Feature
[by Ken Hunt, London] 2016 proved to be, to soundbite Elvis Costello, a particularly good year for the roses. Well, the artistic ones at least. (Brexit notwithstanding, in England the garden roses and the garden as a whole suffered somewhat thanks to the English climate’s vagaries of rain and sunshine.) Nevertheless, it truly was a year to remember musically. That was assisted by chance musical encounters that made me stop and stare and listen. The busker playing chromatic harmonica down below at Waterloo underground station one day in September was utterly spellbinding. A party bash outside the National Theatre in Prague celebrating a Czech national holiday was uplifting
31. 12. 2016 |
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[by Ken Hunt, London] As years go, 2015 was one of the finest. Over and over again it plucked some remarkable rabbits out the magician’s hat. It’s stuff like that that keeps me keeping on.
A note on the process when it comes to these decisions. Part of it is to do with whittling. Some ‘holding entries’ logged were gone by the end of the year. Some albums remain here because even though they did not necessarily overwhelm, in the long run they stayed on the play list. An example might be Los Lobos’ Gates of Gold. In their canon it may be a “a fair to middling album” (according to my fRoots review) but I played it so much without making that special connection with the majority of its tracks.
The festival season brought further discoveries, consolidations and winnowings
31. 12. 2015 |
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[by Ken Hunt, London] Like some old fart’s misbegotten mantra, I typically say that the year started slow. Happens year after year after year after blooming year. For 2014 that applied particularly in terms of live performances. In the annual polls to which I contribute I am fully aware that what my bread-and-butter music diet will rarely register in anything anywhere apart from here.
To explain, as part of the whittling process, long-list ‘holding entries’ from the spring were largely gone by the summer and autumn. The summer festival season brought discoveries, consolidations and further winnowings. It is no coincidence that live performances numerically balance the recorded music entries
31. 12. 2014 |
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[by Ken Hunt, London, updated 18 February 2017] It is a warm, sunny afternoon in September 2004. I am sitting on the steps outside Brno’s railway station scrutinising each tram because one will bring my interpreter, Irena Přibylová. Trams come and trams go. As always, I am writing and observing. I scribble “The drunks hang round the station/Each begs his ‘daily bread’.”
It is now late July 2014 and I am crossing the tram and bus station outside Vienna’s Praterstern station. I start doing something I have never done in my life before. I start singing one of my own songs. It begins, “The drunks hang round the station.” That song – Paper Cone – represents a ten-year journey.
10. 9. 2014 |
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[By Ken Hunt, London] The Summer of 2013 saw the 30th Anniversary Edition of Billy Bragg’s Life’s A Riot With Spy Vs Spy. It counts as a landmark release in the history of British political song, even though its most enduring morsel in the wider popular consciousness is A New England – a song that Kirsty MacColl covered so well and took into the UK Top Ten in 1985. At the time of its release Margaret Thatcher was at the helm of her ship but hell-bent on stormy weather ahead. In 1984 the seismic Miners’ Strike would forever reshape Britain’s political contours.
Less prominent in the brouhaha following her death on 8 April 2013 was Chumbawamba’s In Memoriam: Margaret Thatcher – a limited edition EP release celebrating good riddance to the Iron Lady sent out to subscribers the next day
17. 8. 2014 |
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[by Ken Hunt, Ostrava, Vienna and London] A fortnight before the yearly festival happened, The Prague Post informed readers that Colours of Ostrava was “the Czech Republic’s top summer music event”. Impressions from attending the festival serve to confirm that indisputably it is. Ostrava is in the top right of the country. Poland is 15 km away and the Slovak Republic 55 km distant. Inevitably therefore it is a festival that attracts an international audience. Ten years after the festival’s founding, that is, in 2012 this “multi-genre music festival” switched locations across the city. Since then has taken place in Ostrava’s Vítkovice district. Its new setting is one of preserved industrial ‘dereliction’ – aka a UNESCO heritage site.
1. 8. 2014 |
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[by Ken Hunt, London] It started off as a slow year, especially in terms of concerts or talks that stood out. Disquietingly slow. Then it just got better and better, particularly when it came to concerts, and less so in terms of fees
31. 12. 2013 |
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[by Ken Hunt, London] Another fine year for music. The evidence of this list to the contrary, much of 2012 flashed by in a blur owing to illness in the family that wiped out most of the year’s listening hours. As to recorded music, the pile of unlistened to music grew, thanks to having to prioritise paid reviewing work. Yes, strange though it may seem, if one’s livelihood depends on paid writing, it is astonishing how a paying commission focuses the mind
31. 12. 2012 |
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[by Ken Hunt, London] What a year for music! The number of events of 2011 on this list is greedy by most annual polls’ standards. One of the continual difficulties for me is that, because I am writing in a variety of periodicals and newspapers across a variety of musical genres for a number of territories, wonderful stuff just gets continually squeezed out. I mean, in this brave new world of world music, nobody wants ten roots-based Czech or Hungarian albums or Indian classical or English or even European folk albums…
2011 was marked by losses in the world of music. It started off with the deaths of the singers Bhimsen Joshi and Suchitra Mitra
31. 12. 2011 |
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[by Ken Hunt, London] The Rahul Dev Burman story actually begins eight years before his birth on June 27, 1939, in Calcutta; new chapters continue to be added years after his death in Bombay on January 4, 1994. The Indian film business was revolutionized in 1931 by the arrival of the nation’s first talkie, Alam Ara (Light of the World). This groundbreaking film was the first to use music to create an egalitarian lingua franca that united paying audiences in a nation divided by linguistic abundance.
Filmi sangeet – filmi for short, or “film song” – became became India’s popular music. Burman was part of that first generation for whom silent films were only historical flickers. He grew up with filmi as the soundtrack to his life
20. 6. 2011 |
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