Martin Simpson with special guest Chris Wood
6. 4. 2008 | Categories: Articles,Live reviews
Folk Roots New Routes
Queen Elizabeth House, Southbank Centre, London 25 March 2008
[by Ken Hunt, London] You'd be hard-pressed to find a finer and more authoritative curator for a programme of folk music than Shirley Collins. After all, she is one of the singers who poured ideas into Britain's second Folk Revival. Under the banner Folk Roots New Routes (a title lifted from her and Davy Graham's 1964 duo album), she curated the five-day season of folk-themed concerts at London's Southbank. And, if she is no longer singing in public and on stages, quite frankly that is an irrelevance because she needs to prove nothing, having created so much of such outstanding worth already. (In any case she gave three talks on the Saturday - Romany Rai (about Gypsy singers and songs from Southern [...]
Ola Brunkert (1946-2008)
[by Ken Hunt, London] Ola Brunkert is probably the strongest contender for the drummer you've heard the most whose name you don't know. The Swedish drummer played on nearly every Abba recording from 1972 to their dissolution in 1982. Born in Örebro in Sweden on 15 September 1946, Brunkert's musical background was primarily blues and jazz. He played in a succession of groups including Slim's Blues Gang, Science Poption (who had a sizeable hit with Buckingham Place) and Opus III, in the process also building a career as a studio session musician. He was in the right place at the right time when Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson, Agnetha Fältskog and Anni-Frid Lyngstad set out to conquer the world. A rare exception to Brunkert's virtual monopoly on Abba's drum chair was Abba's folk medley [...]Michael ‘Mikey Dread’ Campbell (1954-2008)
[by Ken Hunt, London] The Jamaican musician, record producer, DJ and broadcaster died 15 March 2008. Especially during the 1980s he bridged the gap between reggae and punk, notably through his work with The Clash on their 1980 Bankrobber single, the US album Black Market Clash (1980) and their marvellously sprawling, spiky and self-indulgent Sandinista! (1989). The former JBC broadcaster had previously recorded for Joe Gibbs, Carlton Patterson, Lee Perry and Sonia Pottinger before setting up his own Dread at the Controls label on which he released Sugar Minott and Junior Murvin records and dub (the Jamaican template form stripped down to rhythm). His own albums include African Anthem and World War III.Bonnie Dobson, Monkey Chews, Chalk Farm, London, 10 March 2008
14. 3. 2008 | Categories: Articles,Live reviews
[by Ken Hunt, London] In 1969 the Toronto-born Canadian folksinger and guitarist Bonnie Dobson arrived in England and never really left. She settled in London, raised a family and eventually largely dropped out of making music. Part of the first wave of Canadian folksingers that made their names down south, she had established her name in the United States and once in England chose to disappear off the radar after 1989. More or less. Because every so often - well once in 2007 and 2008 - she has put her head above the parapet. When she sings you go, even if it is a dimly lit, out of the way place above a pub in Chalk Farm.
Time and geography have draped a veil over much of what she did in the early 1960s. It was extremely hard to track down her early recordings outside in Europe in those [...]
Henrietta Yurchenco (1916-2007)
14. 3. 2008 | Categories: Articles,Lives
[by Ken Hunt, London] The folklorist, folk and ethnic music collector, author, radio broadcaster and producer Henrietta Yurchenco died in Manhattan on 10 December 2007 at the age of 91. She was one of the great links between the racially integrated and progressive-minded US folk scene of the 1930s and 1940s and the folk boom of the 1950s and 1960s, Over the course of her long life in music - the title of her autobiography Around the World in 80 Years (2003) was apt - she was a shaping influence in what people understood by folk music and a kingpin of ethnomusicology and world music.
Born Henrietta Weiss in New Haven, Connecticut on 22 March 1916, her parents - Yitzak (Edward) and Rebecca Weiss - were immigrants from the Ukraine. Both of them sang and her father played mandolin, so there [...]
Buddy Miles (1947-2008)
[by Ken Hunt, London] Buddy Miles was best known as a powerhouse drummer, most famously for his work with Jimi Hendrix on Band of Gypsys - the ensemble with bassist Billy Cox - that followed the Jimi Hendrix Experience. It was a short-lived band and the 1970 album, drawing on a New Year's live set recorded on the cusp of 1969-1970, polarised opinion. The memory most people will have of him was his sound-turned-machine drumming on Machine Gun on Band of Gypsys. Thanks to Coppola's Apocalypse Now, the sound of helicopter rotor blades may have eclipsed the stutter of machine guns in people's Vietnam soundtrack but there was once a time when the machine gun was the sonic image of modern warfare - however it was used, for instance as it appeared in Kubrick's Paths of Glory. Fittingly yet [...]Ron Edwards (1930-2008)
21. 2. 2008 | Categories: Articles,Lives
[by Ken Hunt, London] The Australian folklorist, illustrator, author and one of the pioneers of the Australian Folksong Revival Ron Edwards died on 5 January 2008. He wrote and published extensively over his lifetime on folksong, bushcraft, story telling and linguistics. Simply put, he was a hugely important and influential figure for Australian folk music and anthropology. From 1984 until 2007 he was president of the Australian Folklore Society and edited the Australian Folklore Society Journal. He also wrote widely about Australian folkways, whether Australian folksong, bushcraft or the aboriginal cultures of Australia and the Torres Straits. A skilled painter, he illustrated many of his books himself
Edwards was born in Geelong, Victoria on 10 October 1930. He was raised in an almost [...]
Where the bee stings there sting I – Thao Nguyen & The Get Down Stay Down’s We Brave Bee Stings And All
21. 2. 2008 | Categories: Articles,CD reviews
"I have seen fear and convenience/I have never glimpsed romance."
[by Ken Hunt, London] Thao Nguyen's We Brave Bee Stings And All, produced by Tucker Martine (The Decemberists, Mudhoney and Sufjan Stevens), is one of those fine vehicles that hurtle down the turnpike causing the listener to do a double take or three. On a casual listening or initially you'll get carried along with a banjo-driven song like Swimming Pools without taking in the lyrical context. But then a line like "We splash our eyes with chemicals" drops like bait. And in introducing ideas of The Beauty Myth kind, it plants a tiny barb securely in your mouth before reeling you in.
Instrumentally and vocally, The Get Down Stay Down - Frank Stewart on guitars, piano and organ, Adam Thompson on bass, piano and a beastie [...]
Ági Szalóki, Hungarian Cultural Centre, London, 16 January 2008
27. 1. 2008 | Categories: Articles,Live reviews
[by Ken Hunt, London] Hungary is one of Europe's most productive hothouses for truly revelatory female singers. Once upon a time in Western Europe Márta Sebestyén was all we knew of Hungarian singers. She was our Hungarian sun and moon, earth and horizon. Mind you, starting at the top was not necessarily a bad thing. But it was only getting the chance to see her fly vocally in concert that it truly hit home how world-class a singer she was. In my experience, it is in the live situation that Hungarian music truly reveals its depth and its heights. That applies to most music with a living, beating heart. Despite the generational gap and the apparent differences in their music and approaches, Sebestyén Márta and Szalóki Ági are names fit to speak in the same breath.
With the political [...]
