18. 5. 2012 | Categories: Articles,Lives
[by Ken Hunt, London] Bass player Chris Ethridge (top right in photograph), who died on 23 April 2012 in his birth town of Meridian, Mississippi was one of the sidemen whose curriculum vitae was lit with musical magic and yet overshadowed in some way by one of his early excursions into working as a musician, even though he played bass with Willie Nelson during in the 1970s and 1980s.
23. 4. 2012 | Categories: Articles,Book reviews,Giant Donut Discs
[by Ken Hunt, London] More music for a balmy life on the fictional desert island. April’s selections come courtesy of Christy Moore with Declan Sinnott, Madeleine Peyroux, Gangubai Hangal, Janis Joplin, Santana, The Spook of the Thirteenth Lock, Chumbawamba, Sheila Smith, the Grateful Dead and The Animals. Lots of Irish thoughts and thoughts about Ireland ripple through this month’s selections.
16. 4. 2012 | Categories: Articles,CD reviews
[by Ken Hunt, London] Originally written on the eve of London’s post-Valentine Peace March on 15 February 2003, this with little taken out or added.
Ace’s catalogue is a growing and contracting – call it pulsating – reminder to reinforce why I decided to specialise and limit my listening and writing habits for sanity’s sake.
2. 4. 2012 | Categories: Articles,CD reviews
[by Ken Hunt, London] Originally written on the eve of London’s post-Valentine Peace March on 15 February 2003 with little taken out or added.
Ace’s catalogue is a reminder why I decided to specialise and limit my listening but especially writing habits for sanity’s sake. Not all the people I wrote about in this piece are still alive, notably Ali Akbar Khan, one of my hugest musical influences.
19. 3. 2012 | Categories: Articles,Giant Donut Discs
[by Ken Hunt, London] Sometimes life gets in the way of unpaid writing and technical (internetmabob) matters in the way of uploading. Hence skipping a month. Not that February 2012 was so bad a month. More like the hours got rationed and paying work intruded. This month’s selections are from the UK-based band Durga Rising, the Czech vocalist-violinist Iva Bittová and Wilmar de Visser (bassist with the Nederlands Blazers Ensemble), the Carolina Chocolate Drops’ Rhiannon Giddens, Wizz Jones, El Hachemi Guerouabi, Shamim Ahmed Khan, Judy Collins, Phoebe Smith, Celia Hughes, Belinda O’Hooley and Heidi Tidow. Slaap zacht.
23. 1. 2012 | Categories: Articles,Lives
[by Ken Hunt, London] The mridangam virtuoso Palghat Mani Iyer, born 100 years ago in Palghat (the anglicised version of Palakkad) in Kerala, was one of the musical giants of the Twentieth Century. Prior to Palghat Mani Iyer, the mridangam had filled the subordinate time- and tempo-supporting role – the usual role of drums in both of the subcontinent’s art music systems and folk traditions. He was one of a generation of musicians that changed the complexion of South Indian music.
9. 1. 2012 | Categories: Articles,Giant Donut Discs
[by Ken Hunt, London] The batch of donuts has a great deal, on one hand, to do with current commissions; and on the other, choosing music that had nothing to do with work. The music is courtesy of Bessie Smith, The Kossoy Sisters with Erik Darling, Damien Barber & Mike Wilson, Rosa Imhof, Ida Schmidig-Imhof and Frieda Imhof-Betschart, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan & Party, Martin Hrbáč, The Notting Hillbillies, Mobarak and Molabakhsh Nuri, Vishwa Mohan Bhatt & Musicians of Rajasthan and Peter Case.
31. 12. 2011 | Categories: Articles,Best of Year,Feature
[by Ken Hunt, London] What a year for music! The number of events of 2011 on this list is greedy by most annual polls’ standards. One of the continual difficulties for me is that, because I am writing in a variety of periodicals and newspapers across a variety of musical genres for a number of territories, wonderful stuff just gets continually squeezed out. I mean, in this brave new world of world music, nobody wants ten roots-based Czech or Hungarian albums or Indian classical or English or even European folk albums…
19. 12. 2011 | Categories: Articles
[by Ken Hunt, London] Back in New York, Seeger enthused about what he had seen and heard. Broadside, a publication with a tiny circulation – using, as Cunningham recalled, a hand-cranked mimeo machine “we had inherited when the American Labor Party branch closed in our neighbourhood” – became a vital conduit for song. Originally published fortnightly, very soon monthly, topicality was a major goal.
5. 12. 2011 | Categories: Articles,Giant Donut Discs
[by Ken Hunt, London] The one has a lot to do with thinking about loss and renewal, life and the end of life. The music is provided by Anoushka Shankar, David Crosby, Jayanti Kumaresh, Judy Collins, Chumbawamba, Franz Josef Degenhardt, Sultan Khan and Manju Mehta, Ági Szalóki and Gergő Borlai, Davy Graham and Federico García Lorca.
