CD reviews
[by Ken Hunt, London] When Joep Bor of the Rotterdam Conservatorium first conceived of a project that would take a selection of those “complex and abstract musical entities” known as ragas and present them in an accessible form, he had no idea how many years would flash by. By 1990 Bor was in partnership with the Monmouth, Welsh Border-based Nimbus label. What was little more than a pipe dream in 1984 eventually became The Raga Guide, a 4-CD, 196-page package, the product of a collaboration between traditional Indian musicians, the Rotterdam Conservatorium and Nimbus Records. It was launched at the High Commission of India’s Nehru Centre in London in April 2001.
Over that period team coalesced
30. 5. 2011 |
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[by Ken Hunt, London] This concluding section departs from the previous structure. In this coda Shirley Collins compares then and now. She recollects what it was like starting out for her, with the recording of her first two LPs Sweet England (1959) and False True Lovers (1960) back-to-back in 1958. With Alan Lomax and Peter Kennedy presiding, she cut the tracks for those two records over two days in a house in the north London residential district of Belsize Park. She reflects on what is happening now, especially her concerns about fast-tracked success and its disadvantages.
“I think it was quite spontaneous, a lot of it. Those two albums were recorded in two days. Everything was probably just done once, possibly twice if I made a great mistake
25. 4. 2011 |
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[by Ken Hunt, London] In this second part we pick up the story of the out-of-print classic retrospective Within Sound at a point after the 1970 masterpiece Love, Death & The Lady (1970).
Despite everything in the years from 1955, when Shirley Collins had first appeared on record, to 1970 , there was no grand plan behind the continually shape-shifting projects that she was delivering. “I have to say,” she explains. “it ‘happened’ rather than it was planned in advance that one would do something different the whole time. Things did evolve. It was the discoveries. It was those fortunate meetings. It was my own interests in the sorts of music I liked listening to – Early Music, for example – that led me into these other things. In a way it did just grow
18. 4. 2011 |
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[by Ken Hunt, London] Folksong, English, Czech, Hungarian or any other, is all human life in a nutshell distilled, confined or liberated through song. The Sussex singer Shirley Collins’ achievement is unmatched in the annals of twentieth-century folk music anywhere. Blessed with a voice a natural as breathing, she succeeded in bottling and freeing the essence of the songs she sang. When Shirley Collins’ Within Sound appeared in 2002, the boxed retrospective treatment was a relatively new development in folk music. It is utterly appropriate that Shirley Collins should have been Britain’s first female folk singer to get the long-box treatment. Joan Baez’s Rare, Live and Classic (1993) got the US honours in the female folkie category
11. 4. 2011 |
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[by Ken Hunt, London] Journey’s Edge is a stepping-stone, a betwixt and between work. It captures Robin Williamson poised in midair or mid-dream skipping from the fading psychedelic sepia of The Incredible String Band and yet to land sure-footedly on the other shore. Though nobody knew that on Journey’s Edge’s unveiling in 1977. That only became apparent with the Merry Band of American Stonehenge later that year and A Glint At The Kindling in 1978. Journey’s Edge was Williamson’s début solo release after the splintering of the ISB in late 1974.
21. 3. 2011 |
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[by Ken Hunt, London] East German rock music, nowadays known as Ost-Rock (Ost means east), has never had a champion outside the old East. Sure, Julian Cope got wiggy and witty with Krautrock in all its Can, Kraftwerk and Ohr-ishness. But aside from, say, coverage in the Hamburg-based magazine Sounds in the 1980s and Tamara Danz (1952-1996) – and Silly’s lead singer’s fleeting appearance in the last edition of Donald Clarke’s Penguin Encyclopedia of Popular Music – Ost-Rock got short shrift outside its place of origin, the German Democratic Republic (GDR). Götz Hintze’s Rocklexikon der DDR (2000) and Alexander Osang’s Tamara Danz (1997) biography have redressed the balance somewhat. But Hintze and Osang wrote accounts in German.
14. 2. 2011 |
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[by TC Lejla Bin Nur, Ljubljana] Bonjour (Barclay/Universal, 2009) is Rachid Taha’s eighth studio album since he started on his solo path in 1990. During this time he had released at least two Best Ofs, a hefty pile of remixes, extras & vinyl for collectors and a few concert albums and projects, notably the world-wide resounding success 1, 2, 3, Soleils with Khaled and Faudel in 1998. Before all that, way back in 1980’s, he also recorded about two and a half albums with his band Carte de Sejour
10. 2. 2010 |
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[by Ken Hunt, London] An Echo of Hooves represented a career milestone for the English folksinger June Tabor. In February 2004 its Hughie Graeme was named ‘Best Traditional Track’ and she received the accolade of ‘Singer of the Year’ in the BBC Radio 2 Awards. That though is transitory, foreign stuff, for her album An Echo of Hooves was a summation of decades spent learning how to work with, and work out the emotions contained in Anglo-Scottish balladry.
An Echo of Hooves was a culmination of decades of running ballads through the filter of her grey cells. “I’ve been singing ballads ever since I discovered traditional music,” she says. “You’ll find ballads, even if it’s just one, on most of the albums
2. 11. 2009 |
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[by Ken Hunt, London] Forty years or so ago, Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger released their most recondite project, the two-volume Paper Stage. It was reconstructions of the first Elizabethan Age’s theatre for the second Elizabethan Age. The original peddlers of these more unauthorised than guerrilla playlets in song left few traces and fewer fingerprints. All that survived was the printed page. Theirs was street theatre, the equivalent of graffiti artist Banksy’s Mona Lisa with a rocket launcher, or that Banksy rat sawing a getaway hole to freedom through the pavement
29. 7. 2009 |
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[by Ken Hunt, London] Even by repute, people who have never been to Rajasthan and only ever saw photographs or artwork, view Rajasthan popularly as a region saturated with colour. In its Great Thar Desert, soil, sand and salt lakes offer a palette of yellows, browns and reds. In its deciduous woodlands dhok and dhak – the tree known as the ‘flame of the forest’ – provide the seasonal mosaics of the forest canopy and forest floor and then there is the vibrancy of bougainvillea everywhere whether on the highways or streets. In its street markets full of chillies, mangoes, bananas and spinach, Rajasthan offers an abundance of saturated colours – and watery contrasts
6. 7. 2009 |
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