Susan Reed (1927-2010)
7. 5. 2010 | Categories: Articles,Lives
[by Ken Hunt, London] Folk music everywhere goes through changes of style and presentation. Little is immune to change. That applies whether we are considering traditional or revivalist forms. After all, everything starts from somewhere before going somewhere else. Very little is fixed in a stone. The US folksinger Susan Reed, who died on 25 April 2010 in Long Island, New York State, had a relatively short-lived but important part to play in the East Coast folk scene of the second half of the 1940s into the 1950s.
Born Susan Catherine Reed in Columbia, South Carolina on 11 January 1926, she grew up in a theatrical family.
[by Ken Hunt, London] Ralph McTell is one of Britain’s foremost commentators on the national condition using demotic idioms – folk, blues, ragtime. Rather like Wolf Biermann, Franz-Josef Degenhardt and Christof Stählin in Germany (and then add your own regional or national candidates), he has depicted his homeland through music, through songs, that meanings of which seem immediately apparent but which may well prove to be more eely or oblique.
[by Ken Hunt, London] April and another month in music rolls around and brings ten snapshots of what got played oodles. This divine bumper pack of GDDs comes courtesy of Broadlahn, David Lindley & Wally Ingram, Fred Astaire, Reem Kelani, Rajan Spolia, the Grateful Dead, Bonnie Dobson, Peerie Willie Johnson, Abida Parveen and Mac Rebennack.
[by Ken Hunt, London] March’s stuff and nonsense comes from Mickey Hart and chums, Joni Mitchell, The Carolina Chocolate Drops, Bob Bralove and Henry Kaiser, Wajahat Khan and the Medici String Quartet, The Six and Seven-Eights String Band, Jo Ann Kelly, Dillard & Clark, Farida Khanum and Sohan Nath ‘Sapera’.
[by Ken Hunt, London] This month’s prime quality stuff offers up some seriously magnificent music. This time round on the Banquet Isle with the hole in the middle, Joseph Spence and the Pinder Family, Steeleye Span, Emily Portman, Chumbawamba, Jenny Crook and Henry Sears, Eddi Reader, Lennie Tristano, Kate & Anna McGarrigle, Incredible String Band and KK are serving up the goodies.
[by TC Lejla Bin Nur, Ljubljana] Bonjour (Good day) is Rachid Taha’s eighth studio album since he started his solo path in 1990. During this time he had released at least two Best Ofs, a hefty pile of remixes, extras & vinyl for collectors and a few concert albums and projects, notably the world-wide resounding success 1, 2, 3, Soleils with Khaled and Faudel in 1998. Before all that, way back in 1980’s, he also recorded about two albums and a half with his band Carte de Sejour. 
[by Ken Hunt, London] Peggy Seeger was one of people like Ramblin’ Jack Elliott and Big Bill Broonzy and Cisco Houston whose records introduced Britain to an authentic lexicon of Americana. That word didn’t exist in the 1950s but if it had those musicians would have pretty much defined it.
[by Ken Hunt, London] Vienna is a hothouse of regional musical idioms. And Trude Mally, who died on 4 June 2009, aged 81 in the Austrian capital, mastered two of the Vienna region’s three principal indigenous and typically Viennese folk forms. She sang Weanalieder (Wienerlieder in standard German, literally ‘Viennese Songs’ or songs sung in Viennese dialect) and Dudler, namely, the Viennese variant of yodelling. The third form, incidentally, is Schrammelmusik, an instrumental and vocal form named after the family that originated it.
The “greatest sarod maker” – sarod maestro Amjad Ali Khan 
[by Ken Hunt, London] Who said most months’ Giant Donut Discs reflect deadlines and commissions with a pinch of music for pleasure? This month’s reflects twinges of pain as well. A little pain goes a long way. This time around, we feast on Davy Graham, Wenzel, Llio Rhydderch and (Fernhill’s) Tomas Williams, Achim Reichel, Sonu Nigham & Madhushree, Billie Holiday, The Fisher Family, Los Lobos, Shirley Collins and Big Brother & The Holding Company.
