Articles
[by Ken Hunt, London] A native Californian, the singer and songwriter and one-time member of the Kingston Trio folk group, John Stewart was born in San Diego on 5 September 1939. Stewart’s album California Bloodlines (1969) and Cannons in the Rain (1973) were major additions to a literature of America in song. Major milestones too. His Mother Country typifies the reflective nature of his finest songs. Like the work of the Canadian songwriter Ian Tyson, Mother Country..
27. 1. 2008 |
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[by Ken Hunt, London] The Telugu singer, dancer-choreographer and actress Tangutoori Surya Kumari – also rendered Suryakumari – was born in Rajamundry in November 1925. She became part of the Raj-era independence movement against the British that eventually triumphed with the end of colonial rule in 1947. She was a child-actress in Telugu films as early as 1937 when a part was written for her in Vipranarayana. Thereafter she juggled cinematic acting and playback singing roles..
8. 1. 2008 |
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[by Ken Hunt, London] Back in the 1960s, our understanding of the world’s varied musical traditions was woefully ignorant by today’s standards. If buying American blues or bluegrass albums was an expensive undertaking involving the adventure of a day’s expedition to nearest big city or crossing fingers or sending money to a mail order specialist, maybe in another country, then tracking down what was then called “International folk” – like Japonese court music – was similar to shopping on the moon. It could take decades to track down some choice morsel
8. 1. 2008 |
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[by Ken Hunt, London] Founded in 1968 in Czechoslovakia, the Plastic People of the Universe finally made their UK début in January 2007. No founding members played but the spirit of the band that commandeered its name from a Mothers of Invention track remained intact and strong. The Communist regime vilified the “psychedelic band of Prague” nicely captured in…
27. 12. 2007 |
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[by Ken Hunt, London] Getting paid for something you’d be doing anyway is a rare privilege. Making
a decent living doing it is an altogether different mater, which is
why we present the fine things from 2007 that made our lives finer and
nourished our minds. These are the things that gave us the greatest
pleasure musically speaking.
14. 12. 2007 |
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[by Ken Hunt, London] Chanson is often construed as literate song. Even German, the language that brought us Schubert’s Lieder, treats chanson as a class apart from Lied. Just like Czech invokes chanson’s spirit in the phrase Česky Šanson. Chanson offers other species of commentary on the human condition and for one of the finest examples of chanson’s otherness, hearken to the exemplary work of Fran‡ois Béranger. He made his mark as what can only be described as a protest chansonnier.
14. 12. 2007 |
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[by Ken Hunt, London] The photographer and technical diver Keith Morris went missing off Alderney, one of the Channel Islands in the English Channel, on 17 June 2005
14. 12. 2007 |
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[by Ken Hunt, London] Likely as not, few of you reading this will have ever heard of Alain Daniélou. In terms of mystery and influence, Daniélou was among the 20 most influential characters from twentieth-century ethnomusicology and one of the characters who signposted the way into the world music labyrinth. He worked on such consciousness-shaping series and volumes as Anthologie de la Musique de l’Inde for Serge Moreux’ Ducretet-Thomson label, Religious Music of India for Moe Asch’s Folkways label, Folk Music of India for Columbia and the Unesco Anthology of the Orient for Karl Vötterlee’s Bärenreiter Verlag/Musicaphon.
27. 11. 2007 |
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[by Ken Hunt, London] In a hoary old quote that pops up in Patrick Humphries’ The Many Lives of Tom Waits, Waits, that lovable whey-faced geezer in black with a pork-pie hat, quips, “Marcel Marceau gets more airplay than I do!” Things may have improved marginally in the meantime – Marceau dying in 2007 will have given Waits a chance to cut in – but Waits has proved tenacious when it comes to avoiding anything so vulgar as a whiffette of becoming a popular singing star. Waits is a man of many threads. He has regaled us with many mythologies, mostly hand-woven and threadbare enough for the unwary dupe to be taken in and buy him that figurative drink out of pity.
Suckers! To call Waits a singer-songwriter would be like damning him with faint praise
27. 11. 2007 |
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[by Ken Hunt, London] To my mind, Martin Simpson’s Prodigal Son was more than one of the finest releases of 2007 – it was the finest album of his recording career, trumping even The Bramble Briar (2001), also made for Topic. And he made his first album, Golden Vanity for Trailer back in 1976, so the lad’s been around for some while. Explaining why Simpson has remained such a signal feature in my soundscape would degenerate into a wallow of words. Suffice it to say that his instrumental playing is impeccable, much like his taste in instruments
14. 11. 2007 |
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