[by Ken Hunt, London] Whilst writing the essay about the history of Call of the Valley back in those days when the internet was in its infancy and before mobile phones, it took months to obtain the right phone number for G.N. Joshi – or one that worked. The way things sometimes go, I finally made direct contact only to learn that he had died days before.
5. 6. 2009 | read more...
[by Ken Hunt, London] Key works that open doors to reveal unsuspected possibilities are fewer and farther between than press releases and other fictions would lead us to believe. On the basis that a little hyperbole goes a long way, glib judgements get bandied around with frightening frequency and lightning strike effect. For many people Call of the Valley opened up the skies, was a revelation. Its impact could be likened to revealing a new colour in the spectrum, for it was directly responsible for bringing Hindustani classical music – as Northern Indian classical music is known – to new audiences all around the globe. Its three soloists would go on to internationally acclaimed careers. But all that lay in the future. For countless listeners the first time they would hear the consummate musicianship of Shivkumar Sharma, Brijbushan Kabra and Hariprasad Chaurasia would be this record.
1. 6. 2009 | read more...
[by Ken Hunt after G.N. Joshi] Picture a hamlet, as G.N. Joshi wrote in the original sleeve notes to Call of the Valley, nestling in the shelter of a Kashmiri valley. The story begins as sunrise approaches. Guitar signals dawn’s arrival. Santoor, the very epitome of the Kashmiri soundscape, joins in to play the early morning râg Ahir Bhairav, the first movement of the suite.
Swarmandal – a zither-like instrument – ripples usher in the second movement, Nat Bhairav. The day advances. The sun begins its climb with Joshi imagining Kashmir’s scenic splendour. Set to ektāl, tāl or taal meaning a rhythmic cycle, in this case one of 12 beats, the scene takes on colour and form.
1. 6. 2009 | read more...
[by Ken Hunt, London] Brass Monkey was a band that unfurled before my eyes. Or so it seemed. From their varied beginnings consolidating in the trio of Martin Carthy, Howard Evans and John Kirkpatrick that performed from January to December 1980 to the establishment of the powerhouse acoustic quintet, Brass Monkey proper, in January 1981 of Carthy, Evans and Kirkpatrick with Martin Brinsford and Roger Williams, their impact was never less than revelatory.
18. 5. 2009 | read more...
[by Ken Hunt, London] The Scots composer and musicologist David Johnson died on 30 March 2009 at the age of 66. Born David Charles Johnson in Edinburgh on 27 October 1942, his focus both as a composer and a musicologist was profoundly shaped by Scottishness.
Over the course of his life he composed over 50 works, amongst them five operas. Two of them were inspired by so-called Border ballads, namely his All There Was Between Them (1969) and Thomas the Rhymer (1976). Others drew on other Scottish elements…
13. 5. 2009 | read more...
[by Ken Hunt, London] John Pearse died on 31 October 2008 in Besigheim in Germany aged 69. A wine lover – he wrote the book Cooking With Wine (1987) – it was wine that crooked its little finger at him and brought him to that Swabian wine region where he died. Born John Melville Pearse in Hook in the East Riding of Yorkshire on 12 September 1939, he grew up in the north Welsh seaside torn of Prestatyn in Denbighshire where the family ran a hotel.
27. 4. 2009 | read more...
[by Petr Dorůžka, Prague] The Karachi born, New York City based jazz guitarist Rez Abbasi comes to Europe for a ten day tour which includes two gigs in Czech Republic – 23 April he plays in the Prague Reduta club, and on 27 April at Jazzfest in Brno. He is joined by his Indian wife Kiran Ahluwalia, who is a well known singer on her own right.
21. 4. 2009 | read more...
[by Ken Hunt, London] On its release Cohen’s Songs Of Leonard Cohen (1967) was more than a strained-voice recapitulation of what we already knew through Judy Collins, the song interpreter who had done so much to introduce the Canadian songwriter on her In My Life (1966) and Wildflowers (1967). Cohen’s delivery on his debut’s ten-song album was so much more world-weary, more experienced, more laconic, more droll.
16. 4. 2009 | read more...
[by Ken Hunt, London] Uriel Jones was one of the largely unsung heroes of popular music. His drumming added the muscle and sinew to many of the great hits that came out of his birthplace and hometown, Detroit, for he was a leading member of the Motown house-band, the Funk Brothers. He played on sessions that became international hits including Marvin Gaye’s I Heard It Through The Grapevine, Stevie Wonder’s For Once In My Life, the Temptations Ain’t To Proud To Beg, I Can’t Get Next To You and Cloud Nine, Marvyn Gaye & Tammy Terrell’s……
1. 4. 2009 | read more...
[by Kate Hickson, Berriew, Wales] In the 1980s Swing 51 magazine would occasionally receive small packages from the United States containing cassette tapes merely identified as ‘Citizen Kafka’. It felt like the sort of deception the musical prankster Hank Bradley might perpetrate. However, Bradley’s looked and sounded different. Infuriatingly, the sender’s mailing address was missing and the US postal service was clearly in on the wheeze because every postmark came smudged to illegibility by bureaucracy. It felt a bit like a twofold conspiracy at the time. Prague folk might call it bonus Kafka-esque.
22. 3. 2009 | read more...