, agir semai etc) are not being so much composed. Especially after television was invented, the classical forms have started to vanish.
Did notation at some point enter the music system? And was improvisation of the greatest masters written down on paper, a process that can be seen as a parallel to works of European composers? Cemil Bey could be an example?
I am sure Turkish music historians can tell a lot more about it. But yes, notation came later. Afterwards the greatest masters have written their compositions on notation. Today we are using Western notation in French system (do-re-mi..) with extra accidentals for microtones. Also for each specific pitch we have older names as well, like rast, zirgule, dugah, kurdi, segah etc.
Is there any direct relation between Turkish makam and Indian raga system?
Yes, especially when we play certain scales and follow certain rules, makam and raga systems are similar.
The ud
What it takes to bring new ideas on instrument like ud? Is it just technique, or also incorporating ideas from non-Eastern cultures?
It is a combination of having a good technique, being open to different cultures, having a broadened vision and a good taste. Ud was mostly seen as a traditional instrument which must accompany vocals. But I use it as a solo instrument, for that I have developed an advance technique based on spreading my fingers wide, transposing all the makams in every half tone. For doing that I have practised average 10 hours during my first years of learning, 25 years ago.
Why transposing is so important?
Since Turkish Music is mostly vocal music, every vocalist may want to sing the songs in the range of their voice. In this case the instrumentalists must to adapt to singers’ voice’s range, and that means we must transpose instantly. But transposing makam scales – especially to the half tones – could be ultra challenging. Because you have to keep the intervals correct, accommodate the embellishments, make your instruments sound good. Mostly the instrumentalists avoid that and play just on the keys which works on mainly open strings. But I embraced this challenge and learned from it.
How did ud playing evolve in 20 century?
Serif Muhittin Targan (1892-1967) had a big influence on developing ud in Turkey and in the Arabic world. He was also a good cellist, he could apply all his technical capabilities on the ud. Had a wide perspective and brought ud to an advance level. Targan had a lot of Western influences.
In what sense was Munir Bashir so influential? Did his studies in Hungary bring any Western ideas?
Munir Bashir was a student of Serif Muhittin Targan. Of course his studies in Hungary brought Western Ideas.
Rabih Abou-Khalil studied in Beirut, besides ud also a flute, with the Czech professor Josef Severa, did this also bring some Western influences?
Yes it did.
And Anouar Brahem made many albums for ECM, for Western ears his music still sounds Eastern, but I am sure listener from the Middle East hears many Western elements, can you name some?
Anouar Brahem has a good taste, subtle playing, broadened vision and interesting ideas which I like. I like his albums with unusual bands with for example bass clarinet, accordion, sax and more.
Are there several parallel “schools” how to play ud, like Syrian, Egyptian, Iraqi, Israeli, Turkish, or is it now just a huge melting pot?
Yes, characteristic differences of the local cultures are definitely affecting the style of the ud. I want to add also Iran, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Greece and North African countries on this list. All play the ud in their styles and even with different tuning systems. I believe that the instrument is just a tool, music is in your brains and heart. You externalise what you know and feel at the end, no matter what instrument you play. If a Japanese folk musician plays ud, I am sure the ud will sound more Japanese.
You also designed an ud with two extra bass strings to broaden the range and function of his instrument. Do you use it on regular basis?
Yes I do, especially in projects without bass player and bass needed, I play the bass lines with my ud. Also during my solo shows I loop bass lines to improvise on top of it.
East and West
For Europeans Eastern music seems a mystery, most of the intervals sound “wrong”, with no links to human emotions in a way major or minor scales work in Europe. Maybe listeners from the East have same feeling from Western music?
Actually not. In Eastern music we have substitute makams/scales for Western major and minor. For major we have mahur and cargah in Turkish music. In Arabic Music that’s called ajam, Persian Music mahoor etc. And for minor we have nihavend, buselik and its variants.
Or maybe, the feeling is not “wrong”, but for Eastern ears the Western melodies are trivial, simplistic, lacking ornaments and the mystery of microtonal intervals?
Actually in Western modern music there are examples with microtones and larger irregular rhythms. Also in Baroque and Renascence times there were ornaments. I am sure musicologists can say way more about that. Also it is more more than just East and West. We have many cultures and traditions in the world like North & South America, Asia, Afrika etc. I would consider them also as good sources to get influenced with.
Once I asked the Israeli ud player Yair Dalal about the differences between Eastern and Wester scales, and he explained that the most important thing is the “neutral third”, which is exactly between the major and minor third. I had to agree that “neutral third” is for Europeans a factor that immediately sounds Eastern, but is it really that simple?
I would say, that depends on makam. In some makams third note is important or with microtone. In others that could be fourth (f.e. neva), or fifth (f.e. huseyni) or sixth (f.e. Turkish acem) and so on.
[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.
Williams was aware that his American origin could confuse listeners or even create a barrier, so he appears in the group under the nickname Jean Americanu, which he got from his Romanian bandmates. A unique figure is the cimbalom (hammered dulcimer) player of the group, Marian Șerban. When Romani music was discovered by Western audiences after the fall of communism, he moved to Italy, where he participated in dozens of important projects. He played with the group Aquaragia Drom and with the Neapolitan saxophonist Daniel Sepe, accompanied the English rocker Elvis Costello on an Italian tour and contributed to a soundtrack by the film composer Ennio Morricone. In the following interview, first Corina and then Shaun talk about their musical lives.
Corina, what kind of music you were growing up with?
I grew up listening to the radio and the traditional music of the Dobrogea region where I was born. No one in my family sang and there was no passion for music around me. But I sing. I don’t know how it happened.
In many East European countries, the folk music tradition was corrupted as a propaganda tool, Soviet type mega ensembles were created and the young generation hated them. How was the situation in Romania? And how did you fall in love with the Taraf music?
Young people still associate the traditional music with the music of that period and I don’t know if we are ever going to move past it. I don’t think there is a big interest in it, somehow the folk music still goes on, but I dislike it, it’s kitch. I don’t know how I managed to navigate all that ugly music and make it to the taraf music, I really don’t have an answer to that. It was my luck.
How did you start your band? What was the initial setup?
Shaun and I started the band and it all happened very quickly. We meet on the internet, we sang a few songs and that was it. We grew like a bread.
How easy was it to convince Marian Șerban to join the band? He must be very busy and sought-after musician?
Actually it was very easy. He trusted and supported us every step of the way. And he became like a father to us.
What are your plans for the new album with the Taraf?
The new album is also our first album and I am not sure how it’s going to sound. We are going to add some new stuff, of course, and maybe one or two original compositions.
When you were working with Shaun from the beginning, was there any barrier between him and local musicians because he is Gadjo and foreigner? How did he break the ice? What was the moment when he was accepted?
Meeting Shaun was the second beautiful thing that happened to me, the first was my dog. I’ve learned and I am still learning a lot from him. Although he didn’t grow up here, he is more knowledgeable than me when it comes to this kind of music and he is respected for it.
And also, in your case, because probably you are not of Romani origin, did you have to deal with any prejudices?
Maybe I will be judged for this, but I think music is for everyone. I am not trying to sing like a Roma person, I sing like me.
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Shaun, after your time in Ukraine, when and how did you decide to settle in Romania?
When I went to Ukraine as a Peace Corps volunteer in 2008, I already had the idea to someday study ethnomusicology, and my experience in Ukraine helped me to make that decision. When I finished my service in 2012, I began my doctoral studies at the department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology at Indiana University.
How did you start your band? What was the initial setup?
The band started quite unexpectedly. I was in my first year of field research in Bucharest and had organized some jam sessions with lăutari in the city. Corina must have seen a video from one of these events and wrote to me on Facebook asking if I’d like to try playing accompaniment on some traditional songs. We started out performing on the street as a duo when she had a break from her job at a coffee shop, and soon people were asking to hire us for weddings and parties. We performed for a few months as a duo, then invited cimbalom player Marian Șerban to join us, and after another year we added the violin and contrabass.
You studied art history in Germany, how important was it for your East European explorations?
My time abroad as a young student in Germany was important to my development as a person, but not necessarily as a musician, though the first time I saw a Balkan or Klezmer band it was on the streets of Berlin.
Your great-grand mother comes from south Transylvania, did her musical/cultural memories somehow influence your grandmother or you?
I never met my great-grandmother, who emigrated from Sebeș, Transylvania to Ohio, USA in 1920. But I grew up with frequent visits to my grandmother’s house where there were decorations in German and depictions of Transylvanian shepherds on the walls. Nobody ever talked about Transylvania though, and I assumed my ancestors were from Germany. It was only in 2007, when I made my first trip to Romania to study the cimbalom, that my grandmother told me “Oh you know my mother fled from Romania. Why on earth would you want to go there?”
How easy was it to convince Marian Șerban to join the band? And also to join Volekh? He must be a very busy and sought-after musician..
We were lucky to meet Marian in 2017 when he had just moved back to Bucharest after nearly 30 years in Italy, when he wasn’t yet in a lot of bands. My cimbalom teacher and mentor, Nicolae Feraru, suggested we talk to his nephew Marian because he was looking for people to play with, and we’ve since become great friends. When I formed Volekh Quartet in 2019, I immediately thought of Marian because he’s a very versatile musician with years of experience playing Yiddish theatre music in Italy.
How is Volekh Quartet doing? This band looks like a supergroup of busy people (Mihai Balabaș, a multi-instrumentalist who plays with numerous international groups), Benjy Fox-Rosen (bassist and composer as well as conductor of the Vienna Stadttempel Choir), Marian Șerban (a master of the cimbalom, including collaborations with Ennio Morricone, Ute Lemper and Elvis Costello) and Shaun Williams. So probably live performances are rare? Do you have a next gig planned?
Volekh Quartet was a victim of the pandemic; we premiered our live score for the 1925 silent film “Manasse” at the Europalia 2019 festival in Brussels, and then a few months later the artistic world was shut down and all of our performances were cancelled. Now we’re starting to gain some momentum again, with a performance at TIFF Cluj [TIFF Transilvania International Film Festival] in June and another at TIFF Oradea scheduled for October 1st 2023.
What are your plans for the new album with the Taraf?
Our album plans were also affected by the pandemic, but we’re hoping to finally hit the studio in winter 2023-24, with a release in the spring.
Do you find the Taraf tradition also elsewhere in Balkans? Illiterate self taught musicians playing for the aristocracy?
I take issue with this depiction of lăutari; many have studied at music colleges and conservatories, and the understanding of music theory is at a very high level, regardless of the fact that it’s still mostly an oral tradition. But yes, the phenomenon of Romani musical families persists throughout the Balkans and also in Ukraine and Moldova, where there were often mixed Romani-Jewish musical families.
In electronicbeats.ro you said: “Part of my research is to promote this music, to have a higher status. People watch this music like on Etno TV, somehow the fiddle is seen (wrongly) as kitsch music for grandparents, and it’s a shame that it’s not appreciated.” That is the same what Ross Daly said one generation ago. As a foreigner, he helped the Greeks to re-evaluate their own folk music, can you see any parallels in your role?
I don’t want to inflate my role or my potential influence. I’d say that I only hope I’m able to give back at least as much as I take from this music that has so greatly enriched my life.
Does your position as a foreigner, Americanu, allow you to see the local culture more valuable, contrary to the view shared by locals, who often see it as something inferior, and who are fascinated by American culture instead?
I don’t think so; most people who listen to our music assume that I’m a (Romani) lăutar, since the name is a play on the common culture of nicknames in muzica lăutărească and manele (ie. Marian Mexicanu, Jean de la Craiova, etc).
The role of “outsiders” discovering local music is much wider. Joe Boyd and Muzsikas, Michel Winter, Stephane Karo and Taraf de Haidouks. Also, Gadjos do musicology studies, while gypsies play the music. In European classical music the artists and academics come from the same pool, in Balkans it is different. Any simple explanation?
There are plenty of Romani musicians in the classical, jazz, and pop music worlds, as well as Romani anthropologists, sociologists, and ethnomusicologists. I’m wary of my role as a “Gadjo” outsider who came to Eastern Europe to study the Other, but that is a reality of the imperialistic roots of Anthropology/Ethnomusicology that I’m still grappling with; I hope that what I am doing is not exploitative but rather beneficial to the communities and artists with whom I collaborate.
Your priority concept of your band is a serious performing ensemble for festivals and concerts, not a wedding band pleasing the guests at any cost. But, what about a “selective” wedding band? What if Johnny Depp would ask you to play at his wedding, would you decline?
The reality is that the majority of our performances are private (weddings, baptisms, parties), and we enjoy playing for such events. The difference is that at weddings we don’t get to perform the dark, melancholy repertoire that (in my opinion) makes muzica lăutărească so special.
Dark songs? You mean the doina laments?
I mean a much larger pallete of genres. People typically only want party music at their wedding– that is, sîrbas, horas, manele, drinking songs/table songs. But that excludes whole genres of traditional rural and urban folklore whose traditional listening contexts have disappeared: cântece de jale (sorrowful songs), cântece de blestem (curse songs), cântece de ocna (jail songs), cântece de șmecheri (gangster songs), to name a few. “Lume, lume”, “Cine iubește și lasă” (curse song), and “Lasă mă, nevastă-n casă” recorded by Maria Tănase and many of the epic songs and cântece de jale recorded by Taraful din Clejani (later Taraf de Haidouks) and falsetto crooners like Dona Dumitru Siminica fall into this category of songs without a place in modern society.
In Romania, you have the lăutari tradition and also manele. While lautari is the authentic, virtuoso style, manele represents the pop side, with cheap keyboards? But also the great singers Gabi Luncă and Romica Puceanu are considered as manele. Maybe you can correct me if I am wrong?
First of all, I don’t think it makes sense to frame this question in terms of “authenticity” or “virtuosity”; manele and lăutărească can be authentic and inauthentic, with varying degrees of virtuosity. Some might say that our band is inauthentic because I’m an American and didn’t grow up with this music.
The “manea” rhythm (Çiftetelli in Greek and Turkish) is a part of the shared musical heritage of the post-Ottoman space. In Romanian music, this kind of improvisational dance music (traditionally danced exclusively by women) was performed by lăutari and constituted only a small part of the wedding repertoire. The great singers of the “Golden Age” of muzica lăutărească all had a few manele in their repertoires, but it wasn’t until the 1980s-90s that this dance became a genre of its own, influenced greatly by the arrival of the synthesizer and melodies from other Balkan countries (but also Israel and the Levant). Nowadays there is pop lăutăreasca (see Viorica and Ionița de la Clejani) as well as pop manele, but the manele genre has provided particularly fertile ground for fusion— most of what is called “manele” today is actually closer to reggaeton, trap, and R&B than it is to the traditional Çiftetelli. It’s also important to note that the majority of manele performers come from a lăutar background and were well versed in this virtuosic tradition before migrating to the pop-manele world which generally provides greater opportunities for fame and fortune.
Stelian Frunză said: I can’t consider a Gadjo to be a lăutar because they don’t play with the same “fire”, as we say, that makes the audience jump out of their seats. So, how did you break the ice? What was the moment when you were accepted?
I don’t agree with Stelian here. There are a few (Romanian) Gadje who have been accepted as lăutari and are great performers. I don’t know if I’ll ever play with that degree of virtuosity, but making the audience feel something is not all about virtuosic playing.
Your blog, beyondkarpaty is a wonderful source of information, will there be a book?
Haha, my blog has been woefully neglected for years, but I’m glad it can still serve as a resource. There will be a book, but it’ll be my doctoral dissertation on Romani music and activism in Romania.
[Ken Hunt, London] 2023 into 2024 felt like bursting smiling into sunshine after being under one of the darkest clouds imaginable. In July 2024 I went back to the Rudolstadt Festival. The 2023 Festival had been really important. Santosh and I arrived there a month after being discharged from hospital and six weeks after major surgery. I guess I really needed to get there. I finished dressing and sterilising my operation wound in Berlin-Kreuzberg. Kreuzberg was the first Kiez (‘neighbourhood’) of Berlin where I felt totally at home in and I first visited West Berlin in 1970. Kreuzberg is the first multicultural district of Berlin I’ve encountered and I’ve been going there since the 1990s.
This year, again, Peter Uhlmann (1950-2018), one of the co-founders of the festival was on my mind. I met him in July 1991, the first year of the festival. He and I got a chance to talk deep and heavy in July 2018. This year his wife Christine and I left the others and walked together to the English elm planted in his memory in the Heinepark. Peter was responsible for the festival’s street music component. Name another festival programming street music. In 1991 Peter focussed my head. Ever after I have paid more attention to street entertainers and buskers. And have dropped coin into hats. The doyen of Cologne’s street musicians, Klaus der Geiger came back in 2024. Naturally, he figures in my Germany chapter in the third edition of the Rough Guide to World Music. If there was one mention of a street musicians in any other chapter in any other volume, I never spotted it. I saw Klaus der Geiger performing in the grounds of the Schillerhaus where Goethe and Schiller supposedly first met.
Nikol Bóková Quartet / Spice Jazz Soho, EFG London Jazz Festival 2024 / 28th Made in Prague Festival, The Crazy Coqs, Brasserie Zédel, Soho / 18 November 2024
[by Ken Hunt, London] For many years I was a newspaper obituarist writing for The Guardian, The Independent, The Scotsman, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Times. In addition, I wrote obituaries for many folk magazines. A sample would be Folker in Germany, the EFDSS Journal in the UK, Penguin Eggs in Canada and Sing Out! in the USA.
Zakir began performing in public from a young age: “I did my first show when I was seven, so I must have started at least three years before that. I played off and on from about seven to twelve. Then, when I was about twelve or thirteen, I started my professional career.” He went on to work extensively with many of the greatest exponents of the subcontinent’s two classical music systems. 
[by Ken Hunt, London] Traditional folk tunes have long leached into classical composition. In Central Europe in the times before many nations gained independence, music stoked senses of cultural identity and aspirations of nationhood. The polyvalent artist Iva Bittová came out of the Communist-era, Czechoslovak alternative theatre scene. She is a violin-vocal virtuosa, a Bachelor of Music, and an acclaimed film actor. She is of mixed Moravian, Slovak, Hungarian and Roma stock. The Mucha Quartet came together at the Conservatory in Bratislava, the capital of the Slovak Republic, in 2003.
[Petr Dorùžka, Krems, Austria] Music enterpreneur Ankur Malhotra explains: The reason is favoritism and classism. There are millions spent by billionaires on weddings rather than be used to support the musicians via grant systems.
However, music from the Indian subcontinent is still unknown in its full range. Yet, there are many cases when it flows to the West under favorable conditions. But when a Western listener travels to India as a cultural tourist, leftovers of colonial mentality reappear. Malhotra also explains this contradiction. The interview took place during the Glatt und Verkehrt festival in Krems on the Danube in Austria.
Some were slaves, some came as traders, others as sailors, and as travelers. Exchange between India and East Africa has been going on for centuries.
Yes, but at the same time, that is the beauty of the instrument. It’s sound has such a wide range of overtones. One single instrument creates amazing layers of sound.
Korea is an exceptional example. It works similarly in Canada and in Scandinavia. There you can get a grant of 10,000 Euros. You will record an album with that money. Indians have a lot to learn, especially if they can spend hundreds of millions on a wedding. At the same time, such money could dramatically change the image of Indian music in the world.
Denis Péan is the guiding spirit of the French group Lo’Jo. In October, the band presents their new album Feuilles Fauves on tour, including a Prague concert.
What kind of music did you grow up with?Claire_Huteau.jpg "(c)Claire_Huteau")
Once you said: I go to prisons, psychiatric hospitals, to the schools where I play. So Lo’Jo did a concert in French prison, like Johnny Cash in Folsom Prison?
[Petr Dorůžka, Praha] Finland is musically one of the most diverse regions of Europe. The country of five and a half million offers tricky rhythms from Karelia, Sami joik, high energy dance tunes of pelimanni fiddlers, Finnish tango, runo songs from the Kalevala epic and of course music of Finland’s two national instruments, accordion and kantele. In Finland, tradition is practiced as a living process and not as a museum exhibit, due to many dozens of creative musicians and educators. The crucial move in updating Finnish folk music to modern times was made in 1983, when Heikki Laitinen (* 1943) started the Folk Music Department at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki. 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. 
Inside the music business, I dived deeper into Finnish music, and went to Finland in 1983, ’84, ’85 see and hear for myself and when back in Austin Texas began importing Finnish LPs into USA via my company Suomi Sounds selling by mail order and at Waterloo Records. 
Seeing Maria Kalaniemi’s first solo show in Helsinki was magical. As an accordion player and composer, she was so special, different, original. A serious player / composer opening ears and hearts of all who heard her. Immediately I knew I wanted to work with her. I also started working with Värttinä in 1993 organizing press, radio and extra gigs around their SXSW Austin showcase, then licensed the Seleniko CD to USA and made several US tours plus international tours and licensing. 
Kimmo Pohjonen at Womex Berlin 1999. A life changing event for him and me. His career took off from that one amazing gig. 
Yes, that was a big and memorable event. The Uniko music is so powerful, the audience felt the full force of the work and responded with incredible gusto. It was one of those experiences that made my work so fulfilling, not to mention the artists feeling the same way. Yes, a magnificent occasion. Uniko in fact continues to the new decade, as performed with Tallinn Chamber Orchestra in 2022. 
[Petr Dorůžka, Los Angeles, California] You might find it strange, that a person from a far away, 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 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.
An important part of the story is when Alan Lomax explored Italian music with Diego Carpitella. Did they make recordings in Campania?
Is it a university focused on anthropology? What did you learn there?
The Neapolitan singer, director and ethnomusicologist Roberto De Simone, now almost 90, is a specialist in this field.
[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.
The Netherlands is known for it’s advanced educational system in non-Western musics, was this helpful?
How much it was improvised?IoanaCirli2.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.
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Shaun, after your time in Ukraine, when and how did you decide to settle in Romania?
Do you find the Taraf tradition also elsewhere in Balkans? Illiterate self taught musicians playing for the aristocracy?LiviuDrangu-2017.jpg)
I mean a much larger pallete of genres. People typically only want party music at their wedding– that is, sîrbas, horas, manele, drinking songs/table songs. But that excludes whole genres of traditional rural and urban folklore whose traditional listening contexts have disappeared: cântece de jale (sorrowful songs), cântece de blestem (curse songs), cântece de ocna (jail songs), cântece de șmecheri (gangster songs), to name a few. “Lume, lume”, “Cine iubește și lasă” (curse song), and “Lasă mă, nevastă-n casă” recorded by Maria Tănase and many of the epic songs and cântece de jale recorded by Taraful din Clejani (later Taraf de Haidouks) and falsetto crooners like Dona Dumitru Siminica fall into this category of songs without a place in modern society.