16. 8. 2010 | Categories: Articles,Giant Donut Discs
[by Ken Hunt, London] More boffo music from the rain-soaked rock, as ever reflecting work streams and passions. Lisa Knapp, John B. Spencer, Béla Fleck, Zakir Hussain and Edgar Meyer, Ökrös with Ági Szalóki, Element of Crime, Toots and the Maytals, Miles Davis, Pentangle, Asha Bhosle and R.D. Burman, and the Kronos Quartet with Alim & Fargana Qasimov are the month’s turn-ons.
10. 8. 2010 | Categories: Articles,Lives
[by Ken Hunt, London] “When I met him,” says Mike Heron of the Incredible String Band of Nazir Ali Jairazbhoy, “he was working at the School of Oriental and African Studies, I think. He was teaching there. How I came across him was that [Elektra record producer] Joe Boyd introduced us to odd songs and things and Robin [Williamson] suggested we might have a sitar player on Mad Hatter’s Song. He actually played on Mad Hatter’s Song credited as ‘Soma’ because he asked not to have his name used, I don’t really know why. He probably had some contractual thing going. It says sitar by Soma but it’s actually him.”
17. 7. 2010 | Categories: Articles,Giant Donut Discs
[by Ken Hunt, London]
Swing 51‘s Giant Donut Discs® column gathered musical snapshots from all manner of people. These were Julian Dawson’s GDDs as published in Swing 51 issue 13/14 with annotations and updates. This is one in our series of Donuts from the vaults. For information about Julian’s musical activities, visit his official website at the bottom of his Donuts. (And how frequently does a writer get to write that?) In April 2010 the German-language edition of his biography of the pianist Nicky Hopkins appeared.
17. 7. 2010 | Categories: Articles,Lives
[by Ken Hunt, London] The Benares-style tabla artist Chandrakant Shantaram Kamat was one of the mainstays of radio and recital in Pune. Between 1956 and 1991 he was an All India Radio (Pune) staff musician and he also did 50 years’ service at the Sawai Gandharva festival. Over the course of his career, he accompanied successive generations of top-notch principal vocalist, instrumentalist and dancers.
17. 7. 2010 | Categories: Articles,Giant Donut Discs
[by Ken Hunt, London] This time around on the desert island’s solar powered phonogram we have Trembling Bells, Buddhadev Das Gupta, Andy Cutting, Maggie Holland, Polkaholix, Jackson Browne, Shirley & Dolly Collins, Eliza Carthy and Norma Waterson and The Bells of St. Margaret’s, Westminster (under Tower Captain George Doughty). Plus for a limited period on the internet, July 2010’s special offer, a bonus donut from David Lindley and Wally Ingram.
21. 6. 2010 | Categories: Articles,Giant Donut Discs
[by Ken Hunt, London] This time around on the desert island phonogram we have Amira Medunjanin and Merima Ključo, Dave Swarbrick, Bea Palya, Elizabeth Cotten, Leonard Cohen, Marlene Dietrich, Vishwa Mohan Bhatt & Matt Malley, Kraftwerk, Jerry Garcia, Leonard Cohen, and Illa Arun, Sapna Awasthi & Kunal Ganjawalla.
21. 6. 2010 | Categories: Articles,Lives
[by Ken Hunt, London] Lucy Loes, the well-known Ostend dialect folksinger and the so-called ‘Queen of the Fisherman’s Song’ (‘de Koningin van het Visserslied’) died on 17 June 2010 in Bredene in the Belgian province of West Flanders at the age of 82. She was born on 24 January 1928 in Ostend (Oostende) on the Belgian coast where she grew up imbibing the local songs sung in the local dialect. The region had yet to become the hub of the tourism or a major Channel ferry port with fishing as a major local industry.
21. 6. 2010 | Categories: Articles,Live reviews
[by Ken Hunt, London] 
Ali Akbar Khan shuffled on stage with a walking stick, reasonable given he was one week away from 81. By night’s end, all memories of the frail character that had mounted the dais at the concert’s beginning had vanished. Swapan Chaudhuri, one of the most exceptional tabla players alive, provided the percussive accompaniment – a job a bit like catching eels with bare hands. He has an uncanny knack of being able to match and bat back this sarodist’s glorious spontaneity. Alam Khan was the second, junior sarodist but he coped brilliantly with his father’s senior waywardness.
7. 5. 2010 | Categories: Articles,Giant Donut Discs
[by Ken Hunt, London] Even though this month’s choices are skewed and heavily informed by volumes 7-9 in Smithsonian Folkways’ Music of Central Asia series, in terms of preference, as usual, there is no order implied and no order to be inferred. As ever, the common link to May 2010’s GDDs is that this is music that stuck around. This month we meet, greet and embrace Jackson Browne David Lindley, Barb Jungr, the Kronos Quartet with Alim & Fargana Qasimov, Asha Bhosle, Les Byrds, Sirojiddin Juraev, Homayun Sakhi and Rahul Sharma, Jiři Kleňha and Neneh Cherry and Youssou N’Dour.
7. 5. 2010 | Categories: Articles,Feature
[by Ken Hunt, London] London’s National Portrait Gallery is currently offering two marvellous exhibitions of Indian art. Admission is free and while they may not appear to cast much light of the subcontinent’s musical arts, amid the huqqa smokers, the military figures, nobility and royalty, there are a few correlations between Indian portraiture and aspects of the subcontinent’s music to interest the musically minded.
