Articles
[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. When all was done and dusted, it was live events – concerts and suchlike – that made 2014 so special.
New releases
9Bach / Tincian / Real World
Sam Amidon / Lily-O / Nonesuch
Olga Bell / Krai / One Little Indian
The Bevvy Sisters / Plan B / Interrupto Music
Iva Bittová / Entwine/Proplétám / Pavian
Country Joe Band / Entertainment Is My Business / Secret Records
Jackson Browne / Standing In The Breach / Inside Recordings
Martin & Eliza Carthy / The Moral of the Elephant / Topic
The Furrow Collective / At Our Next Meeting / Furrow Records
Bonnie Dobson / Take Me For A Walk In The Morning Dew / Hornbeam
Kronos Quartet / A Thousand Thoughts / Nonesuch
Sam Lee & Friends / More For To Rise EP / The Nest Collective
Thomas McCarthy / Herself and Myself / ITCD
Amira Medunjanin / Silk & Stone / World Village
Nachthexen [Scarlett O’, Dunja Averdung, Jürgen Ehle & Jörg Nassler] / Nachthexen / electrocadero
Nishtiman / Kurdistan – Nishtiman / Accords Croisés
Robert Plant and the Sensational Space Shifters / lullaby and… THE CEASELESS ROAR / Nonesuch Records
Oysterband / Diamonds On The Water / Navigator
Peggy Seeger / Everything Changes / Signet Music
Kavita Shah / Visions / Naïve
Tiburtina Ensemble & David Dorůžka Trio / Apokalypsis / Animal Music
Wilson & Swarbrick / Lion Rampart / Shirty
Historic releases, reissues and anthologies
CSNY 1974 / CSNY/ Rhino
Ron and Bob Copper / Traditional Songs from Rottingdean
/ Fledg’ling
Grateful Dead / Wake Up To Find Out – Nassau Coliseum concert in Uniondale, NY • 3/29/90 / Grateful Dead Productions
Ravi Shankar / A Night At St. John the Divine / East Meets West
Various artists / The Flax In Bloom / Topic
Various artists / Magic Kamancheh / No Ethno
Various artists / Orkney – Traditional Dance Music from Orkney / Topic
Various artists / Songs of the Spanish Civil War / Smithsonian Folkways
Various artists / TFF Rudolstadt 2014 / heideck
Events of 2014
Kronos Quartet with Bryce Dessler, Jarvis Cocker and David Coulter and Mariana Sadovska (Chernobyl. The Harvest) / Barbican Hall, London / 13 May 2014
Explorations: The Sound of Nonesuch Records – Session Four – Iarla O’Lionáird and The Crash Ensemble; Kronos Quartet featuring Rhiannon Giddens, Olivia Chaney, Sam Amidon and Natalie Merchant / Milton Court, Guildhall School of Music & Drama, London / 18 May 2014
Sam Lee & Friends / Queen Elizabeth Hall, London / 29 May 2014
Kiran Ahluwalia / The Jazzcafe Camden, London / 6 July 2014
Marta Topferová & Tomáš Liška’s Milokraj / Crossroads, Ostrava, Czech Republic / 17 July 2014
Lo Còr De La Plana / Colours of Ostrava, Ostrava / 18 July 2014
Vé Zou Via / Colours of Ostrava, Ostrava / 19 July 2014
9Bach / Colours of Ostrava, Ostrava / 19 July 2014
Robert Plant and the Sensational Space Shifters / Colours of Ostrava, Ostrava / 19 July 2014
Nishtiman / Glatt & Verkehrt, Krems an der Donau, Austria / 27 July 2014
This Is Not Black (Ceci n’est pas Noire) – Alesandra Seutin featuring Ayanna Witter-Johnson / Purcell Room, London / 12 September 2014
A Time and Place: Musical Meditations on the First World War – featuring The Unthanks, Sam Lee and others / Barbican Hall, London / 18 September 2014
Dhrupad and Shock of the New – Jyoti Hegde and Abhishek Raghuram / Darbar Festival / Purcell Room, London / 20 September 2014
Best Then, Better Now – Prabha Atre / Darbar Festival / Queen Elizabeth Hall, London / 21 September 2014
Zakir Hussain – Masters of Percussion / Barbican Hall, London / 18 October 2014
Harry Manx / Borderline, London / 30 October 2014
Vishwa Mohan Bhatt / Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, London / 8 November 2014
Jim Page and Dick Gaughan / TwickFolk, The Cabbage Patch, Twickenham / 9 November 2014
Kronos Quartet / Rudolfinum, Dvořákova síň [Dvorak Room], Prague / 13 November 2014
Five past music projects that returned to haunt
Kiran Ahluwalia / Aam Zameen: Common Ground / Kiran Music
Grateful Dead / Workingman’s Dead / Warner Brothers
Nic Jones / The Enigma of Nic Jones / Topic Records DVD
Chris Wood / Trespasser / RUF Records
Various / Lovely In The Dances / Osmosys Records
This year’s street art is from Prague, should you be wandering the pedestrian alleyways in the vicinity of Řetězová, Prague 1. This cannabis love token image is © Ken Hunt/Swing 51 Archives.
The image to the right of Events of 2014 is of L-R Jiři Plocek, Ben Mandelson and Grit Friedrich taken on our visit to to visit the extraordinary instrument maker Vít Kašpařík in Velké Karlovice in the Carpathians. The Assurd – Enza Pagliara female contingent of Vé Zou Via shot is from Colours of Ostrava. Both are © Ken Hunt/Swing 51 Archives.
The image of Kiran Ahluwalia at The Jazzcafe Camden, London is © Santosh Hunt/Swing 51 Archives.
Otherwise the images are © their image-makers, photographers and designers.
31. 12. 2014 |
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[by Ken Hunt, London and Prague] This month’s selection anticipates two December deaths: my father Leslie Lloyd Hunt (1912-1995) and Lubomír Dorůžka (1924-2013), the father of my co-host on this website’s father. In my father’s case it is through Acker Bilk’s most famous vehicle. Among others providing the music are Amira Medunjanin, Vlasta Grycová, Robert Plant and the Sensational Space Shifters, the Incredible String Band, Kala Ramnath and Ali Akbar Khan, Martin & Eliza Carthy, Commander Cody And His Lost Planet Airmen and Acker Bilk.
Eleno Kerko – Amira Medunjanin
Amira’s debut album Rosa, released in 2004, set many listeners on personal quests of discovery. The promise of Amira was wholly vindicated by the edgy music she revealed at her London debut opening for Taraf de Haďdouks in June
2007. The places that musical discoveries can transport us to are surely some of the best available to the human mind. Silk & Stone reveals that the Bosnian singer has also been on further quest of personal discovery.
It is her fifth album under her own name. After Rosa, she added three further albums of unerring and enduring quality to her catalogue. A small point. 2009’s Zumra (‘Emerald’), was jointly credited to Amira Medunjanin and the accordionist Merima Ključo.
A digression… Merima subsequently fetched up in a trio called Checkpoint KBK with David Krakauer and Iva Bittová. They had a song called Kino Laterna in their repertoire. (Listened to a studio recording of the song only night.) The lyrics I wrote for it were directly inspired by Lubo Dorůžka, Prague’s Kino Lucerna and Czechoslovakia’s anti-fascist potapky (‘great crested grebes’). 2014 found me absorbed in Wolfgang Beyer and Monica Ladurner’s history of the anti-fascist, swing jazz-inspired youth movements during the Nazi occupations, Im Swing gegen den Gleichschritt (‘With Swing against the Goosestep’) (Residenz Verlag, 2011). In it Lubo features as a direct witness. Forgive the digression.
Amira Medunjanin is a vocalist that I would travel across Europe to see perform live. The Macedonian song Elena Kerko (‘Helen, Darling’) is the album’s opening track and it is a perfect opening gambit. It bottles the essence of what she does, combining traditional and jazz elements. Much of that is down to Bojan Z’s cascading, jazz-tinged piano part. Bojan Z(ulfikarpašić)’s piano is what brings this project to fruition more than any of the other instrumental elements – namely double-bass, oud, kanun and guitar. Silk & Stone is a complete and utter masterpiece. From Silk & Stone (World Village 450029, 2014)
Maria Panna krmí díťátko – Vlasta Grycová
There is an elegiac quality to this tale which translates as ‘Virgin [Lady] Mary feeds the baby’. It is a Christmas carol associated with Moravian Slovakia. This version is an abridged, four-verse version and misses out some of the stable creatures that come to visit the infant Jesus. The cat visits but not the little dog or the hen. In the extended version the last verse states, “Play, violin, don’t make us cry/Tydli, tidli, tidli, Baby Jesus.”
The melody has the deceptive simplicity of great folk art. From Antologie moravské lidové hudby – Čas adventu a Vánoc (Indies MAM 515-2, 2012)
Embrace Another Fall – Robert Plant and the Sensational Space Shifters
As someone who never fell for the blandishments of Led Zeppelin, much of Robert Plant’s back catalogue has remained a closed book. Before going to Colours of Ostrava I had hoped to listen to an advance copy of lullaby and. THE CEASELESS ROAR by way of preparation. Things happen and it didn’t happen. Maybe for the better because it made for a blank canvas. As it turned out, experiencing the rapture of the audience – and ‘rapture’ isn’t too strong a word – helped. The audience adored Robert Plant and the Sensational Space Shifters and that was something to cherish.
Of all the tracks on the album, this one hit the most buttons. The vibe of the song, its shifts of mood and dynamics are downright extraordinary. Part of its appeal is the soundscape that the Sensational Space Shifters and the guesting Julie Murphy create on the album. She sings a verse about the rumoured death of a lark on the mountain from the Welsh-language song Marwnad yr Ehedydd (‘The Lark’s Death’). Murphy’s interjection works really well, adding a new layer to the studio recording.
The Kronos Quartet played in the Dvořákova síň at the Rudolfinum in Prague on 13 November. The day before the concert the Kronos’ first violinist David Harrington and I met for one of our periodic chinwags and catch-ups. He talked about finally meeting Robert Plant for the first time fairly recently. Nonesuch’s label head Bob Hurwitz had brought them together. It was a good meeting of musicians from very different backgrounds but with commonalities they never touched on. From lullaby and… THE CEASELESS ROAR (Nonesuch Records 7559-79537-3, 2014)
Smoke Shovelling Song – Incredible String Band
Reflecting on the death of Clive Palmer, a founder member of the Incredible String Band, on 23 November 2014, all manner of memories flowed through my head. He was a decisive figurehead in acid-folk – but then he had blundered into being one of Scotland’s earliest busts for LSD in December 1966. This isn’t one of the dishes he brought to the table. It is a song by his ISB cohort Robin Williamson. But, for me, it was their very different, very varied voices that combined to create something that resonates across the generations. From Incredible String Band (Fledg’ling FLED 3076, 2010)
Rāg Durga – Ali Akbar Khan
I count myself fortunate that, while religions of several stripes have increasingly surrounded me, never to have had religion in my life in any sense beyond the academic has shaped me more. That said, there are elements of theoretical Hinduism that have engaged. Several years ago I was at Harballabh Sangeet Sammelan – the mid-winter music festival held in Jalandhar City. The festival has been held in an unbroken annual sequence since its founding in 1875. The image on the left gives an idea of its architecture and that image is its temple dedicated to Durga Ma.
Historically, She was known locally in Punjabi as Devi Talāb, literally the ‘Goddess of the Pool’, as the Sanskrit scholar Dr Ashok Upadhyay explained to me. In Hindu iconography Durga is depicted with ten arms and generally is riding a dawōn, a sacred big cat, depicted as either a tigress or a lioness. Outside one wayside temple in the country, it was a tigress. She represents the warrior aspect of the Divine Mother. She is the Inaccessible, the Invincible, the Goddess “who can redeem in situations of utmost distress”. A deity to warm to.
This was the song and the performance my head sang when I walked across the lake to the temple dedicated to Her. I count myself wholly blessed to have known Ali Akbar Khansahib as well as I got to know him and to have got to speak to him about the everyday, not only music. Kavi Alexander of Water Lily Acoustics captured something special in these recordings. He had a rare empathy for sound and sonorities. From Indian Architexture (Water Lily Acoustics WLA-ES-20-SACD, 2001)
Bonny Moorhen – Martin & Eliza Carthy
It is September 2010 and Martin Carthy and I are standing on the banks of the upper tidal Thames at Isleworth Ait in Middlesex, close to Mill Plat where the Duke of Northumberland River joins the Thames. It is one of my favourite places on the planet. It is low tide and a plethora of water fowl and general birdlife is going about its business, feeding on the mud and gravel banks of the ait – as a river island or eyot is known hereabouts. Among the waterfowl are coot (Fulica atra ) and moorhen (Gallinula chloropus). Watching them triggers a conversation about a song that Carthy is ruminating upon. Its figurative ‘hero’ is a sort of moorhen of another feather – the game bird known alternatively as the black grouse (Tetrao tetrix). He speaks eagerly about this song he is working on and its political nature.
Eventually it appears on one of the supreme albums of 2014. Its emergence is an indication of how long a song may gestate with him. From The Moral of the Elephant (Topic TSCD587, 2014)
Rāg Maru Bihag – Kala Ramnath
The violinist Kala Ramnath is unquestionably one of the great voices of Hindustani violinistics. In late November 2014 she stayed with us in London – London being a staging post on her trip between San Francisco and Mumbai. She had a new violin with her, one that she had taken collection of this June gone. The Chicago-based luthier Vladek Stopka had made it. It would have been an affront not to listen to its voice. The decay on its sound was a marvel and, well, one thing led to another led to another. We started working on something, firing ideas off each other. It reached the point where we had to rewind and start recording the proceedings.
I had the pleasure of seeing this recording of Rāg Maru Bihag unfurl in the Landestheater at Tanz&FolkFest Rudolstadt in July 2010. Abhijit Banerjee accompanied her so sweetly on tabla at both of her superlative appearances at the festival. In this performance she references two people whose presence in her life so soundly affected her music. She includes a composition by her guru Pandit Jasraj and one, again in Maru Bihag, by Prabha Atre, with whom she studied. Her Maru Bihag is an interpretation to take to the grave. Love it to pieces.
The accompanying photo was taken by Sushil Sidhu, my brother-in-law-to-be, at this performance in the town theatre. It is one of my absolute favourite portraits of her. It captures the same look of concentration she had on her face and we shared as time ceased to exist in any measurable form. From Magic Kamancheh (NoEthno 1015-19, 2014)
Turn It Up – Robert Plant and the Sensational Space Shifters
Their 2014 debut, lullaby and… THE CEASELESS ROAR was unquestionably my most played album release of 2014. This track has a marvellous brittle quality to it in places. It reminds me of some of the sonorities Tom Waits plays with on his recordings. Especially the percussion. It refers to Charley Patton in the opening line and that is fine by me.
“Turn it up…”
From lullaby and… THE CEASELESS ROAR (Nonesuch Records 7559-79537-3, 2014)
Down To Seeds And Stems Again – Commander Cody And His Lost Planet Airmen
George Frame, aka the Good Commander, and I go way back. We first met in 1979 to do an interview for Dark Star, one of the post ZigZag, second-wave of UK music magazines. By the end of the interview only their ivory-tickler George and I were capable of still taking part in an interview. We bonded.
This was one of the Airmen’s finest original songs of break-up, despair and the end-game of intoxication. In this version it is not the dawg that dies but the narrator’s ant-farm. Heartbreak dogged them that sort of way. Takes me right back to my country roots. From Live From Armadillo World Headquarters 1973 and The Capitol Theatre 1975 (SPV 49922 2CD, 2007)
Stranger On The Shore – Acker Bilk
My father played Albert system clarinet – rather than the better known Boehm system clarinet. It meant he transposed when he played. He was a highly gifted musician whose career as a full-time musician was stymied because his parents couldn’t rustle up the guinea – twenty-one shillings – for his entry to the Guildhall. He had passed its theory, sight-reading and playing entrance examinations. Plus he could busk and play by ear. At the age of 14 he became a gigging musician in dance bands, played throughout the Second World War as a Royal Air Force bandsman. Came so-called peace time, he played semi-professionally in dance band. He did that until Parkinson’s stopped him holding down the pads four or five years before his death.
My father warmed up on clarinet with two pieces in particular. One was the top-range and tricky fingering of Artie Shaw’s Concerto For Clarinet and the other was Bilk’s Stranger On The Shore. And that’s why this is here. Neither was a doddle for Albert system clarinet.
Acker means ‘mate’ in Somerset dialect.
The copyright of all images lies with the respective photographers, companies and image-makers. The image of Kala Ramnath is © Sush Sidhu/Swing 51 Archives. The photograph of the Durga mandir and Liam Tyson and Robert Plant are © Ken Hunt/Swing 51 Archives. The publicity photograph of Leslie Hunt circa 1926-28 bears the imprint by the Robert M. Barr studio of Denmark Hill, London, S.E.5 on the rear © Swing 51 Archives
30. 11. 2014 |
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[by Ken Hunt, London] Two months rolled into one, thanks to the aftermath of travelling and delivering copy. The choices refect work, death and making associations. The musical scatter cushions include Kishore Kumar, Carlos Paredes, Kavita Shah, Olga Bell, Abhishek Raghururam… And more.
Dil Aisa Kisi Ne Mera Toda – Kishore Kumar
13 October 2014 marked the 27th death anniversary of one of Bollywood’s greatest male vocalists, Kishore Kumar. Dil aisa kisi ne. is a song from a relatively unknown Bollywood composer called Shyamlal Mitra. Kishore Kumar won the Best Male Playback Singer for this song at the 1976 Filmfare Awards and its lyricist Shyamalal Babu Rai, known professionally as Indeevar, Best Lyricist in the same awards. It is from the film Amanush which apparently translates as ‘English: Inhuman’. Surely with a title like that it deserves to appear on playlists. From Amanush (1975)
Siddhivinaayakam – Mandolin U. Srinivas
U. Srinivas – latterly increasingly rendered Shrinivas – died on 19 September 2014. Born on 28 February 1969 in Palakolin in Andhra Pradesh’s West Godavari District, he was a child prodigy in the classic South Indian sense. One of the great differences was he did not burn out young. Unlike too many child musicians in Karnatic music. What he did with a solid-body electric mandolin was exquisite. This is a composition by the pre-eminent Hindu saint-composer Dikshitkar. It says everything you need to know about Srinivas.
The piece was recorded on 26 July 1995 at Real World Studios with K. Murugaboopathi on mridangam (double-headed, barrel-shaped hand drum) and E.M. Subramaniam on ghatam (tuned clay pot). My obituary of Srinivas appears in the Winter 2014 issue (Issue #64) of the Canadian folk magazine Penguin Eggs. From Mandolin U Srinivas (WOMAD WSCCD003, 1995)
Further information about the magazine is at: http://www.penguineggs.ab.ca/
Paper Planes – Kavita Shah
The M.I.A. track from her 2007 album Kala (‘Art’). The album this track comes from ranks as one of the most daring and ambitious works of 2014.
Kavita Shah interprets a highly interesting body of work. Joni Mitchell’s Little Green gets a kora (African harp) passage intervention. Her recognition and reworking of this M.I.A. song gets my wholehearted approval. From Visions (Naïve NJ 624811, 2014)
Further information about Kavita Shah is at: http://www.kavitashahmusic.com/
Canção Verdes Anos – Carlos Paredes
Listening to a private recording graciously provided by Jackson Browne from a concert in The Hague at which Carlos Varela joined Browne on stage, I was struck by the sound of Varela’s guitar. It reminded me of Carlos Paredes. It sent me off on a Paredes listening jag. Canção Verdes Anos (‘Song of the Green Years’) was the the performance that wound up on repeat over and over again.
Carlos Paredes (1925-2004) was an integral feature in a line of master musicians known in idiomatic Portuguese as a casa. It means a “case” – a usage with similarities in English. It means someone unique or someone who is their own man. (Maybe even theiur own ‘person’ nowadays.) He extended the range, voice and dynamics of the guitarra portuguesa or Portuguese guitar. He took it to new places. Paredes’ style was also shaped by his development of his so-called Coimbra guitar. It was a bigger, richer-voiced instrument than the usual, twelve-string Lisbon model.
This particular composition appeared in director Paulo Rocha’s 1963 film Os Verdes Anos (‘The Green Years’). The Kronos Quartet included it on their Kronos Caravan album (2000), a project for which I wrote the notes. It was a thoroughly exciting ride, with ideas flying to and fro. Canção Verdes Anos was a piece of music that David Harrington identified. I have a memory of David telling me that he obtained approval for arranging the track from Paredes in person.
From guitarra portuguesa (EMI 0 777748674 2 9, 1987)
Jogkauns – Prabha Atre
The remarkable, truly remarkable concert that Prabha Atre gave at the Darbar Festival was called ‘Best Then, Better Now: The Legendary Prabha Atre’. It sounded like a neat line. Still, something niggled about the line’s originality. That niggle was answered after reading the advertising poster for Timberland at a bus stop. It said, of course, ‘Best Then. Better Now’. (A short history of advertising slogans is now declined…)
I had waited many years to see Prabha Atre sing and she did not disappoint in any way. She brought an originality of delivery to her performance that was commanding and arresting. My review of her concert appears in the Winter 2014 issue of Pulse. From Amrut Prabha (Times Music TDICL 154P, 2007)
Jungle Drum – Emilíana Torrini
Listened to this song a lot while gaining a measure of the Icelandic singer-songwriter Emilíana Torrini’s songwriting. Of course, the homework counted for little because that’s the way it goes in the ‘grand scheme’ of preparation. From a Rough Trade promo single [undated])
Perm Krai– Olga Bell
Every so often I pick up magazines that ordinarily I wouldn’t read. I do it deliberately because I get asked by several European music festivals about musicians. Born in Moscow and raised in Alaska, Olga Bell is a musician operating out of New York. An article about Olga Bell’s music in a freebie music magazine struck me that hers was a music I should listen to. From Krai (One Little Indian
TPLP1236CD, 2014)
Further information about Olga Bell is at: http://bellinspace.tumblr.com/
Dolphins – Eddi Reader
Eddi Reader did better with this song in live situations but her interpretation of this song just uplifts. How she bends the song to fit her voice and fit Tim Buckley’s vocal delivery. This is definitely something based on Tim Buckley’s version rather than its composer, Fred Neil.
I wouldn’t want to imagine how Britain’s music scene would sound without Eddi Reader. She is a continual source of joy and inspiration. From Mirmama (RCA 74321 15865 2, 1992)
Viriboni – Abhishek Raghururam
This performance opens the Karnatic vocalist Abhishek Raghururam’s double-CD concert souvenir from a concert he gave at Sringeri Math, T Nagar Chennai on the last day of December 2010. His name had come out of a discussion about names to watch out for. India is a big place and keeping on top of names to note is a never-ending adventure. Live in London at the Darbar Festival he lived up to the praise that preceded him. From December Season 2010 (CDW274AD, 2011)
Enjoy Yourself (It’s Later Than You Think) – Marvellous singers and players
The actor Toby Jones takes the lead role as Neil Baldwin (who also appears as himself providing historical and personal insights) in Peter Bowker’s uplifting BBC drama Marvellous. Televised on 25 September 2014, it had a recurring musical theme in this song. The playwright in a blog for the BBC (link below) explains, “We have a chorus in the form of a choir and ukulele orchestra that, to reflect the inclusive nature of the film, is a combination of three choirs including one from Hanley – the M.Y. Inter Theatre Choir – for adults with disabilities. The choir itself I invented and called the Neil Baldwin Orchestra. At first they stand alone as a chorus but they are slowly integrated into the story and then the fictional Neil actually joins their ranks.”
The refrain sings this way:
“Enjoy yourself, it’s later than you think
Enjoy yourself, while you’re still in the pink
The years go by, as quickly as a wink
Enjoy yourself, enjoy yourself, it’s later than you think…”
An absolute earworm of a song (with added “the worms crawl in, the worms crawl out…” segue possibilities). The original Enjoy Yourself (It’s Later than You Think) by Carl Sigman with lyrics by Herb Magidson was sung by, amongst others, Guy Lombardo and His Royal Canadians, Doris Day, Prince Buster and The Specials. From the television drama Marvellous (2014)
The copyright of all images lies with the respective photographers, companies and image-makers. The photograph of Jackson Browne of unknown date is from the Swing 51 Archives by Jessica Karman. The image of Prabha Atre with a blue sky behind her is © Ken Hunt/Swing 51 Archives. The other image of her and that of Abhishek Raghururam are © Santosh Sidhu/Swing 51 Archives.
31. 10. 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. In Brno I was sitting on those steps as a music critic specialising in improvised and non-Western classical music about to interview Iva Bittová. Her intoxicating music has engaged my brain since the late 1980s. At her home her hospitable enquiry about tea or coffee results in her and the non-Czech speaker – that’s me, friends – trading one-word wordplays in Czech. Mine ends with sýkory (titmice in British English or chickadees in American English) and Iva bursts into birdsong.
It is now October 2006 in Prague. Iva and I meet the morning after her appearance in Don Juan in Prague – its title is in English. Each tells the other what we are doing, about what’s happening with our families and our plans. I tell Iva about writing lyrics for several rather good (litotes, litotes, litotes) musicians. Those brown eyes of hers ask whether. That afternoon at U Osla v Kolébce (At the donkey on the griddle) over lunch and three beers I write the lyrics for our first two collaborations. It marks the start of something new. A body of songs specifically for her in English.
So Paper Cone (although my fuller title is Paper Cone of Cherries) is a favourite child. It is the lyric I started before I had any suspicion that Ivuška [an intimate form of Iva] and I would ever compose together. She is the sister I never had. As we say in Indian classical music, she is my sister in music. Who could ask for anything more? Who could ask for anyone better? Trust me, I’m not biased in any way.
Paper Cone figures in the live repertoires of Eviyan – the trio of Bittová, Gyan Riley and Evan Ziporyn – and the Czech band Čikori. It appears on Eviyan Live (Les Disques Victo, 2013) and Eviyan (Animal, 2015), as well as on Čikori’s At Home (Pavian, 2016).
The Czech-language version of this article appears in the 16 September 2014 issue of the Divadelní noviny (‘Theatre news’).
The photographs of Iva Bittová are © Santosh Sidhu/Swing 51 Archives and were taken during the back-to-back interviews for fRoots and The Strad on 10 September 2004.
A recommended source of all Czech and Slovak music (and nothing else) “at Czech prices” is: http://www.cdmusic.cz/ or if you’re in Prague, stay on the 22 Tram until the Pohořelec stop and go to Široký dvůr, Loretánské náměsti 4, 118 00 Praha 1 Hradčany. The shop is convenient to the castle. The shop is close to the Klášterní pivovar Strahov or Strahov Monastic Brewery http://www.klasterni-pivovar.cz/ and a place where I have written for decades, U Zavěšenyho Kafe (‘At The Hanging Coffee’), down the hill in the direction of the castle (Hradčany) at Loretánská 13, 118 00 Praha 1 (meaning ignore obsolete references on the internet to the address it used to be at: Úvoz 6, 11800 Praha 1).
10. 9. 2014 |
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[by Ken Hunt, London] A good deal of music this month came out following up new musical experiences gained over the summer. There was also prepping interviews and anticipating 2014’s annual Darbar Festival, then about to take place between 18 and 21 September. (Before that festival there is generally a good measure of music to listen to by way of preparation or homework to be done. Much of this month’s selections sprang from attending Colours of Ostrava. This month Jackson Browne, The Pogues, June Tabor & Oysterband, Velvet Underground, Ganesh-Kumaresh, Shirley Collins and Steve Ashley, Lo Còr De La Plana, Jackson Browne & Graham Nash, Alla Rakha and Aruna Sairam are in attendance. But there are many more discoveries waiting in the wings.
This column was updated on 30 November 2014.
Take It Easy → Our Lady of the Well – Jackson Browne
Of all Jackson Browne’s studio recordings, the transition of Take It Easy – the song that soon helped to make him famous (courtesy of the Eagles covering it on their debut album) into Our Lady of the Well remains an abiding favourite. The pedal steel guitar of Sneaky Pete Kleinow flows underneath Take It Easy and then forms the structural bridge into Our Lady of the Well.
Decades before I managed to get to California, there was a certain something about the LP cover illustration and picturing Jackson Browne sitting there in the shade of that courtyard. The horticulture got me. California lived up to expectations From For Everyman (Asylum 243 003, 1973)
An update – at his concert at the Royal Albert Hall on 25 November 2014 Jackson Browne played these two compositions as a transition.
Thousands Are Sailing – The Pogues
“Did the old songs taunt or cheer you/
And did they still make you cry?/
Did you count the months and years?/
Or did your teardrops quickly dry?”
I interviewed Phil Chevron, the man who composed this song, once and I interviewed Christy Moore about Phil Chevron once. For some peculiar reason I recall Phil Chevron and me chatting in the late 1980s in Hammersmith Palais – of Clash immortalisation-through-song fame, though it was a venue that my father had also played. The gig had some Christy Moore connection. It’s all a blur now. Unlike this song. From If I Should Fall From Grace With God (WEA 2292-44493-2, 1987)
Adam Sweeting’s obituary of Phil Chevron from the Guardian is here: http://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/oct/09/philip-chevron
Love Will Tear Us Apart – June Tabor & Oysterband
Joy Division did little for me, quite likely because I was listening to very different music at the time and it is the nature of a music critic’s life that there is never enough time to get in all the listening that he or she wants to do. What brought this song – and performance – back into material that I wanted to revisit was twofold. June Tabor & Oysterband performed at TFF Rudolstadt 2014 this July, though I wasn’t there. Second, the Belgian music journalist Annik Honoré died on 3 July 2014 at the age of 56. In her case the word ‘muse’ was frequently bandied about in the context of Joy Division’s Ian Curtis writing these words. Although Joy Division was marginal in my musical worldview, down the years enough of the mudslinging, arguments and counter-denials about Honoré did seep into my consciousness.
Ian Curtis died in May 1980 and Love Will Tear Us Apart subsequently became something of a hit. This version bottles its essence. The closing verse sings this way: “You cry out in your sleep all my failings exposed/And there’s a taste in my mouth as desperation takes hold/Just that something so good just can’t function no more.”. Ragged Kingdom didn’t put me on the path to Joy Division but it did introduce me to the value of a really excellent and dark song. From Ragged Kingdom (Topic Records TSCD585, 2011)
June Tabor and John Jones talk about Ragged Kingdom here. Check out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4_573-Lxdc
Pale Blue Eyes – Velvet Underground
Lou Reed’s poeticising of human frailty and carnal desire in song was something truly special. Amid the column inches after his death on 27 October 2013 the gentle, wistful song asked to be played. It is from the Velvet Underground’s third, self-titled album, released in 1969, and the first to be made without John Cale. It’s a habit of that goes back to the early 1990s to play Velvet Underground music either in Prague or on returning from the city. Or before going, as in this case. Not from the pre-expanded edition set of their third album. From the boxed set The Velvet Underground (Polydor 31452 7887-2, 1995)
Gabhira Nottal – Ganesh-Kumaresh
This is a recording from the Karnatic violin duo Ganesh-Kumaresh from Darbar Festival in London in 2009. It fades out but gives a good impression of the sound the brothers make. I happened to be in the audience for this concert. Aside from their music-making, what struck me was the enthusiasm and energy of their responsiveness that they showed when they attended other musicians’ concerts. This recording captures their musical energy. From Ethno Port Poznań 2014 (Centrum Kultury Zamek CK ZAMEK 009, 2014)
The Ethno Port Poznań festival’s website for 2014 (in English) is located round about here: http://www.zamek.poznan.pl/news,en,394,3198.html
Honour Bright – Shirley Collins and Steve Ashley
I did my first interviews of many interviews with the Sussex folksinger Shirley Collins in 1979. At one point she used an idiom that I hadn’t heard before. It was honour bright. It is a dated expression and means ‘on my honour’ though I took it to mean something it along the lines of ‘Scout’s honour’.
I had no idea – and she didn’t illuminate much – that it was the title of a song by her first husband. After her first husband, Austin John Marshall’s death on 3 November 2013 in Manhattan, Honour Bright was one of the pieces of music I played to nudge memories of him whilst I was writing his obituary for The Independent. It is the first track on the fourth disc of the Shirley Collins boxed set. It is now out of print. Alas. It is such a labour of love. And just to correct an omission, the uncredited Alan Lomax interview material about Shirley in it is mine. From Within Sound (Fledg’ling NEST 5001, 2002)
Ken Hunt’s obituary of Austin John Marshall from the Independent is here: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/austin-john-marshall-graphic-artist-record-producer-and-songwriter-who-played-a-key-role-in-the-folk-revival-of-the-1960s-9094365.html
Nòste País – Lo Còr De La Plana
Lo Còr De La Plana is a group that has never failed to exceed my expectations and hopes for them on the occasions I have seen them perform live in Germany, England and the Czech Republic. They lift my heart no matter what the subject matter. And some of it gets pretty dark whether about relationships breaking up, Satan in Marselha (Marseilles), arming the police, crime syndicate stuff, you get the picture. That may have something to do with understanding so imperfectly what they are singing about but the spirit communicates. They sing in Occitan, an ancient language, the homeland of which straddles modern-day France, Spain, Italy and Monaco. If I am correct, Lo Còr De La Plana translates as ‘the heart of [Marselha’s] La Plaine [neighbourhood or quarter]’. In a manner of speaking more heart than ‘choir’ – or to lapse into French more cur than chur. At Colours of Ostrava they delivered one of the festival’s most outstanding performances. And this album reinforces why they are a band beyond description.
At Ostrava I broke a long-standing, personal rule (concerning two left feet) and danced in public. My excuse was that it was a circle dance with scores of people in each circle. And there were several separate ring dances going on in the tented Drive Stage enclosure. You never know when you’ll have another chance to dance, so I danced. On one hand was a beautiful Polish woman and the other a beautiful Czech or Slovak woman. (My Czech is too primitive to know whether I am hearing Czech or Slovak.) It was the spirit of the festival and Còr De La Plana that got me. Colours of Ostrava is a festival I can only recommend. From Marcha! (Buda Musique 2799095, undated [2012])
Crow On The Cradle – Jackson Browne & Graham Nash
This stylish cover of Sydney Carter’s song really buggered his relationship with the Inland Revenue. Its influx of royalties convinced the taxman that his annual income had shifted up a gear. And nobody on a moderate income relishes having to dissuade said authorities that they have got the wrong end of the stick. Disabusing can take years. David Lindley’s violin on a track is marvellous. It is a song that Browne and Lindley would return to.
From No Nukes (Elektra/Asylum 7559-60592-2, 1979)
Intermission – Alla Rakha
In the LP sleeve notes to Gandhi, Richard Attenborough writes, “To be greeted by a thick blanket of snow – many of them witnessing such a sight for the first time ever – a group of India’s most distinguished musicians arrived in England in the second week of January this year [1982]. They had come to record the music that Ravi Shankar had written for Gandhi.” The contingent that performs on the Indian part of the film soundtrack includes the sarodist Aashish Khan, the sarodist Sultan Khan, the vocalist Lakshmi Shankar and the tabla maestro Alla Rakha. It is an aberration in my opinion that this soundtrack has never been reissued.
One of the decisive scenes is the re-enactment of General Dyer’s wholesale slaughter of men, women and children at the Sikh holy temple at Amritsar. After the massacre there is an interlude of quiet reflection before the “intermission”. The screen is black and a tabla strikes up. The playing is unmistakably that of Alla Rakha. Fluent and articulate, it is consummate piece of Hindustani rhythmicality. It is a piece that Ravi Shankar could have at most suggested taal (rhythm cycle) and laya (tempo) building brick terms. Rather than composing in detail, I would suggest.
It was Alla Rakha and his tabla fluency which opened the Hindustani treasure cave for me. Not voice, not sitar, sarod or any instrument of melody. To hear, to intuitively understand that rhythmicality was down to my musician father teaching me how notto count time signatures but instead to feel them and when the ‘one’ was arriving. Then to be in the presence of Alla Rakhaji‘s rhythmic sophistication and muscularity meant entering a new realm of music. I went through the door and when I returned I was never the same.
This choice was brought on by Richard Attenborough’s death. It is an exquisite piece of mythopoetic fiction. That’s mythopoetic in its original sense of making myths. To which I would add in Attenborough’s case the nurturing of myths. The Indian government paid handsomely for this propaganda film. It was money well spent by the Indian government. It became the standard history. So many figures were ‘disappeared’ or maginalised. Take Jinnah on the Pakistani side of Self-rule’s history or Ambedkar on the Indian side of the border.
In the 1982 Academy Awards Ravi Shankar and George Fenton lost out to John Williams’ E.T. for Best Original Score. So far, not re-released. Bizarre. I volunteer to write its reissue’s CD booklet notes… From Gandhi – Music From The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (RCA ABl1-4557, 1982)
Kalinga Nardhnam – Aruna Sairam
Of the living Karnatic vocalists – male or female – Aruna Sairam (also rendered Sayeeram especially in Francophone territories) is the musician whose music I play and revel in the most often. For me, her music is an essential part of a healthy and balanced musical diet. I can no longer imagine what it might be like, never to have listened – or experienced live – Aruna’s singing. At Colours of Ostrava I found myself extolling her virtues and explaining how mesmerising a performer and interpreter she is for the director of another European festival. Kalinga Nardhnam became the central plank of an impromptu thesis on the inexpressible joys of Aruna Sairam’s vocal artistry.
When it came to specifying a piece of music which demonstrates what sets her apart, I instinctively and immediately chose her interpretation of this thillana. I described how in it she sings of the time that the Boy Krishna trounced the multi-headed serpent-demon Kalinga by dancing on its head. TLest this episode sound arcane. Kalinga (Kālingā) is another name for Kaliya (Kāliyā). For lovers of popular culture, the original cover artwork of Aerosmith’s Nine Lives (Columbia, 1997) transmogrified Krishna’s head into, well, a cat’s. Sacred Hindu imagery spoiled by a moggy, so to speak. I digress.
Talking about Aruna Sairam’s phenomenal gift led to a craving to re-experience her singing this spectacular piece of sacred music. So I tracked down a commercial recording and ordered the Amultham label’s Yamuna Nathikarayil. From Yamuna Nathikarayil (Amutham AM 5230, 2007)
PS Then on 31 August 2014 something wonderful concerning Aruna Sairam occurred. But that’s a story for another time…
The photograph of Jackson Browne is copyright unknown, credited to Jessica Karman. The June Tabor and the Oysterband shot is © Judith Burrows. The live photo of Aruna Sairam is © Santosh Sidhu/Swing 51 Archives. The copyright of the other images lies with their respective photographers, companies and image-makers.
30. 8. 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. Many had paid their money long ago and had for waited years. Bragg’s measured and thoughtful Facebook posting recognised infirmity. Like an echo of I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night, it read “Don’t celebrate – organise!”
Political song in Britain is in rude health. Part of its healthy state derives from its performers and song-makers looking both backwards and forwards. Its deliverers span the generations. Epitomising that principle is the Anti-Capitalist Roadshow and its souvenir, the double CD Celebrating Subversion (2012). Fielding Frankie Armstrong, Roy Bailey, Robb Johnson, Reem Kelani, Grace Petrie, Peggy Seeger and others, it describes itself as “a collective of singers and songwriters, plus one magician” – the last-mentioned being “socialist magician” Ian Saville.
Grassroots in nature and orientation, the country’s network of folk clubs is still the bread-and-butter provider for a good share of people’s livelihoods. In general terms, the folk scene accommodates the overlapping folk revival, acoustic music and political song factions pretty neatly. The same club will book guests of any of those persuasions. Nevertheless, there often seems to be a sort of glass door between the various factions. Perhaps as a by-product of this, a scattering of alternative, parallel venues has sprung up. These cater to “the underground of the underground”, as R2‘s editor Sean McGhee calls it. Some have strong folk-punk or punk-rock leanings but the principle is to provide platforms. That works for established performers such as Attila the Stockbroker or the next wave such as Louise Distras.
The folk club scene acting as a hotbed for politically inspired songwriters is nothing new. Once upon
a time, as far as most people on the British folk scene were concerned – and it was the widely held consensus view – the whole damned folk scene was leftie, liberal or worse. It was a fallacy but never a complete fallacy. The plain fact was that, in terms of voting habits, the colours nailed to the folk scene’s mast were multicoloured. That freedom encouraged, say, the Tory-voting songwriter (and naval historian) Cyril Tawney to write exquisite songs of social observation.
Britain’s unique folk club scene truly bred, or acting as midwife to, political and topical song-making. When Pete Seeger visited in the 1950s he encountered a folk scene that astounded him. One message he took back home concerned a song movement of hugest vigour and punch. Typically, Johnny Handle, Stan Kelly and Leon Rosselson spearheaded this revelation. While certain writers were operating under the influence of Francophone chanson, others used dialect,
occupation or regionality to channel social commentary.
“These Americans came over,” remembers Rosselson, “and heard me perform, and other people, at some event and I remember how impressed they were by the fact that there were these topical, as they would call them, songs being written over here. There was no equivalent over there. This is way before ‘Protest’ started. All that flow from Woody Guthrie had stopped. People weren’t writing songs anymore. The songwriting revival happened here before it happened in America.”
Into this songwriting melting-pot came other inspirations. Chartism – a British working-class movement for political reform – was one. Another major one was what was the satirical movement, a movement given national prominence through That Was The Week That Was, the two short-lived BBC series televised in 1962 and 1963. Again looking backwards and forwards, Rosselson and Johnson’s The Liberty Tree (2010) takes as its inspiration that “atheistic and traitorous scoundrel” Tom Paine, the author of Rights of Man (1791) and The Age of Reason (1793-94) and the man who fed ideas into the French and American Revolutions.
Between May 1979 and November 1990, Thatcher and her Tory administration were in power. It made her both an emblematic and popular figure for vilification, one by-product of which was her achieving a kind of reverse Muse status for political songwriters. She inspired the opposition. After all, oppression can do wonders and make writers more resourceful. The Scottish Trades Union Congress famously underwrote Dick Gaughan’s 1986 album of songs about miners and mining, True and Bold as part of an awareness-raising drive.
The trades union movement, once so active from the 1960s through to the 1980s, is now largely off the arts radar, though in a neat twist, in October 2013 the ever-prolific and teaching professional, Robb Johnson put together a limited edition release to support the Brighton & Hove National Union of Teachers’ hardship fund “to support teachers for whom striking causes particular financial problems”.
The loathsome Tony Bliar, as he is accurately mis-spelled, and New Labour eventually followed Thatcher. Holding office from May 1997 and June 2007, Bliar succeeded in mobilising hundreds of thousands of Stop the War protesters in marches and demonstrations throughout Great Britain. The Hyde Park rally brought central London to a standstill and Robb Johnson’s We All Said Stop The War on Clockwork Music (2003) memorialises its across-the-generations, faith and political spectrum supporters.
But the reasons for setting political thoughts to music go on and on. Tony Benn (1925-2014) was a noted old-school Labour Party left-winger. He used to attend the Glastonbury Festival where one area is devoted to political and anti-war debate and music, and also toured with one of Britain’s finest politically engaged singers, Roy Bailey. In an interview with Stephen Moss in The Guardian in October 2013, he made a shrewd observation that transfers well to social activism as well as songs of social justice and solidarity generally: “As I got older I came to see that the most important thing to do was to try to influence public thinking.”
Of course, one aspect of political songwriting – and the UK variety is no different to its counterparts anywhere else – is that song-makers who deal in political or socially engaged song are frequently accused of preaching to the converted. Fulminating against politicians and the men and women who run the land is not the only way to go about matters. Raising awareness and influencing public thinking remains vital. Britain’s increasingly troglodyte neo-Nazi bands would agree with that.
Billy Bragg’s dedication in The Progressive Patriot (2006), his book about cultural identity, is to The Clash – “the flame you lit is still burning bright”. The title track of Billy Bragg and The Blokes’ England, Half English (2002) addresses issues of cultural identity. Similarly, but differently Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros’ Global A Go-Go ‘Bhindi Bhagee’ (2001) – bindi (okra or ladies’ fingers) and bhaji (fritters) – referenced one of the planet’s universal currencies. Food is a basic political drive, along with water, warmth and shelter. Both songs cleverly sent messages by special delivery – music. Maybe both prompt even casual listeners to think
about what Britishness and living in a multicultural society mean.
When Louise Distras recited We Are All Pussy Riot! – forgive a political poem rather than a political song creeping into the narrative – on the eve of Pussy Riot’s sentencing, and we all know the gist, if not the specifics, of the sentence handed down, her litany of named or anonymous inspirations from disparate cultures and eras delivered.
To mis-tweet (it is post-modern) a line from the Australian art critic Robert Hughes: What would you prefer? A song that struggles to change the social contract and fails? Or a song that seeks to please and amuse and succeeds?
The image of Louise Distras is © Mike Distras and courtesy of Louise Distras.
Ken Hunt writes the long-running political song column RPM in the UK-based, bimonthly magazine R2 http://www.rock-n-reel.co.uk/ A German-language version of this article appeared in Folker at the beginning of 2014. https://www.folker.de/
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. And to mangle the Four Seasons’ comeback hit, ‘Oh, what a site!’
My first impressions of the site with no festival crowd inside it were mixed. A real ‘What the fuck!’ deal. Treat that fruity remark in the sense of judging a book by its cover. Even from the outside its industrial landscape is imposing but its architecture gives little away about the sheer scale and size of what is behind the site’s fences and outer rim of buildings. Within the festival grounds is a Metropolis set (think Fritz Lang) seemingly for the Twentieth Century more than the Twenty-first Century. It is made of steel, rust, pipes, chimneys, towers, more rust, greenery growing in walkways eight meters above our heads and, a favourite, a gasometer converted into a conference centre with venue (Colours’ Vítkovice Gong Stage). Initially orientation appeared impossible. Gradually dots joined up. But given the size of the site, musical inclinations, temperatures in the high 30s and musical curiosity, there were corners of the festival grounds upon which Kenneth never clapped eyes. Two shallow excuses would be I wound up doing a couple of, for me, interesting conversations with musicians before audiences of a few hundred festival-goers on the Gong Reflex Stag. Mine were with Iceland’s Emilíana Torrini and a Welsh group called 9Bach to which the singer-songwriter Bonnie Dobson had drawn my attention before their signing to Real World and making their second album Tincian. In part, another excuse for not seeing acts was also down to the English-language festival programme being shakier about Czech and Slovak acts than its Czech-language edition, though I may be doing that programme a disservice as I failed to pick up a copy.
Some festival-goers choose to fly around a festival sampling as much nectar from as many flowers as possible. As it were, the catch-a-few-songs-here and the half-a-set-there approach. My approach is to catch entire sets in order to get a bigger picture. It’s not necessarily better, just a different approach, but it suits me and my legs and my head better. Years of experience of TFF Rudolstadt’s multi-stage character – and mountain-goating it there – have counselled me in this more leisurely, more intense approach. One unmissable act had to be Lo Còr De La Plana, one of France’s greatest folk-flavoured bands. They come from the People’s Republic of Marselha, elsewhere known as Marseilles. They are a male sextet and combine polyphony and percussion. That Saturday evening on the Drive Stage, in the time they performed they were without question the best band on the planet. They exceeded themselves and initiated a set of ring dances that swept through the tented venue. Social dance was not something I was expecting at Colours of Ostrava and nor would I have expected to join in. However, it would have been churlish not to join in. Handsome men and beautiful women held out hands to strangers and whisked the next stranger into the ring dance.
At concert’s end, Lo Còr De La Plana announced their next day’s collaboration with the Naples-based female quartet Assurd. It was hymned as Vé Zou Via (that is, a pun on Vesuvius) and it
would have been rude to decline the invitation. The next afternoon they sang like the choir on Olympus. Stupid me, I was so carried away by their vocal swell that when the amplification and lighting dropped out and they sang unamplified I fancied it was part the Vé Zou Via act. Hey, without getting fazed or skipping a beat, nine musicians went acoustic, peered into the packed tent in front of them and continued singing their hearts out. The electricity returned at some point and they resumed their electric set. Seldom has electrifying professionalism seemed so unaffected and natural.
Sunday’s other, earlier highlight was 9Bach. They are doing things for Welsh music that are revelatory and live they proved themselves to be a world-class folk-themed band. Returning to the hotel late that evening, a gentleman got off the same tram and rushed up to me. He engaged me energetically, saying he had gone along to the 9Bach conversation on spec that morning, not knowing a thing about Wales or Welsh music, let alone 9Bach. I had asked Lisa Jên to sing a Welsh folksong unaccompanied as part of the talk and she sang deliciously. The stranger had enjoyed her singing so much and his curiosity was so piqued by the discussion that he went to the concert. For him and me alike, 9Bach’s performance on the Gong Vítkovice Stage was one of Colours’ ear-openers. With that he rushed off in the opposite direction. The exchange lasted little more than two minutes but, for me, it reaffirmed what festivals can do in allowing acts to talk to festival-goers.
I have jumped ahead a day. Looming over the festival was Saturday night’s Ostrava return for Robert Plant and The Sensational Space Shifters on the Česká Spořitelna Stage. They did not disappoint. Even though their lullaby and… THE CEASELESS ROAR was as yet unreleased, they were holding a hand of trumps since Plant needs no education when it comes to constructing a set. Plus he can rely on choice morsels from the Led Zeppelin hostess trolley. Plant is savvy enough to juggle old and new material to please and tease. They did the upcoming album’s Little Maggie and Rainbow. They revealed them to be new tours-de-force in waiting. Looking backwards, Whole Lotta Love – which also skirted Quicksilver Messenger Service’s take of Bo Diddley’s Who Do You Love? – was pure deliciousness. The set revealed aspects of the band’s essence with psychedelia, some world music and a wholesome serving of rock.
For me, two extra-musical strands added credence to the line about Colours of Ostrava being “the Czech Republic’s top summer music event”. I’ll give credit to the festival’s director, Zlata Holušová.
In order to arrive in good time for a front-row position for Lo Còr De La Plana, I wandered well ahead of time across the site to get a beer and write at a table in the nearby beer tent. Close to the Drive Stage where they were appearing, there was a whole crew of graphic artists – street, graffiti or otherwise – creating festival-temporary works of art. They were ‘under construction’. Over the course of the festival I returned to see how they had progressed. I have no notion of the names of who did what but the vibrancy and excitement of their art impressed – that and the decision to include it as a feature. Here’s hoping it is a regular occurrence.
The most subtle, unobtrusive and mysterious non-musical element was a post-revelry one. Saturday’s headlining act happened on the Česká spořitelna stage. After Robert Plant and the Sensational Space Shifters finished their set, the audience dispersed. (Basille were coming on 90 minutes later after midnight.) Above the mixing tower facing the stage, the sound of clock chimes rang out – ones of the kind that chime the quarters but, more specifically the fourth quarter. Public clocks do it all across Europe. Perhaps, the Czech Republic’s most famous one is the astronomical clock in Prague’s Staroměstské náměstí. In the ‘Old Town Square’ you have The Walk of the Apostles and sundry fixed figures doing particular things as the quarters sound. It makes for spectacle. Go past it enough times and the experience gets diminished, dimmed or downgraded. It’s like a Londoner hearing the Cambridge Quarters struck by ‘Big Ben’ yet another time.
After Robert Plant and the Sensational Space Shifters had done their bestest, the glory that Colours of Ostrava had put on and Cia La Tal’s Carillo had created was probably missed by a good chunk of the audience exiting that field of dreams. You had to be in the right place and right frame of mind to experience what the tower was producing. Bożena Szota, the festival director of Ethno Port Poznań in Poland and I gazed up in a state of wonderment. The penny dropped when realising that it wasn’t mechanical figures but human mannequins now putting on a further, visual show. On several levels I bet it went over many people’s heads. We stood there absorbed.
Colours of Ostrava is like no music festival I have ever experienced anywhere in Europe.
Further information about Colours of Ostrava is at: http://www.colours.cz/en/
Further information about Cia La Tal | Compañía de Teatro Internacional in English, Spanish and Catalan is at: http://cialatal.com/>
All photographs © Ken Hunt/Swing 51 Archives. The hay stooks are from a trip into the Carpathians with Grit Friedrich, Ben Mandelson, Jiři Plocek and Benjamin Taubkin to visit the extraordinary instrument maker Vít Kašpařík in Velké Karlovice. But that’s a story for another time.
1. 8. 2014 |
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[by Ken Hunt, London] Several of these listening selections came about thanks to travelling in the Czech Republic and Austria and meeting an extraordinary bunch of people, some of whom became new friends. The gathering here comprises Nishtiman, John Barry (featuring John Leach as soloist), Grateful Dead, Tommy McCarthy, Bonnie Dobson & Her Boys, Geirr Tveitt, Ado Abdelmasih, Aziz Günel and Ibrahim Aksim, Iva Bittová & Vladamír Václavek and CSNY.
This month’s Giant Donut Discs is in memory of the jazz critic Jack Massarik, my fellow Jazzwise scribe and sometime tour guide to jazz spots in Soho (after the Jazzwise writers’ Christmas get-togethers). I learned that Jack had died on 13 July 2015 while I was out East. Jack was a very good egg.
Nishtiman – Nishtiman
Nishtiman plays Kurdish folk-flavoured art music. The songs are in a variety of Kurdish regional voices. The details would be a list that neither I nor you the reader, would grasp without speaking Kurdish. As a title, the word is emblematic of Kurdistan. Nishtiman signifies ‘homeland’ (though the word’s German translation Heimat captures nuances that ‘homeland’ doesn’t). The world’s largest stateless nation, the fictive Kurdistan straddles Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey and, in terms of geopolitical status, it comes with varying degrees of autonomy and external support. The septet is a mixture of Kurds from Iran, Iraq and Turkey, augmented with two France-based musicians – the percussionist Robin Vassy and double-bass player Leila Renault – who provide the timbral lift at the lower end. The project’s artistic director and percussionist Hussein Zahawy has pulled together musicians who reflect back aspects of the Kurdish diaspora, regional styles and dialects. Sohrab Pournazeri sings and plays tambur or tanbur (long-necked lute) and kamancheh (spike fiddle). Ertan Tekin plays zurna (shawm). Goran Kamil plays oud (lute). Maryam Ebrahimpour sings.
Listening to Nishtiman, it occurred that all Kurdish music ever to cross my path had had a diaspora or expat dimension. (For example, music from The Kamkars.) This music is neither ‘purist’ nor folkloristic in its approach. It is folk-inflected, light classical Kurdish music for today with a solid underpinning with bass and percussion to propel it. It is an adventure.
Nishtiman was the second to last act on the final night of the 2014 edition of Glatt&Verkehrt, the long-running Austrian festival based in Krems an der Donau in the Wachau district – an hour’s rail journey from Vienna along the Danube (Donau). At the festival I didn’t get them. However, the performance did prime me for the recording. It all fell into place back in Britain reviewing this album for fRoots. Loved to be disabused. From Kurdistan – Nishtiman (Accords Croisés AC 150, 2014)
Opening theme to The Ipcress File – John Barry and John Leach
Sidney J. Furie’s spy film The Ipcress File (1965) was a big shift away from the malarkey and high jinks of the James Bond films. While the opening credits roll and Michael Caine’s character Harry Palmer is in the kitchen making coffee and generally starting his day. John Barry’s theme plays over the opening credits. The music has a modern jazz feel but it has an unusual sound to it central to its impact. This is the cimbalom, the large Hungarian member of the hammer dulcimer family. The musician playing it was John Leach. It never even crossed my pretty little teenage head what the instrument delivering that distinctive sound was at that time. It was just an interesting and unusual sound. With hindsight it was probably the first time I heard the instrument. Reading the excellent obituary of him in the Daily Telegraph rekindled my curiosity.
The IPCRESS File (1962) was Len Deighton’s first spy novel and it was a revelation. The word in the title stood for ‘Induction of Psycho-neuroses by Conditioned Reflex under strESS’. To steal an anachronism from David Lindley, it had a putting-wires-into-your-brain vibe. Deighton’s Horse Under Water (1963) and Funeral in Berlin (1964) followed and I read both in them all in their Penguin paperback editions.
The music in context is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBCqP7R42K0
From The Ipcress File – Special Edition (2006)
John Leach’s obituary from the Daily Telegraph of Saturday 12 July 2014 is here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/10962261/John-Leach-ob ituary.html
New Speedway Boogie – Grateful Dead
Over the course of the summer many things kismet caused me to rethink my relationship with the Dead’s Workingman’s Dead album from 1970. The album marked a profound change in the Dead’s songwriting, for, with it, their lyricist Robert Hunter revealed new levels of achievement and songcraft. The songs were like nothing on the previous albums and the lyrics were in another realm compared to those revealed on Aoxomoxoa and Live/Dead (the US release of which included song lyrics for the first time).
New Speedway Boogie is a prime example of the Hunter/Garcia song parttnerships’s new style. Its launch-pad was the debacle that was the Altamont Speedway Free Festival held on 6 December 1969. It is strewn with lines that sound like proverbs or old saws. A favourite verse is, “Now I don’t know but I been told/it’s hard to run with the weight of gold/Other hand I heard it said/it’s just as hard with the weight of lead.” Apparently the Dead first performed the song on 20 December 1969 at the Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco, an indication of the creativity and speed of productivity that typified the Workingman’s Dead period. The cover, a group shot including Robert Hunter (far left, standing), is a product of the Alton Kelly/Stanley Mouse studio. Alas, my (uncredited) obituary of Alton Kelly for The Times is now behind a paywall. From Workingman’s Dead (Rhino R2-74401-F, 2001)
Further information about Stanley Mouse is at: http://http://www.mousestudios.com/
Down That Road – Tommy McCarthy
The opening track from Tommy McCarthy’s debut album. This was listening material in anticipation of his next album. Thomas McCarthy is the Traveller singer that gives me the strongest hope of this culture blossoming into thisncentury. He is the real thing – as best I can judge it. Apart from that he is a fab singer. As this piece illustrates. From Round Top Wagon (ITCD 0012, 2010)
I Got Stung – Bonnie Dobson & Her Boys
This is the album to which I have returned to over and over again all year. Bonnie Dobson is a song interpreter and a songwriter to whom I have returned for more years than I care to put a year on. From Take Me For A Walk In The Morning Dew (Hornbeam Recordings HBR003, 2014)
Hundrad Hardingtonar, Opus 151 – Geirr Tveitt
Hundrad Hardingtonar, Opus 151 by the Norwegian composer Geirr Tveitt (1908-1981) was a curiosity purchase in a charity shop in Richmond upon Thames. I had never heard of him but Norway’s Hardangar folk fiddle tradition is a long-standing interest of mine, dating back originally to the curiosity of seeing the cover artwork of the LP Folk Music of Norway (Topic 12TS351, 1977). Tveitt’s suite of tunes associated with the Norway’s famed folk violin with sympathetic strings is a wondrous example of mining a folk tradition and refashioning that musical ore for classical purposes. From Suites Nos. 1 and 4 (NAXOS 8.55078, 2001)
B’Utho – The priests Ado Abdelmasih, Aziz Günel and Ibrahim Aksim
This particular piece of Christian liturgical music belongs to what may well be a bygone era of tolerance in Syria. Its inclusion in this month’s selection of music is, no apology, occasioned by the UnIslamic State and its decision to reinvent the region’s culture.
From Syrian Orthodox Church – Tradition of Tur Abdin in Mesopotamia (UNESCO/Auvidis D 8075, 1998)
Sirka v Louži – Iva Bittová & Vladamír Václavek
Bílé inferno – ‘white inferno’ in Czech. Co-credited to Vladamír Václavek, it is one of Iva Bittová’s milestone albums. Every home should have one. At Colours of Ostrava in July 2014, just thinking about her, ideas flowed through my head. She’s that sort of gal. The plan was that I was going to do a ten-minute or so talk about an aspect of contemporary Eastern European music. Namely, writing odd lyrics for her – mainly in English but also sometimes in Czech – and how that came about.
For me, the image of the ‘white inferno’ is a key one. She remains one of my handful of ‘total musicians’ – a concept I shan’t expand upon here. One nice thing about Sirka v Louži is that Vladamír Václavek wound up on the composing side of a set of lyrics of mine called Paper Cone of Cherries that Iva set to music. How good can is life get? Very. From Bílé inferno (Indies Records MAM055-2, 1997)
The Lee Shore – CSNY
This track is from a 40-track 3-CD, one DVD set curated by Graham Nash and Joel Bernstein. What they have produce is a mix-and-match fantasy set. It combines electric and acoustic sets, with or without accompanists. (The accompanists are Tim Drummond on electric bass, Russell Kunkel on drums and Joe Lala on percussion.) The material is presented in solo, duo, trio and quartet permutations and come from Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young gigs in Landover, MD, Chicago IL and Hampstead, NY and Wembley in England in August 1974, augmented by recordings from a benefit gig in San Francisco in December 1974. The bonus DVD adds eight tracks from Landover and Wembley.
This boxed set had accompanied me to Austria so that I could finish listening to its music, watch the DVD and knock out the review. Sitting tip-tapping on the keyboard in an apartment looking over Vienna’s Praterstrasse at the end of July 2014, occasionally I would look out at the plane trees outside while collecting or re-shaping my thoughts. At around certain times of the morning one or two black redstarts would arrive to feed in the time canopy. The Rotschwanz (Phoenicurus ochruros) is a seasonal visitor in Britain and only knew its German-language name. But I watched it and that flycatcher is now twinned with this song of Pacific sailing in my head. Which means nothing to you, but helped fix The Lee Shore in my head this month. From CSNY 1974 (CSNY/Rhino 8122796035, 2014)
Jane Cornwall’s tribute to Jack Massarik entitled ‘A passionate jazzman’ appeared in the Evening Standard of Wednesday 26 July 2014. It appears here: http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/a-passionate-jazzman-jack-massarik-obituary-9608559.html
Jane is another fellow Jazzwise scribe and, like Jack, a contributor to the Evening Standard.
The copyright of all images lies with the respective photographers, companies and image-makers. The photographs of Nishtiman at Glatt&Verkehrt are © Ken Hunt/Swing 51 Archives.
31. 7. 2014 |
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[by Ken Hunt, London] Bob Dylan, Bonnie Dobson, Pavla Milcová, Salamakannel, SANS, Kronos Quartet, Ray Fisher, Zakir Hussain with Adnan Sami, Jenna And Bethany Reid and the Incredible String Band.
Like A Rolling Stone – Bob Dylan
This performance is a portal to, or a portent of Dylan’s mutable identities to come. It is one of the most pivotal songs in his canon. No matter how frequently or infrequently I listen to this particular recording, it loiters menacingly in the shadows of my mind. Commentators talk about the impact of the first Beatles film – A Hard Day’s Night – in 1964. Other people clearly saw something that I didn’t. For me however, it is pretty much impossible to communicate the impact of Like A Rolling Stone at the time of release in 1965. I splashed out on a second-hand mono copy of the LP in a record shop in Wimbledon.
One reason spurring on revisiting this album was the sale of Dylan’s manuscript lyrics, handwritten at the Roger Smith Hotel in Washington D.C. – with sundry try-outs, rhyming prompts, ideas and doodles. It fetched USD 2.045 million in June 2014 at Sotheby’s. How many people were prompted to play this track as a consequence of the publicity?
Years ago this website’s co-host, Petr Dorůžka was in my former writing room and saw the LP sleeve propped up on a shelf it. He commented on its impact on him and we bonded anew in that moment. From Highway 61 Revisited (Columbia 512351 6, 2003)
Winter’s Going – Bonnie Dobson
Songs that spring surprises are always to be cherished. This song of Bonnie Dobson’s is a track from her come-back album (as it will inevitably be described). It is an album that continues to floor me. It is unsettling and that is intended as high praise. From one of my most favourite and most played albums of 2014. From Take Me For A Walk In The Morning Dew (Hornbeam Recordings HBR003, 2014)
Červené Jablíčko – Pavla Milcová
Červené Jablíčko – meaning ‘Little Red Apple’ – is an arrangement of a Czech folksong in a very different, folk-rock treatment. Pavla Milcová had a way with Czech and Moravian folksongs. This arrangement added strings and percussion in new ways to what was essentially the folk-rock process. Her voice was arresting. I apologise for not keeping up with what she did later. I’ll explain.
Life is littered with regrets. At one point I compiled a musical introduction to the music of the newly established Czech Republic. (Czechoslovakia split into the Czech and Slovak Republics in January 2003.) This track was part of it – Track 2. Foolishly I believed that the anthology had something going for it artistically and, given the popularity of Prague in particular as a tourist destination, commercially. Nothing I had ever encountered in the record shops made any attempt to capture the essence of the Czech music that had fired me up so much. It was to be my psaníčko (love-letter) to the other music of the Czech Republic that had spun my head.
If any record company is interested in the project, please get in contact. From Apollo 14 (BMG (Czech Republic) 82876539272, 2003)
Käin Minä Kaunista Kangasta Myöten – Salamakannel
This is spin-off listening from writing about another act – SANS – for an article in fRoots. It was part of my listening preparation for doing an interview with the four members of SANS. The Finnish ensemble Salamakannel was part of a huge blossoming of Finnish folk arts – or so it seemed to me from the distance of London. The same names appeared on different releases in varying contexts. It’s a great little sing-along with Jussei Ala-Kuha’s chunky mandolin chords. Andrew Cronshaw produced.
Recorded in February 1992, this sounds like the sort of number that should be revisited for concert performances. From Koivunrunkorakkautta (Amigo AMFCD 2005-2, undated [1992])
Omenankukka – SANS
In July 2011 four loosely connected musicians met to rehearse for Finland’s Kaustisen kansanmusiikkijuhlat – one of the nation’s premier music festivals. They were the UK-based Armenian ‘apricot pipe’ or duduk player Tigran Aleksanyan, the UK expat, Australia-based reedman, Ian Blake the UK-based string-and-wind multi-instrumentalist Andrew Cronshaw and the Finnish vocalist Sanna Kurki-Suonio (who sings on Käin Minä Kaunista Kangasta Myöten, the track above this).
SANS’ Live was recorded on their December 2013 tour of Flanders. Its second track begins with a statement of the Southern English folksong Searching for Lambs as an instrumental overture to the Finnish lament Omenonkukka (Apple Blossom). Listening to Omenonkukka, while its notes and its melodic sequences may well be fixed, that leaves plenty of room for expansion and expression. They are not traditional or hereditary musicians. They are doing something that is totally engaging and ear opening. From SANS’ Live (Cloud Valley Music CV2014, 2014)
Tusen Tankar – Kronos Quartet
This elegiac piece opens A Thousand Thoughts and the translation of its title is where the album title comes from. Kronos had it from the Swedish folk group Triakel and they had Tusen Tankar from the Swedish traditional singer, Thyra Karlsson of Östersund, Jämtland.
For me, the album it comes from is the ensemble’s Kronos Caravan for another decade. Incidentally, Kronos Caravan (2000), for which I wrote the booklet notes, is reissued in its entirety as part of Kronos Explorer Series (Nonesuch 536951-2, 2014)
From A Thousand Thoughts (Nonesuch 7559795573, 2014)
When Fortune Turns the Wheel – Ray Fisher
Ray Fisher was one of the folksingers whose musicianship transformed my appreciation of Scottish folksong. Her singing was a giant leap-forward for my consciousness. So much more fell into place through talking to her. She was a gracious and generous provider and dispenser of knowledge and skills.
I had been writing about her – and Bert Jansch – for the January 2015 tranche of new entries for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. But barely a day goes by when her voice doesn’t sound in my inner ear. One of my greatest influences. This piece of music first appeared in 1982, in my opinion her finest album. From Willie’s Lady (Folk-Legacy Records CD-91, 2006)
Durga – Zakir Hussain with Adnan Sami
Adnan Sami went on to far greater things financially speaking. Encountering his playing by chance on a television programme – I have a dim memory that he was still at school at the time – prompted me to write about him for the El Cerrito-based magazine Keyboard in which I had a long-running London news column. This album was the first time I tracked him down on record. It has the tabla maestro Zakir Hussain as the headliner yet the show is Adnan Sami’s and Hussain is his gracious, supportive self. Durga is one of my all-time favourite ragas, a bonfire of the vanities of a rāg to which I continually return for illumination. The duo’s live recording of Durga is delightful and of unstated provenance.
It would have been impossible to tell what direction Adnan Sami’s career would take. This parcel of joy, licensed from EMI Pakistan, largely slipped through the cracks. From The One And Only Zakir Hussain With Adnan Sami (Serengeti Sirocco SIR CD 054, 1990)
Marching – Jenna And Bethany Reid
Escape is song suite about Jan Baalsrud and the Shetland Bus. To quote from the album information: “The Shetland Bus was the name given to a secret operation between Shetland and German-occupied Norway between 1941-45 (sic). These missions did not go over land, but also the North Sea. With no lights and at constant risk of discovery by German aircraft and patrol boats, crossings were made during winter under coverage of darkness.” Phil Goodlad’s narration (words by Martyn McLaughlin) binds the narrative.
Bethany and Jenna Reid play fiddle and their playing is a continual source of inspiration. The dynamic of the piece explodes with contributions from James Lindsay (double-bass), Iain Sandilands (percussion) and James Thomson (flute and pipes). It’s erratic or churlish to pluck out a plum from this pie. The suite is a masterpiece ever heard hundreds of miles from its Norwegian and Shetlander home turf. From Escape Lofoten Records LOFCCD001, 2010)
A Very Cellular Song – The Incredible String Band
This is one of those songs that educated my teenage listening years. It is a pinnacle of Mike Heron’s songcraft and cultural thievery. I mean the latter in a wholly positive way. One time around the time of Elektra’s release of The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter in March 1968 I was in Collet’s record shop in New Oxford Street in London. It was a place where a good part of my musical education occurred. I was hungry for new musical experiences. Hans Fried who worked behind the counter insouciantly played me The Real Bahamas. It changed my life and future.
One non-musical thing about Hangman’s also struck me. That was the blue of the sky in the cover image (of the UK edition). A similar blue is in the backdrop of a photograph of single hollyhock flower and Japanese maple from our garden. From The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter (Fledg’ling FLED 3078, 2010)
The copyright of all images lies with the respective photographers, companies and image-makers. The photograph of the common hollyhock Alcea rosea © Ken Hunt/Swing 51 Archives
30. 6. 2014 |
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Lubomír Dorůžka (1924-2013)
[by Ken Hunt, London] One of Europe’s foremost jazz critics, of a status comparable to Nat Henhoff in the States, died on 16 December 2013 in Prague. Lubomír Dorůžka rose to become the preeminent Czech-language jazz historian in Czechoslovakia and, after the separation in 1993, the Czech Republic. He was a Czech musicologist, music historian and critic (not just jazz), author, literary translator (including, naturally, the Jazz Age writings of F. Scott Fitzgerald and William Faulkner, amongst others) and much more. Lubo Dorůžka had the ill-starred fortune to be a jazz aficionado under two totalitarian regimes, during periods when to call jazz dangerous was an understatement.
He was born on 18 March 1924 in what was then Czechoslovakia’s capital, Prague. Growing up, he bore witness to Czechoslovakia – after 1933 the last remaining parliamentary democracy in central and eastern Europe – pressured into ceding territory. That began so fatefully with Nazi Germany’s annexation of the Sudetenland in late 1938.
Anyone caught listening to swing jazz during the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia or France could expect imprisonment and possible internment or death in concentration camps. Loving jazz and the freedoms it represented was dangerous. Mike Zwerin (1930-2010), in his 1985 book La Tristesse de Saint Louis: Swing Under the Nazis (‘The Sadness of Saint Louis’), calls this music “a metaphor for freedom”. The Nazis labelled it more robustly “degenerate music”.
The Monica Ladurner film Schlurf – Im Swing gegen den Gleichschritt (‘Schlurf – With or in the Swing against the Goosestep’) (Austria, 2007) documents the American swing jazz-loving, underground youth movements in their German, Austrian, French and Czechoslovakian guises in various languages. The derogatory German-language idiom Schlurf, though now it sounds faintly quaintly antique to German ears, came from schlurfen – ‘to shuffle’. The word communicated a world of wastrels, sluts (more correctly Schlurfkatzen) and ne’er-do-wells loitering in the shadows or an alleyway. It’s rather like a precursor of punk. Its subtext said jazz, inferiority and degeneracy. In Germany another movement was the Swing-Jugend (‘Swing youth’). They were fond of substituting ‘Sieg Heil!’ with ‘Swing Heil!’ in the right circumstances. In occupied Czechoslovakia their equivalent movement was the Potápky, literally, great crested grebes. They ducked and dived like those water fowl. And, of course, grebes – great or little – have the habit of resurfacing somewhere other than anticipated.
At a screening of Schlurf. at the Kino Světozor in Prague, where it was running as part of the MOFFOM (short for Music on Film Film on Music) festival in 2009, something unexpected happened. Partway through, Lubo was there on screen talking about the movement and those times. It took a while to click that he was speaking in German – in cultivated, Czech-inflected German – because we had never talked in German. Foolishly, it had never occurred to me that he spoke the language. In fact certainly during occupation part of his schooling had been through the occupier’s language. At the time I was based in Lubo and his wife Aša’s Prague apartment while they were away travelling. I was surrounded by framed photographs (like him with Louis Armstrong), his book collection, memorabilia and the like. It seemed unreal. Between 1944 and 1945 he began writing about swing for a samizdat publication. In the screening I wept in the darkness for Lubo and my father, Leslie Hunt, who was a swing jazz musician, twelve years Lubo’s senior, who throughout the War had been a full-time bandsman with the Royal Air Force, playing the very music that the Nazis hounded.
During the Communist era Lubo became the Czechoslovakia correspondent for major US magazine titles. Jazz was American and the authorities kept an eye on it and anyone peddling it. It meant that he was receiving all manner of US releases for review, including ESP LPs like the Fugs. Czechoslovakia’s earlier official party line, like other Iron Curtain countries, had been that jazz, like blues, was the voice of social struggle, the voice of the oppressed Negro in the United States and so on. In this ghetto jazz was safe and containable. As its popularity grew and its counter-cultural possibilities made themselves apparent, the Czechoslovakian authorities grew wary.
Lubo’s Panoráma Jazzu (‘Panorama of Jazz’) (1990), published during the time of political climate change, covers the standard jazz history and its Czechoslovakian complexion. It includes, say, Jaroslav Ježek and Karel Velebný, but extends to musicians such as Anthony Braxton and David Murray as well as the jazz released on Eastern bloc labels such as Amiga, Melodiya, Muza and Supraphon. His 2002 book Český jazz mezi tanky a klíči (‘Czech jazz between tanks and keys’) (2002) – though klíči has parallel translation possibilities such as ‘musical keys’ and ‘passports’ – is another of his books on the nation’s jazz history. “Between tanks and keys”, his son clarified, refers to the exact time interval between the Soviet tanks in 1968, and the Velvet Revolution in 1989, when crowds at Wenceslas Square rattled their keys as a symbol of resistance.
He and his wife (who died four days after him) came to love Cornwall on the Atlantic tip of England in the period when travel was possible. Into their 70s they would travel overland by coach from Prague to Victoria Coach Station and then on to Cornwall. The freedom to travel was something they prized highly, having spent chunks of their lives when such possibilities were restricted or impossible.
On the day I flew back to London after MOFFOM 2009, I was attending to last-minute matters in the city. The weather turned. Walking to the Metro station at the top of Wenceslas Square, the skies opened up. I had no coat or umbrella. The rain bucketed down and forced me to rush for the shelter of a pub on Krakovská, at the top end of the square but still too far from the entrance to the station to do the dash in the deluge. Waiting out the rain, I started writing a song lyric for the Czech violinist-vocalist Iva Bittová. The film Schlurf and more specifically Lubo’s reminiscing shot with the backdrop of the Kino Laterna got the creative juices going. (Kino Laterna was a wordplay on Kino Lucerna on nearby Vodičkova which had been a backdrop in Schlurf and laterna magika or ‘magic lantern’ theatre.) Two beers later the first draft was done. The rain let up and it was possible, as my father used to say, to dance between the raindrops and head to Muzeum station. Beforehand though, I took stock of where I had been. In the downpour I had spied an inn sign and had simply ducked in.
The pub’s name was U Housliček! I knew enough broken Czech to know that, even if it had any other idiomatic meaning, literally housliček meant ‘little violin’. That seemed auspicious enough for a ‘don’t believe in miracles: rely on them’ moment. Scant hours later I touched down at London Heathrow with a fair-to-finished lyric ready for keying, for sleeping on and then sending off. Titled Kino Laterna, it became part of the repertoire of Checkpoint KBK, Bittová’s US-based trio with clarinettist David Krakauer and accordionist Merima Ključo.
In late May 2013 Lubo, his music critic and broadcaster son, Petr (this website’s Czech co-host) and I attended a concert at Libeňská synagoga in the Libeň district of Prague 8. It was a concert featuring Iva Bittová, his guitarist grandson David Dorůžka, the pianist Aneta Majerová (David’s partner) and the cellist Peter Nouzovský. Lubomír was treated like a dignitary, being addressed by all but family and close friends as Pán Dorůžka where, by tone and reverence, Pán functions more on the Lord side of Mister. I felt myself privileged that for more than 20 years he and I had been Lubo and Ken.
Lubomír Dorůžka may have been an unknown and unsung hero beyond Czech borders but he was one of the greatest champions of jazz of our era. No, back up: he was his country’s and his countries’ Nat Hentoff with an added danger factor.
A shorter version of this tribute was published on Jazzwise‘s website.
The image of three generations of Dorůžkas from Libeňská synagoga on 31 May 2013 is © Ken Hunt/Swing 51 archives
More images, including Lubo and Satchmo, are at https://www.facebook.com/media/set/edit/a.10201182595759547.1073741833.1610003051/
23. 6. 2014 |
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