Giant Donut Discs® – Dagmar Krause (1989)
[by Ken Hunt, London] The Giant Donut Discs® column in Swing 51 brought together a wide range of talent and one of the finest was Dagmar Krause. The bumper double issue 13/14 included a lengthy interview with her, but also her current list of Donuts. In the spirit of her choices back then, this “patchy list” as she called it (“Seems fine to us,” was appended in 1989), had next to no additional information; in that spirit there are no subsequent annotations. That feels right because hers is a no-nonsense approach to music.
23. 3. 2011 | read more...
[by Ken Hunt, London] Life is rarely dull on the treasured island. More travellers’ tales, aka GDDs, from the faraway island – about love and deception, wading birds, coming on and vamoosing, work, tall trees in Kashmir, church bells and science fiction-inspired escapes. Bert Jansch, Lo Cor De La Plana, Carolina Chocolate Drops/Luminescent Orchestrii, Paul Kantner, Drewo, Gayathri Rajapur, Fairport and Shivkumar Sharma remain more than temporary island dwellers.
[by Ken Hunt, London] More travellers’ tales, aka GDDs, from the faraway island – this time from Bryan MacLean, June Tabor, The Everly Brothers, June Tabor, The United States of America, Eddie Reader, The McPeake Family, Clara Rockmore, Shujaat Khan, Artie Shaw and Christy Moore with Declan Sinnott. The strangest thing happened this month. Just like the S.S. Politician going down off Eriskay in the Outer Hebrides in 1941 and the 1949 Ealing comedy Whisky Galore, all these bottles of single malt whisky washed ashore in time for Burns’ Night. Nobody was more surprised than me…
[by Ken Hunt, London] Winter draws on in London but on the fictitious tropical island the sun is shining. Helping to banish gloom this month is a rather fine selection of music. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, this month’s haul of traveller’s tales embraces Martin Simpson, Ella Ward, Yardbirds, Shashank, Don Van Vliet, David Lindley & El Rayo-X, Rickie Lee Jones, Swamy Haridhos & Party, Cyril Tawney and Anne Briggs.
[by Aparna Banerji, Jalandhar City] Wintertime in Jalandhar gets chilly. If you have a wan sun by early afternoon, you’re lucky. The kites can barely get above the mists in Model Town. But there’s this big tree not far from the gurdwara where the guards smile and, in friendly recognition to strangers, do that little head shake thing. That tree is alas not a peepal or Sacred Fig but a koel (Eudynamys scolopaceus) flies there each afternoon almost unnoticed after the mists lift. (If you know the particular tree, keep quiet.) On the island there is no fug, no koels, no peepals. As you sup coconut milk through a desert-island straw, the only strains are lilting musical ones from faraway. 
[by Ken Hunt, London] Winter draws on in London but on the fictitious tropical island the sun is shining. Helping to banish gloom this month is a rather fine selection of music. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, this month’s haul of traveller’s tales embraces Methera, Amy Rigby, Ida Kelarova, the Hallé Orchestra under Mark Elder, Dave Bartholomew, Bonnie Raitt & Was (Not Was), the Oysterband, Alim and Fargana Qasimov, The Byrds and Czech Philharmonic Orchestra under Rafael Kubelík.
[by Aparna Banerji, Jalandhar City] For this month’s super ten I start with Shubha Mudgal followed by Gayatri Iyer, Sahaj Ma, Jagjit Singh and Lata Mangeshkar, Surinder Kaur, Kailash Kher, Richa Sharma and Sukhwinder, Bhupinder and Chitra, the Wadali Brothers and Suraiya and Shyam.
[by Ken Hunt, London] Winter draws on in London but on the island the sun is shining. Helping to banish gloom is a rather fine selection of music this month. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, this month we have Norma Waterson, Mohammad Reza Shajarian and Mohammad Reza Lotfi, Tükrös Zenekar, O’Hooley & Tidow, Ronu Majumdar and Kishan Maharaj, the Butterfield Blues Band, Santana, Wizz Jones, Bukka White and Melissa Etheridge. It begins with a song of mortality and the acceptance of mortality and ends with one bitter and not accepting. In between all human life is there.
[by Ken Hunt, London] As summer slides into mellow fruitfulness, what better batch of lifesavers on a desert island could one wish for than these? Let’s start with Dusty Springfield and her wicked way with telling a delicious tale about forbidden love. You’ll have to look for taboo subjects amongst the choices by Ahmad Sham Sufi Qawwali Group, Little Feat, Martin Carthy & Dave Swarbrick, Ralph McTell, Los Lobos, Joe Ely, Jerry Garcia, Bonnie Dobson and Dave Swarbrick. You might well find one or two sins hidden here.
[by Ken Hunt, London] This month a raft laden with new provisions landed. It would have been rude not to, as they say, that is, not to have included some. In no particular order, ladies and gentlemen, here’s the Peter Rowan Bluegrass Band, Flora Purim, Jody Stecher and Kate Brislin, Laurie Anderson, Alastair Hulett and Dave Swarbrick, Jenna and Bethany Reid, Bill Kirchen, Wargaren, Annette Pinto and Diva Reka. It’s not entirely new stuff because, as ever, it reflects other work going on during the month.