Articles
[by Ken Hunt, London] As far as Germany is concerned, the sovereignty of TFF Rudolstadt must now be taken more or less as a given. It is a model of how to revitalise a local economy too. The 2007 festival reasserted such contentions many times over. Like nearly every festival I’ve ever attended, the knack lay in out-balancing longueurs with high points. That said, this year TFF RU unwound a new strand of adventurousness with part of its US-themed programming. Philip Glass’ setting of Allen Ginsberg’s poetry, Hydrogen Jukebox (in a performance from Ensemble Creativ), the Degenerate Art Ensemble and, most notably, Laurie Anderson raised the bar in that respect.
23. 7. 2007 |
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[by Ken Hunt, London] The merest mention of the bandoneon conjures images of Argentina, a sub-culture of disadvantage and disaffection, and people expressing themselves through a once sleazy dance called tango. For decades the bandoneon and tango combined to figure as the lingua franca for Carlos Gardel, were refashioned as the nuevo tango (new tango) of Astor Piazzolla and lurked in the automatic writing of Jorge Luis Borges. In Argentina the bandoneon and tango have became expressways to the nation’s soul, shorthand for longing and loss, passion and pain. The bandoneon’s tones evoke a muscular sort of heartache. Such musing may prompt memories of the composer of Astor Piazzolla’s remark that it was an instrument born in a church in Germany moved to the prostibulos – brothels – of Argentina.
16. 7. 2007 |
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In the world-music-jargon of melting-pots and cultural crossroads Israel holds a prominent place. This March, the Israeli ministery of culture invited several dozens of festival organisers and journalists for a marathon series of showcases in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Surprisingly, the opening night was focused on klezmer, a style considered by many Israelis to be a dying phenomenon of past – along with the yiddish language.
9. 7. 2007 |
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Fado’s history is kind of mysterious. Some theories says that the Portuguese sailors and the African slaves are in its base; According to some musicologists, Fado’s roots are also in the Lundun and Modinha; two kind of music styles coming from Brazil.
Fado started to appear in Lisbon in the beginning of the 19th century as an urban music and it was singed. Fado appears in a different form among the underprivileged and due to that it’s regarded as popular music. Fado was the people’s “newspaper”, it was through this song form that some news where known.
9. 7. 2007 |
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[by Ken Hunt, London] At first glance, Anna Marly’s name may ring no bells. Her original name was transliterated as Anna Betoulinsky and she was born in the Russian city of St. Petersburg on 30 October 1917 – a stormy time in Russian history, the very month of the Bolshevik uprising. Of mixed Russian and Greek parentage, her father was identified as a counter-revolutionary, was arrested and executed in 1918.
3. 7. 2007 |
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[by Ken Hunt, London] The Grateful Dead were a band that polarised opinion. How you took them over the course of their 30-year lifespan probably got entrenched. Mind you, given the band’s archival revelations, the present tense ‘take’ still seems pertinent, even all these years after their linchpin Jerry Garcia’s death in August 1995 and the band’s subsequent folding that year.
2. 7. 2007 |
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[by Ken Hunt, London] ‘Peerie’ Willie Johnson’s birthplace was the Shetland Islands. They are home to one of the most fascinating of Scotland’s indigenous folkways. The Shetlands are a cluster of islands and a cultural staging post. Head south and before you reach the Scottish mainland you come to the Orkneys. Head north and you’ll reach the Arctic Circle. Head east and you make landfall in Scandinavia. To the north-west are the Faroes and then Iceland. To the west is North America. The geographical position and isolation of the Shetlands were what created ‘Peerie’ Willie Johnson’s consummate self-taught guitar style.
1. 7. 2007 |
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[by Ken Hunt, London] The Grateful Dead turned Kris Kristofferson’s Me And Bobby McGee into a road movie. With the Full Tilt Boogie Band, her finest ever band behind her, Janis Joplin turned the song into an increasingly urgent love song. Beginning with Joplin’s acoustic strumming and voice, the song built, propelled by Clark Pierson’s drums and Ken Pearson’s Hammond organ. Then nearly three minutes into the song, Richard Bell’s piano slides in unobtrusively. From there on in, the ensemble interpretation steadily steps up its frenzied energy. Together, the whole band delivers one of the Pearl album’s – and Joplin’s – defining statements.
25. 6. 2007 |
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[by Ken Hunt, London] This review though concerns one of the Czech Republic’s great future exports. Namely Dan Bárta & Illustratosphere. Currently they are little known outside their homeland. However, in the Czech Republic Bárta’s reputation as a major vocalist is a given. If talking to Czech friends and strangers in a biased audience counts as a straw poll, then everyone knew him. The rub was that every one of them had previously failed in their attempts to buy tickets for the band’s concerts in Prague – Bárta’s home and base. It meant most of the crowd braving the showers was Czech.
25. 6. 2007 |
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[by Ken Hunt, London] As much as the films, Disney songs are the stuff of English speakers’ dreams (and nightmares if Fantasia‘s demon king counts), the common ground, the warp and weft of Anglophone culture. Hal Willner’s 1988 Stay Awake project was a fresh, ripe look at the Disney Songbook. Its cast included Los Lobos, Ken Nordine, Sinead O’Connor, Sun Ra, Bonnie Raitt, Syd Straw and Suzanne Vega. But one Stay Awake interpretation re-set the bar height beyond Sinatra’s wildest imagination.
25. 6. 2007 |
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