Rolling Thunder/Shoshone Invocation into The Main Ten (Playing In The Band) - Mickey Hart

In 1972 I clapped eyes on Kelley/Mouse’s Rolling Thunder cover artwork in a record rack in the tiny Virgin record store at Notting Hill Gate. It shone out that in some way it was Grateful Dead-related. It turned out that it was the Dead’s absentee drummer Mickey Hart’s solo debut. The opening track sequence draws on and draws in so many threads. Shoshone shaman Rolling Thunder, marimbas from Mike and Nancy Hinton, tabla from Alla Rakha and Zakir Hussain, the whole Calif rock caboodle participating on The Main Ten - John Cipollina and Bob Weir on electric guitars, Stephen Stills on electric bass guitar, Hart on drums, Carmelo Garcia on timbales and the Tower Of Power Horns. That’s why I opted to talk on the subject of Mickey Hart when my fellow writer friend Gavin Martin invited me to talk about anything I wanted at Talking Musical Revolutions 8. From Rolling Thunder (GDCD 4009, 1972)

Help Me - Joni Mitchell

A long-running email dialogue with a rather special vocalist planted Help Me in my head and then the song kept rattling around. Potentially, Help Me is ghazal-like in its layered ambiguity. On hearing Help Me at the time of its release, it had seemed very much a woman’s song. Then under the influence of Iqbal Bano and Farida Khanum and a nazm here and a ghazal there, I got to thinking about how gloriously open to re-interpretation Help Me could be, once going beyond the tale of one of Joni Mitchell’s romances that failed to work out. And more importantly, how it might be twisted to reveal new facets and ambiguities with a further turn or two.

The arrangement begins with trademark Mitchell guitar chords (those tunings that always caused a double-take or two) before the band storms in. Her voice on this recording is as smooth as a silken scarf being run through a gold ring. As songs go, it is both as sheer as silk and barbed. As Help Me exits in one channel, in comes Free Man In Paris (another fine song) in the other. One day Joni Mitchell’s Asylum-era is going to get the treatment and sound it deserves. (What is it with the CD’s flat, gated (?) drum sound?) From one of her greatest works Court & Spark (Asylum 7559-60593-2, 1974)

Snowden’s Jig (Genuine Negro Jig) - Carolina Chocolate Drops

It’s always gratifying for the year to start with a humdinger of a concert that really sets the bar high. The Carolina Chocolate Drops did that with their Bush Hall, Shepherds Bush, London at the beginning of February 2010. I was born with two-left feet but when I hear something like Snowden’s Jig I really do wish for some sort of painless transplant that would enable me to do the soft-shoe shuffle. From Genuine Negro Jig (Nonesuch 7559-79839-8, 2010)

Red Queen - Bob Bralove and Henry Kaiser

During his tenure with the Grateful Dead until they folded their hand following Jerry Garcia’s death in 1995, keyboardist-composer Bob Bralove’s role gradually evolved. He and guitarist Henry Kaiser have taken as their starting points on this album an assortment of improvisations that Bralove fashioned in Grateful Dead concerts.

Explaining the project for this here website, Bralove lifts the latch to say, “Ultraviolet Licorice was a recording that was inspired by the back-up material I did for the drums and space parts of GD shows. By the end of the GD I was playing tracks and playing live as segues between drums and space. I recorded all of those performances isolated from the band. I could record just what I was playing to inspire the band to improvise. Henry and I looked at that material which was recorded during the last six years of GD shows and said, ‘Why don’t we use this to inspire us?’ So we went into Fantasy Studios in Berkeley, CA in July of 2008, dropped all of those recordings onto the multi-track and recorded live to them. On that session I played acoustic piano (Steinway Concert Grand) and Henry played electric and acoustic guitars. It was a one day session and a wonderful time.”

Red Queen differs from much of the material on Ultraviolet Licorice. It could almost be a throw-back to Paul Kantner’s Blows Against The Empire. At 2:28, it is the shortest piece on the album and therefore closer in length to Bralove’s Quicksilver Rain, Wind Before The Storm, Urban Twilight and the Bralove/Tom Constanten composition Cowboy Sunset on Bralove’s solo piano album, the delightful Stories in Black and White (BLove 1001, 2007).

Today, the Red Queen conjured in my mind is the Red Queen of Through The Looking-Glass. Tomorrow, she may be a character in a card game. The day after that, who knows? From Ultraviolet Licorice (BLove no number, 2009)

For more information about its participants go to http://bobbralove.com/music.html and http://www.henrykaiser.net/

Raag Desh - Quintet for Sarod and String Quartet - Wajahat Khan and the Medici String Quartet

Desh, also known as Des, is a late evening raga. It is very popular, it is much performed and, personally speaking, it is one of my favourites for the vistas it opens up. The sarodist Wajahat Khan, one of maestro Imrat Khan’s sons, places Desh (it means ‘country’ twinned with ‘homeland’) in a very different landscape to the ones that most interpreters have placed it in. The reason for that is simple: Paul Robertson (violin), Stephen Morris (violin), Ivo-Jan van der Werff (viola) and Anthony Lewis (cello). Collectively, the Medici Quartet. There is such sensitivity apparent here. Khan breaks the performance into four movements: Prayers of Love, Monsoon Memories, Romantic Journey and Celebration. The effect is pastoral and elevates the suite to amongst the highest achievements in East-West classical collaboration. From Wajahat Khan and the Medici String Quartet (Koch 3-6996-2, 2000)

Clarinet Marmalade - The Six and Seven-Eights String Band

The Carolina Chocolate Drops’s gig jolted me into revisiting my past. I thank them for that. The Six and Seven-Eights String Band of New Orleans, though from a parallel tradition to the one the Drops are exploring so ably, could be their godfathers. They are probably more or less forgotten now. More’s the pity. Apparently string band jazz was popular around 1910-1925 in New Orleans but little of it was ever recorded. The Six and Seven-Eights date from that era. They were long gone when that marvellous mandolin maestro David Grisman alerted me to the existence of their solitary Folkways album. Like Dave Apollon, they became part of my back-education.

There is a total joie de vivre - surely the right expression for a New Orleans-based band of such character - to their music. Credits: William Kleppinger (mandolin), Frank ‘Red’ Mackie (string bass), Bernie Shields (steel guitar), Dr. Edmond Souchon (guitar); produced by Frederic Ramsey Jnr and Samuel Barclay Charters. Smithsonian Folkways will do you a copy as part of the archival service. From The Six and Seven-Eights String Band of New Orleans (Smithsonian Folkways Recordings FA 2671, 1956)

The downloadable liner notes are at: http://media.smithsonianfolkways.org/liner_notes/folkways/FW02671 .pdf

Black Rat Swing - Jo Ann Kelly

It is strange how things can happen. Jo Ann Kelly (1944-1990) was, to my mind, the finest and most natural female blues artist that England ever produced. Her self-titled Epic album was reviewed in one of the first issues of Rolling Stone that I ever saw. She was somebody I would have loved to have interviewed and learned from. We never talked to each other. The irony was that we were frequently tens of yards apart during our lives.

After she died in October 1990 there was a bash to commemorate her in a pub - the Royal Oak maybe - close to Clapham North tube station in London. The following Sunday I visited my parents in Mitcham on the north Surrey-south London border. As usual, I relayed what I had been up to and mentioned reviewing a musical wake for Folk Roots for a blues singer who had died way too early called Jo Ann Kelly. My mother commented that one of her neighbours five or so doors down had also been called Jo Ann, had been a musician and that she too had died recently. My mother continued that Jo Ann’s partner was called Pete Emery and talked about Jo Ann cycling off with her daughter on the ‘dickey seat’ - a Hunt family joke from my mother’s family’s Singer car’s pannier seat days (sorry about the Saxon genitive mouthful) - of her bicycle, taking her to school. At that point we realised that we were talking about the same person, doors down on the street that I had left two decades before. Never managed to find Pete Emery in afterwards when I knocked. Then when my mother’s illness caused me to move back in, events overtook. It never happened then either.

One of the people I met at Jo Ann’s farewell bash was John Pilgrim, master of the Viper-ish washboard, whip-speed anecdote and quip alike. If I could bottle Pilgro’s recollections and finagle a monopoly on incontinence pads, I would be a very rich man. John plays washboard on Black Rat Swing, a Soho pick-up (honest, it’s a great story) and pre-Pentangle Mike Piggot plays fiddle, the lass sings and Pete bubbles away on electric guitar. It is an epitome of groove. From Do It & more (Hatman 2023, 2008)

www.manhatonrecords.com

The Radio Song - Dillard & Clark

Dillard & Clark - Doug Dillard and Gene Clark - were an act that never achieved their full potential yet what they delivered on their two albums - The Fantastic Expedition of Dillard & Clark (1968) and Through The Morning, Through The Night (1969) - was truly spectacular. The warmth of the harmonies and the strength of the musical support conjure glowing memories. The Radio Song is a performance that I associate with a visit to Collett’s in New Oxford Street at the time of the album’s UK release. Hans Fried - who, with Gill Cook, was one of the lurking presences in that record shop - and I got stuck into good-natured banter about Dillard & Clark and the Flying Burrito Brothers.

The interwoven strands of Dillard & Clark’s voices, the chop-chord and burbling mandolin, steady rhythm guitar and the sly introduction of bowed string bass create the sort of combination you can spend hours - and years - unpicking. From The Fantastic Expedition of Dillard & Clark/Through The Morning, Through The Night (Mobility Fidelity Sound Lab MFCD 791, undated)

Read more about Dillard & Clark at Crawdaddy!’s online presence:
http://www.crawdaddy.com/index.php/2010/02/02/the-fantastic-exped ition-of-dillard-and-clark/?utm_source=NL&utm_medium=email&utm_ca mpaign=100209

Bale Bale - Farida Khanum

Farida Khanum is a Punjabi treasure. That assessment should apply to both sides of the Wagah Border. Regrettably, there is a really unfortunate snootiness on the border’s Indian side towards Pakistan-based artists. This is a piece of Punjabi tradition, praising the gait of Punjabi womankind. Talking the walk, if you prefer. “Bale Bale” - maybe “bole bole” comes closer for Anglophone ears - means, “Say, say”, “Tell, tell”, that sort of thing in the scheme of Punjabi-ness. No doubt there are better recordings of her doing this staple in her repertoire but I really do not care one iota. Don’t be put off by the la-la-la introduction.

There is an ambience and presence to this recording (and her other seven performances on it) that distils so much. This version, the (untranslated) French notes state, comes from the film Pardesi (’Stranger’ or ‘Foreigner’) after an idea by Martina Catella. It’s a simple song with harmonium, hand-drum and handclap accompaniment. In its simplicity it says so much about the Punjabi character and the perils of division. It’s a very optimistic song. From Pakistan - Musiques du Pendjab, Vol. 2 - “Le Ghazal” (Arion ARN 64301, 1995)

Phagan Ka Lehra - Sohan Nath ‘Sapera’

I should apologise for this choice but I’m jolly well not going to. Advance copies of my Rough Guide to India arrived and, like one does, I played it. This piece of Punjabi folk music taps into Ludhiana’s Rajasthani migrant worker influx - think Mexican bracero field workers at whatever picking time in California in particular to get a US parallel - and consequential cultural cross-fertilisation.

Shefali Bhushan’s Beat of India from which this snake-charmer music derives is one of the truly great labels promoting India’s folk arts. If there is one more active when it comes to promoting India’s folk music, pray tell. This is music with dirt under its nails, not folkloristic park entertainment or ‘gentrified’ folklore. From The Rough Guide to India (World Music Network RGNET1231CD, 2010)

Context from Aparna Banerji at http://www.tribuneindia.com/2010/20100117/spectrum/book6.htm

I Bid You Goodnight - Joseph Spence and the Pinder Family

Manumission is a ‘big’ word in several senses. It means a release from slavery. (The Shorter Oxford Dictionary finesses its meaning better if more wordily.) The day I first heard I Bid You Goodnight, a piece of musical magnificence if ever, upstairs in Collet’s folk department in New Oxford Street in London was a day my life changed forever. It was nothing less than a musical manumission. That Nonesuch album, The Real Bahamas, was mind-blowing.

I Bid You Goodnight was more blues, more gospel than I had ever heard from anyone in my life. The weaving voices were revelatory, a similar sort of impossibility to The Watersons. It was the stuff of dreams that necessitates re-calibrating and re-tuning your ears. (All the while delighting in so doing.) I Bid You Goodnight is a performance that needs repeated doses - not to get the gist of, but to imbibe over and over the better to appreciate it.

Later, I met Jody Stecher and Peter Siegel who had recorded Joseph Spence and the Pinder Family in the Bahamas in 1965 for that Nonesuch LP. (The credits were misspelled ‘Pindar’ on the original vinyl Polydor Special edition of the LP that I tracked down in Woolworth’s at Tooting Broadway for twenty-five pence, as they had been on the US Nonesuch edition.) Still later, Peter took me and my daughter to the exact spot near the Brooklyn Bridge where he had taken Joseph Spence. A hallowed place, one might say.

When I interviewed Jody Stecher, he told me about a second take of I Bid You Goodnight that had never been issued because of a glitch because of people pressing in too close to the microphone. That second version, the one here, now cleaned up, eventually appeared in 1992. It differs from the Nonesuch ‘original’ the way folk music should differ. (If you want something pretty much replicated exactly from performance to performance, opt for the Eagles.) For Giant Donut Discs I am taking the Rounder version.

For reasons of the heart, mind and body, the Nonesuch version, however, would be one of my all-time Desert Island Discs. From The Spring of Sixty-Five (Rounder CD 2114, 1992)

Who’s The Fool Now? - Steeleye Span

Around 1968-69 I seem to remember hearing this song sung by The Home Brew (Michael Clifton, John Fordham and Ray Worman) on the wireless. Maybe I’m conflating events but in my memory the session also had Shirley Collins singing. I placed plastic against Bakelite and recorded the broadcast on a Phillips open-reel. I have no idea what happened to that tape but Steeleye Span’s rendition brought memories flooding back.

The song is a lustrous commentary on the state of inebriation - or altered states. Or maybe merely an observation on absurdity and a world in which a hare chases a hound, a mouse chases a cat, cheese eats a rat and so on. It opens disc one of the CD and DVD. From Live at a distance (Park Records PRKCD104, 2009)

More information at: www.parkrecords.com

Fine Silica - Emily Portman

Emily Portman’s reaching for notes on Fine Silica evokes in me memories of Annie Briggs and Lal Waterson. Exquisite. From The Glamoury (Furrow Records FUR002, 2010)

More information at: www.emilyportman.co.uk

Pickle - Chumbawamba

I was writing some lines about the first time I heard Anne Briggs’ Hazards of Love in a record shop and the way the information on the back of an LP or an EP was a whole world of information to be lapped up in those pre-internet days. The following day Chumbawamba’s newie landed on the doorstep and rather than plopping ABCDEFG on the digital Dansette and listening to it, I deliberately took the package down the Nelson to read the notes before playing the CD. Much as I had done with Hazards of Love back when.

Loads of the stories in the notes were ones I knew but I’d never seen them assembled in such wantonly redolent order. Reading them felt like it used to do when one was spinning the dial on the radio and slipping and sliding between domestic radio stations, static and faraway signals. The tales embrace Brecht, Metallica, the Devil’s Interval and Shostakovich. Good company, eh?

Pickle is inspired by a retort of Martin Simpson’s about “people who want to keep music faithfully traditional, want to preserve it and not alter it.” Martin’s reply: “That’s not music” - pause - “that’s a pickle.”

Coda. Since these are my donuts, the Chumbas’ Hammer, Stirrup & Anvil about Shostakovich’s ear and what we get to hear gets shoehorned in here as a Bonus Donut. From ABCDEFG (No Masters NMCD33 and Westpark WP87186, 2010)

More information at: www.chumba.com

Kwela Ceilidh - Jenny Crook and Henry Sears

Certain things do not transplant well. The new soil they attempt to grow in changes them. British folk clubs, Irish pub sessions and Hungarian táncház usually become different elsewhere once uprooted from their native habitat. The Herschell Arms is a freehouse in Park Street, Slough (as in the sly Robb Johnson song, She Lives In Slough, concerning a certain Slough-based royal). Let me contradict myself. The Herschell Arms was an Irish pub on in British soil that bust clichés, at least at the time that The Herschel Sessions was cut.

It includes live session recordings by Broderick (Luke Daniels, Clare Garrard, Colm Murphy and Don Oeters), Jenny Crook and Henry Sears, Cunásc (Paul Curran, Eric Faithful, Brian Hurst and Roger Philby), Herschel Street (Alan Burton, James Fagan, Steve Hunt and Nancy Kerr) and Don Mescall.

Kwela Ceilidh is a string duet for harp and mandolin by Jenny Crook and Henry Sears. Crook was apparently a finalist for the BBC’s Young Tradition Award in 1992 and contributed music to David Attenborough’s The Private Life of Plants while Sears has done sessions for Alison Moyet and the BBC. The tune just jumps out at the listener. I cannot comment on the continued availability of The Herschel Sessions CD but I found a reference to a version of the same tune (that I haven’t heard) as being on their Chasing the Dawn. This, however, would appear to have the tune’s first recorded excursion - happy to be contradicted - and highly effective it is too. From The Herschel Sessions (OSCD003, 2000)

More information at: www.jennifercrook.com

Ae Fond Kiss - Eddi Reader

Adding to a month’s listening on Burns Night in January 2010 without adding something from the Scots Bard would be remiss. Eddi Reader’s rendition of Ae Fond Kiss (’One Fond Kiss’ in Scots) is sublime, the way pain can be. But especially the pain of parting.

“Ae fond kiss, and then we sever/Ae fareweel [farewell], alas, for ever” - Burns’ opening lines are so simple and yet so telling. As songs of separation go, it knows few rivals in any language to my ken. Ae Fond Kiss, take it to your bosom and it will mean different things at different times in your life. Ae Fond Kiss is a love song of the profoundest ilk. Its line “For to see her was to love her” communicates a sense of loss and unconditional love and exerts a pull as few songs or pieces of poetry ever achieve. A song of love and parting for all seasons. From The Songs of Robert Burns (Rough Trade RTRADCDX097, 2008)

C Minor Complex - Lennie Tristano

Lennie Tristano (1919-1978) made piano solos maybe the like of which nobody had ever heard before. Here he is flying and delivering new lessons not only in how to play but in how to listen to jazz in 1962. I would imagine The New Tristano has lost not one jot of immediacy and impact down the years. Listening to what each hand is doing is a lesson in itself. This is the sort of music that parallels what was happening with the marvellous Jacques Loussier and his explorations of jazz from an alternative perspective on his trio’s Play Bach albums. (Remember how Play Bach No. 3 (Decca SSL 40 507, 1959) and Play Bach No. 5 (Decca SSL 40.205 S, 1964) felt?) From The New Tristano (Atlantic Masters 8122-77676-2 - the CD edition gives 1962 again)

Matapedia - Kate & Anna McGarrigle

Kate McGarrigle wrote songs. Anna McGarrigle wrote songs. Matapedia’s wonderful lyrics leave you guessing which sister wrote which bit of the song. Matapedia, the album, is one of their masterpieces. Whether individually or collectively Kate & Anna McGarrigle wrote some of the finest songs in the English and French languages and bequeathed them to posterity. Too close to Kate McGarrigle’s death to write anything more analytical. From Matapedia (Hannibal HNCD 1394, 1996)

Ken Hunt’s obituary of Kate McGarrigle in The Scotsman of 23 January 2010 is at http://news.scotsman.com/obituaries/Kate-McGarrigle.6007824.jp

The First Girl I Loved - The Incredible String Band

January 2010 saw me delivering an article about the Incredible String Band’s first five LPs. None of the re-mastered albums were available as I wrote that piece for R2. The day I was due to ping the article off, The Incredible String Band and 5000 Spirits landed on the doormat. 5000 Spirits played while doing the last-minute tweaks. Joe Boyd and John Wood - respectively, the producer and sound engineer on the original Elektra sessions - have done wonders with its master. First Girl I Loved, the last track on the album, left its mark yet again.

The remastered Robin Williamson was singing very clearly, “Well, I never slept with you/Though we must have made love a thousand times” a few days later when my daughter rang, prompting a startled “What are you listening to?” Strange the power of words and song. The song is eely and ends as an epistle. Robin was 23, coming on 24, when the album on which this appeared came out.

He took the song to new places subsequently, expanding it into an astonishing performance piece. Him doing the song with its spoken word section at Stagfolk, the folk club in Shackleford, off the Hog’s Back in Surrey, around 1980 still lingers as a memory. Annoyingly Southern Rag commissioned me but never ran the review. From The 5000 Spirits or The Layers of The Onion, Fledg’ling FLED 3077, 2010)

Look out for more information about the Incredible String Band reissue programme at The Bees Knees, “a music information archive and the home of Fledg’ling records”: www.thebeesknees.com

Ajab Si - KK

As a film Om Shanti Om is an exceptional mishmash/mash-up on a Bollywood pile-up scale, both cinematically and musically. It flips between past and present lives, past and present movies with lashings of the supernatural and rebirth, revenge and disco beats. The music is from Vishal & Shekhar and the lyrics are from Javed Akhtar.

The film itself is tongue-in-cheek referential with allusions to Karz and a red carpet of Bollywood cameos, including the bow-down-and-be-so-very-humble-in-her-presence Rekha (Bhanurekha Ganesan) and that what’s-his-name? fellow from Sholay. This is maybe the least obvious track to pick from the soundtrack, much of which is decidedly upbeat and comes ringing with kitsch lines like “My heart is filled with the pain of disco”. That said, who gives a flying flip? Because it’s Bollywood, innit? From Om Shanti Om (T-Series/Super Cassettes Industries Limited SFCD 1-1261, 2007)

Album Bonjour wasn’t produced by Taha’s long term collaborator Steve Hillage, the producer of most of Taha’s previous band and solo opus. This time, the producers are New Yorker Mark Plati (who has collaborated with, among others, David Bowie, The Cure) and Gaetan Roussell, the leader of the well known French band, Louise Attaque. Roussell also wrote the music and some of the lyrics for the title song Bonjour, composing three more songs in collaboration with Plati and of course with Rachid Taha, the author of the majority of the music and lyrics. Also new is the ample team of various musicians that recorded this album with Rachid Taha at studios in Paris and New York; only mandolute master Hakim Hamadouche remains from former albums and live performances.

Rachid Taha claims that he gathered this fresh team with a purpose, to bring a new wind to his new album, however (in my opinion) that wind blows from the stifling port and stuffy shopping centre of a Megapolis, not from the spacious seascapes and airy deep spaces of the universe. The rhythms are less interesting, a bit monotonous. Here and there they don’t agree and sometimes come to blows. The same goes for a myriad of various sounds and sound crumbs as well as for the Rachid Taha’s proverbial marriage between Euro-American and North African popular genres; as far as we can even still talk about the latter. Rachid’s vocals are rather straight and one-sided, less multiple, more or less not taken advantage of enough in all its expressive potentials (such as onomatopoetic sounds), probably because the producers don’t know him well enough to know exactly what to do with his voice. And yet Bonjour is still, despite the annoying bits and pieces, punctuated with rare outstanding moments, a solid product of contemporary popular music with Taha’s distinctive beyond-genre flavour.

Taha’s selection of 10 short pieces (allegedly radio friendly 3 to 4 minutes) starts with the love-pleonasm Je t’aime mon amour (I love you my love) and continues with the story of the homeless tramp Mokhtar which offers a hand to Ha Baby, a statement of universal love, which bounds into the title-song Bonjour which claps hands with North African rap Taha style, Mine jai (Where are you coming from). This one goes on into the birth of humanity Mabrouk aalik (Congratulations) which spills onto otherwordly Ile liqa (See you soon), followed by It’s an Arabian song, a duet with French singer and Taha’s old pal Bruno Maman, with whom he also wrote the music, while Rachid’s lyrics are short: “Good is better than evil. Never forget.” The penultimate track, Selu (Ask) with its solid drive, is a tribute to all great minds, the phrase “ask angels” (selu el maleika) is also a wordplay with title-song Bonjour or Salam aleikum. At the end the circle comes around and fastens the way it was opened, with the sensuous and sensitive love lure Agi (Come).

By the time Peggy officially relocated to England in 1959, the folk scene was largely a young person’s scene. A decade on, when I saw her with Ewan MacColl (1915-1989), every time I saw them he whiplashed me back to my schoolboy days and sitting on a form in school assembly. He had a headmasterly hauteur towards folk club audiences. That British folk scene regularly felt like two diary-keepers from opposing sides documenting a battle. One faction I understood: and the MacColl-Seeger one had nothing in common with what I was experiencing, with my life, with my music.

When she emerged after MacColl’s death in October 1989, my ears felt less biased. It began with reviewing her 1992 Smithsonian Folkways anthology Songs of Love and Politics - a great record - for Q magazine and being charmed and captivated by her takes on traditional and non-traditional songs. The quality of her voice and what she was communicating lifted the latch. There were some traditional songs like Pretty Saro and Broomfield Hill. Yet it was the discovery of her own feminist observations on male conditioning such as Lady, What Do You Do All Day? and, especially, Gonna Be An Engineer that caused me to ditch my Seegerish blinkers.

The sheer quality of what she has brought to the folk scene is incalculable. Enough of ruminating: time to let her to talk.

To kick off, I wondered how you felt the creative process has changed for you over the course of your musicianly life?

Thank God for a new question! Well, I didn’t make up a song, I didn’t create a song until I was about 22. That was when I was in China. [Song of the Forts] was a song that hopefully nobody is ever going to hear. It was a hopeless song. It was based on trying to express a feeling about militarism in a way that was like a political speech to music. I met Ewan when I was nearly 21 and I got very enthused with the idea of political song. His early songs were extremely direct and I think not nearly as well crafted as his later ones. I wasn’t very proud of the song but I just felt it was good to have written it. Then I wrote a couple of songs that were like his song the Trafford Road Ballad and something that was like one of his marching songs for Aldermaston [the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament march destination]. I was kinda copying other people, which I think sometimes is a necessary thing to do. I think it’s a necessary thing to do in singing ballads and singing folksongs that you learn to sing as close to the people that sing with the intentions of the creators of the songs - of course if that’s possible - and then you go your own way. Copying things, I think, was very important. I learned to put new content into an old form.

In early days I put an awful lot of words into the songs, especially the feminist songs. I think the development of the creative process, for me, has been influenced by Ewan MacColl, by the traditional songs, by my knowledge of classical or formal music. The last has been really useful for me in the offbeat pieces that I’ve done, as on my songs for the 2004 one [Peaceful Woman, Fighting Hard]. The accompaniment for the Bush song was great such fun. I have a wonderful time performing that because I can hit any note on the piano, so long as I can resolve it in a way that my voice can come back up to. It’s a kind of plagiarism of a traditional song.

Then I had my partner Irene who said, ‘Be more human in what you do.’ Ewan had ‘more human’ in his songs probably than I did. I just hadn’t worked it out. Some of the humour that I used was borrowed directly from cartoons, from jokes, from other people’s words. I ‘plagiarised’ terribly.

Who doesn’t?

I try to acknowledge it when I do it. All these things have fed into what is essentially a media-trained person. It’s been an absolutely wonderful journey. I’m beginning to plot my next move. What I’d like to do is create songs that I can sing on political platforms. My voice is not strong and many of the songs I’ve made have been too complicated.

What do you mean by that exactly?

I’ve never been good at actually performing on political platforms. I don’t sing well actually standing up for a start. My voice is not strong. And many of the songs that I’ve made are too complicated to sing like that. I will probably remake my song, No More, No More, No More about Nelson Mandela. It needs words that people can use and remember. That’s what I want to do.

This creative process that you’re going through right now, when it comes to the delivering of songs, is that to do - though I’m loath actually to use the analogy - with the smoothing away that occurs with years?

A tone of voice adds an awful lot, an added dimension to the meaning of words. I write songs for singing, not the singer. You can write a song on paper but unless you sing it, you won’t realise it. Writing in short sentences if you’re going to read it out over the radio where people don’t have the benefit of lip-reading is important. So it’s important in something that is spoken to not be too complicated unless you’re going to speak very slowly. In a short sentence you can use a long word.

The creative process, as far as I’m concerned is one of adding one creative thing on top of another. And also going back to original inspirations. One of the songs I’ve been performing is The Judge’s Chair about abortion. I created that literally like a traditional ballad. Literally. I used all the ways of a traditional ballad. It’s made of their strength.

How do you mean that?

There’s a whole stack of things that happen to ballads that don’t happen in other types of songs. Things like: they jump into the middle of the action; scene changes are no heralded by any logic; you get incremental repetition, repetition of a motif, of an idea, each time with slightly different circumstances; non-judgemental attitudes. There is a whole stack of things that people recognise in a traditional ballad. These are things that people somehow recognise in the cultural genes that are handed down to them. Maybe it’s inherent in the language, I don’t know. Ewan used that in The Ballad of the Carpenter [the alternative name for The Ballad of Jesus Christ in the 1957 BBC radio broadcast, released as Sing Christmas and the Turn of the Year (Rounder, 2000)]. I consciously use that.

In Song of Myself you lay down your history and you talk about journalists asking you the same questions over and over again.

I get sick of it. God, you get sick of it! It’s like they have to hear you say what they have read already. You hear it on the radio in interviews. The interviewer asks a question and then you ’so and so and so’. The person says, ‘Oh yes, I did that.’ There’s got to be a better way of interviewing people against past events. Why not just give a capsule? Born so-and-so. Parents so-and-so. Took up the banjo. Now tell us about who you really are. And get deeper in, quicker.

There’s so much small talk with interviews. Often now I will say I don’t want to spend more than five minutes on family, Pete Seeger and Ewan MacColl. Let’s talk about who I am now! They can read about that anywhere. Send them to the website if they’re really interested. But do we really have to give everybody encapsulated information? When what we really need to share is feelings, responses, attitudes, quirky things.

Maybe things that are not quite as favourable to you as a person but which take you off the pedestal. You can say, OK, this person may be special here with what we’re talking about, but. Sure, I shit, I fart, I pick my nose, I do this, this, this. Other people can feel, ‘Gosh, we’re all in this together.’

The website to be sent to: www.pegseeger.com
Not to be confused with that of Irene Young whose 2004 portrait of Peggy Seeger from Peggy’s website appears above: www.ireneyoungfoto.com

Small print

Unless otherwise stated, all interview material is original and copyright Ken Hunt.

She was born Gertrud Barbara Mally on 21 January 1928 in Neukettenhof - nowadays absorbed into Vienna’s southeastern suburban sprawl - and took to singing and playing the piano whilst still a child. She was something of a child prodigy and was performing on stage with her Dudlerin aunt Ady Rothmayer (1893-1975) - the word Dudlerin is the female form for a Dudler - by the age of ten.

During the Second World War Rothmayer was assigned to engagements and she took along her niece to sing a mixture of folksongs and Wienerlieder in an Austrian equivalent of Vera Lynn-style morale-boosting concerts for Axis troops in Norway, on the Russian Front or in field hospitals. After the war came to a close, Mally was singing for radio, on the musical programmes at cinemas - this was the era in which live music was a normal part of a cinema presentation along with (pre-television-in-every-room) newsreels - and touring with the likes of Hans Moser. She even appeared as a featured vocalist in films. By 1951 her life had aligned with the Matauschek Family - a family associated with Wienerlieder - whose son Fritz (1917-1977) she was married to between 1953 and 1960.

Mally’s career continued onwards and upwards, notably with the musician Karl Nagl (1922-1994) with whom she turned the so-called ‘Nagl-Stüberl’ into a major centre of the Viennese vernacular music arts. She went on to broadcast and record extensively. For many her fleeting, almost ghost appearance on Chris Strachwitz and Johnny Parth’s Folk Music of Austria (Arhoolie CD 454/455, 2009) singing Unterm Lindenbaum (’Under the Linden Tree’) might be their introduction to her art. I hab di gar so gern (’I love you so much’) Fischrecords 013, 2008) arguably serves her the best. Partially recorded at her 80th birthday bash on 21 January 2008, it is fleshed out with archival live recordings made between 1948 and 2003

Christina Zurbrügg’s out-of-print book Orvuse on Oanwe - Dudlerinnen in Wien. Die Lebensgeschichten von Poldi Debeljak, Luise Wagner und Trude Mally sowie der singenden Wirtin Anny Demuth (1996) and the documentary film spin-off, the Christina Zurbrügg- und Michael Hudecek’s film (and DVD) «Orvuse On Oanwe» Die letzten Dudlerinnen Wiens (1998) tell the tale.

More information in German at www.fischrecords.at

[by Ken Hunt, London] The Indian instrument maker and repairer Hemendra Chandra Sen died at his south Kolkata (Calcutta) home on 2 January 2009 at the age of 87. From apprentice to master craftsman, over the course of more than sixty years he made tanpuras, sitars and sarods for many of the most illustrious Hindustani instrumentalists of the age. He also bridged the generations. Although a sitar player himself, he became especially associated with the sarod, the short-necked, fretted lute.

His customers included the sitar and surbahar player Annapurna Devi, her brother, the sarodist Ali Akbar Khan and their cousin, the sarodist Bahadur Khan, the sitarist Ravi Shankar, the sarodist player Rajeev Taranath, the sarodist Amjad Ali Khan and Amjad Ali Khan’s sarod-playing sons Amaan Ali Bangash and Ayaan Ali Bangash. He was working at his trade until hours before his death, working into the night on an instrument before suffering a fatal cardiac arrest the next morning.

Hemendra Chandra Sen had been based in Calcutta since the 1940s and it was natural that the customers for his instruments included the cream of the generation of fiery young Bengali instrumentalists then making names for themselves. In time, his shop cum workshop, Hemen & Co in the Deshapriya Park area of south Kolkata became a place of nigh-pilgrimage for musicians bringing in instruments for repair and servicing or arriving to commission new beauties that Sen made to measure to suit the client’s build and tastes.

The family connection with Amjad Ali Khan was especially important. Just as the US blues musician BB King named his guitar Lucille, the sarodist has long had the habit for naming his instruments. He named his favourite, completed by Sen in 1976, Ganga (Ganges). Others included Saaz and Brahmaputra. All three are pictured in Amaan Ali Bangash and Ayaan Ali Bangash’s biography of their father Amjad Ali Khan (Roli Books, 2002). In honour of his father, the sarod pioneer Hafiz Ali Khan, Amjad Ali Khan inaugurated the Hafiz Ali Khan Award in 1985. The Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee presented the award to Sen in Gwalior in 2003.

Hemendra Chandra Sen is survived by two sons and two daughters. His sons Tapan and Ratan are following the family trade.

She Moved Thru’ The Bizarre/Blue Raga - Davy Graham

Davey Graham died on 15 December 2008, days before I was due to journey to India. That was why I missed his funeral. He would have approved of that - an excursion trip to India trumping a funeral trip. In the days before travelling I wrote his obituary for The Scotsman. Then whilst travelling in India I wrote his German-language obituary for Folker! (since then the magazine has dropped the exclamation mark) between Agra, Jaipur and Jalandhar. This is the way I wish to remember him: as a friend and a musician who at his best and at his various peaks made the rafters ring. He could be infuriating and could be infuriatingly good too. As here. When he recorded this he was Davy, by the way. From the Dave Suff-compiled anthology A Scholar and a Gentleman (Decca 532 263-1, 2009)

Ken Hunt’s obituary in The Scotsman dated 18 December 2008: http://news.scotsman.com/obituaries/Davey-Graham-Guitarist-composer-multiinstrumentalist.4803436.jp

Arschgeweih - Wenzel

It’s saucy. He’s naughty. And Wenzel is a Liedermacher’s Liedermacher, a songwriter’s songwriter. He twists like an eel. He writes eely songs that sit around like time-bombs a-ticking away which you can never guess when they might ‘fully’ make sense. They come drenched in allusion and allegory. Arschgeweih! As a title, in the English ‘Arse Antlers’ works even better. There are no subtitles but, admit it, it is a hoot of a title to hook the unwary.

It opens with the potty mouth/barber’s invitation “Das Schamhaar kurz rasiert.” or “Public hair shorn short.” and from that opening gambit it just gets better and better because he’s not bothered. Plus who could resist offerings from a record company whose name translates both as “Sailor blue” or “Drunk as a sailor? If this is what a boy from the German interior can do, imagine what he could have done if he had grown up on Hamburg’s Reeperbahn or in Rostock! From König von Honolulu (Matrosenblau //08, 2009)

Bedd f’ anwylyd (My Lover’s Gone) - Llio Rhydderch and Tomas Williams

It’s not a perfect take but the combination of Rhydderch’s triple-strung harp and Williams’ trumpet captures another dimension of Welsh vernacular music. It’s an apple with blemishes but, that said, many of the tastiest apples will never get on a supermarket shelf. It also says oodles about what’s happening in Welsh arts nowadays. From the Various artists’ Blodeugerdd - Songs of the Flowers (Smithsonian Folkways SFW CD 40552, 2009)

Die Gedanken sind frei - Achim Reichel

Achim Reichel is one of the defining musicians of Hamburg’s music scene. A contemporary of whatever the Beatles were called in their Reeperbahn days, he survived Hamburg’s little-white-pills-and-Pils beat scene era and went on to create a body of work that bottled Hamburg’s very essence with shanties and folksongs (Volxlieder is a corruption of Volkslieder or folksongs).

One of the most enjoyable conversations - as opposed to interview - I ever had with a musician during the Noughties was with Achim Reichel. It lapsed into Hamburg dialect and Platt. This old song about thoughts being free, as in cannot be controlled, is one of most haunting songs of the German condition. Ougenweide’s Frank Wulff lays his mojo hand on this studio recording like a Hamburg whore to healing superb effect. From Volxlieder (Tangram 69532, 2006)

Inn lamhon ke damaan mein - Sonu Nigham & Madhushree

Watching Jodhaa Akbar in a freezing apartment in Jalandhar in the depths of winter in January 2009 summoned unbidden the opening words of T.S. Eliot’s poem The Journey of the Magi: “A cold coming we had of it/Just the worst time of the year.” Elliot’s lines carry echoes of an Anglican sermon preached on Christmas Day 1622 and unless you have experienced a Punjabi winter they may sound out-of-place. The snakes and the frogs are tucked away hibernating even though, no doubt, the daytime winter temperatures were far milder than England in the early 1600s. But winter in Punjab is a different sort of cold to the ones westerners are used to.

Even before the heating finally kicked in and before the film’s images took hold or Hrithik Roshan (Akbar) and Aishwarya Rai (Jodha) wove their cinematic magic, A.R. Rahman’s OST was already on the way to dispelling the cold. It’s difficult to call an A.R. Rahman soundtrack underrated nowadays. Jodhaa Akbar deserves to be better known, not least of all - mirroring Rahman’s life - it blends Muslim and Hindu elements so cleverly and with such integrity. The soundtrack from which this song comes is masterly, a major piece of quality work. Javed Akhtar is the lyricist. The song itself is a typical Rahman composition in the sense that it could only come from him or one of his copyists - copycats if you wish. If anyone wants to hear what Bollywood was like in the second half of the first decade of the Twenty-first Century C.E., listen to Sonu Nigham & Madhushree. And be prepared for mood, tempo and rhythmic shifts, anchored in a marvellous melody.

Furthermore, the CD itself is a superlative piece of packaging, of the sort explains why the artefact can add value to the ‘product’. (Like that of Rab ne bana di jodi (YRM-CD 90050, 2008) since you ask.) From the soundtrack to Jodhaa Akbar (UTV 88697 23373 2, 2007)

Gloomy Sunday - Billie Holiday

It’s not the best version of the Hungarian suicide song but it was the one that introduced me to the masterpiece. Teddy Wilson & His Orchestra accompany. It was recorded in 1941 and finds its new lend-lease life here as part of Bob Dylan’s radio show entitled President’s Day (no. 68). From Theme Time Radio Hour - Season 2 (Ace CDCH2 1225, 2009)

Joy of my Heart - The Fisher Family

This track was recorded by Bill Leader in 1965. There was no room in the house so Joe Boyd slept in the car. It’s a wonderful affirmation of life. Norman Buchan’s notes said, “This Gaelic song is full of praise for the beauty of the Western Isles, and many have been translated into English - not always successfully - by Marjorie Kennedy-Fraser and others. This one reverses the process. It was written in English by Hugh S. Roberton to the Gaelic tune Leannon Mo Ghaoil. It has been translated into Gaelic by John Bannerman.”

The Fisher Family on this recording are Archie, Cindy, Joyce, Priscilla (later Cilla) and Ray. For its joy of life. From The Fisher Family (Topic 12T137, 1966, reissued in Japan on the British Folk Paper Sleeve Collection VSCD-834, 2002)

Kiko And The Lavender Moon - Los Lobos

The performance is here because it’s magical and moreishly sinister.

“He plays and plays/Still playing till he/Goes off to sleep.”

The source’s artwork is so bland and puny that it’s going to be shamed but mercifully not named here. So there!

A Denying: The Blacksmith - Shirley Collins

Folk poetry is a rare thing and this is rare by any standard. A version appeared on Shirley Collins’ EP Heroes In Love. That was how I first heard it. Having heard it, I went ferreting out England’s folk heritage that no manner of Cecil Sharp-inspired singalongs or country dancing in school had ever prepared me for. Hearing that EP helped make it make sense. Hearing Anne Briggs’ The Hazards of Love reinforced the wonder of a tradition I had never suspected existed or indeed had ever existed. Those two EPs were the first two folk record purchases I ever purchased. That is about as high as it gets in my opinion. I got more than lucky with those two sweet little mysteries of life.

This version is the second variant Shirley Collins recorded, though. It is the one from her Anthems in Eden song cycle that begins:

“Oh, a blacksmith courted me, I loved him dearly.
He played upon his pipes both neat and trimly,
With his hammer in his hand he strikes so steady
He makes the sparks to fly all round the smithy.”

A Blacksmith Courted Me is a sublime tale of love and desertion - the way pain can be sublime. And Shirley Collins’ performance on her and her sister Dolly’s version on their magnum opus captured an additional facet of this superlative piece of folk poetry. Shirley’s voice doesn’t rant or rail: it captures the bewilderment of abandonment. Folk poetry in its highest state. From Anthems in Eden (EMI Harvest SHVL 754, 1969)

I Need A Man To Love - Big Brother & The Holding Company

A choice brought on by guitarist James Gurley’s death at the age of 69, a couple of days before his seventieth birthday. It brought back memories of Big Brother & The Holding Company and the birthing pangs of their Cheap Thrills album, on which this song was originally released.

Agreed, the smart money would be on the Cheap Thrills version. This one’s slightly shorter in length yet still not what you’d call succinct. The song is a new introduction to their repertoire in April 1968 and is still being played in.

The group shot in the cover artwork is by Baron Wolman and was taken at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco in 1969. Left to right: up front, Janis Joplin, Dave Getz, James Gurley, Peter Albin and Sam Andrew. From Live At Winterland ‘68 (Columbia Legacy CK 64869, 1998)

Valerie J. Nelson’s obituary of James Gurley from the Los Angeles Times of 24 December 2009 is at http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-james-gurley24-2009dec24,0,1577562.story

Baron Wolman’s website http://www.fotobaron.com/

Big Brother & The Holding Company’s website: http://www.bbhc.com/

New releases

Aruna Sairam / Divine Inspiration / World Village
Damien Barber & Mike Wilson / Under The Influence / Demon Barber Sounds
Szilvia Bognár / Semmicske énekek/Ditties / Gryllus
Kaushiki Chakrabarty / Live at Saptak Festival / Sense World Music
Leonard Cohen / Live in London / Columbia/Sony Music
Gwenan Gibbard / Sidan Glas / Sain
Robb Johnson / The Ghost of Love / Irregular
La Musique D’Issa Sow / Doumale / Home Records
Amira Medunjanin and Merima Ključo / Zumra / Gramofon/ World Village
Cass Meurig and Nial Cain / Deuawd / fflach:tradd
Bea Palya / Egyszálének/Justonevoice / Sony Music (Hungary)
Madeleine Peyroux / Bare Bones / Decca
Martin Simpson / True Stories / Topic
Matt Turner, Peg & Bill Carrothers / The Voices That Are Gone / Illusions
Wenzel / König von Honolulu / Matrosenblau
Wihan Quartet / Beethoven Late String Quartets / Nimbus Alliance

Historic releases, reissues and anthologies

Alistair Anderson / Steel Skies / Topic
Jesse Fuller / Move On Down The Line / Fled’gling
Davy Graham / A Scholar and a Gentleman / Decca
Grateful Dead / Road Trips Vol. 2 - Carousel 2.14.68 / Grateful Dead Productions
Louis Killen / Ballads and Broadsides / Topic
Various artists / 50 Years of Folk Music in Newcastle / Ceilidh Connections
Various artists / Blodeugerdd - Song of the Flowers / Smithsonian Folkways
Various artists / Onder De Groene Linde / Music & Words
Various artists / Theme Time Radio Hour, Season 2 / Ace
Various artists / Three Score & Ten / Topic

Events of 2009

Aruna Sairam / Darbar International South Asian Music Festival 2009 / Purcell Room, London / 3 April 2009
F. Wasifuddin Dagar / Nehru Centre, London / 8 April 2009
Brass Monkey / The Goose Is Out! DHFC, East Dulwich, London / 15 May 2009
Iva Bittová / Purcell Room, London / 10 June 2009
Leonard Cohen / Mercedes-Benz World, Weybridge, Surrey / 11 July 2009
Richard Thompson / Fairport’s Cropredy Convention, Oxfordshire, England / 14 August 2009
Ridina Ahmedová / Palác Akropolis, Prague / 9 September 2009
Martin Simpson & Big Band / Queen Elizabeth Hall, London / 17 September 2009
June Tabor / Queen Elizabeth Hall, London / 18 September 2009
Vishwa Mohan Bhatt & Salil Mohan Bhatt / Great Hall, Kensington Town Hall, London / 29 November 2009
Bahauddin Dagar / Lecture Room, Victoria & Albert Museum, London / 18 December 2009

Images: Smile (possibly a Banksy) (Ken Hunt), Three Score & Ten (courtesy of Topic Records) and Aruna Sairam and Bahauddin Dagar (Santosh Sidhu).

Thorneymoor Woods - Louis Killen

Louis Killen recorded this poaching song with a twist during his sessions with the premier recordist of Britain’s Folk Revival, Bill Leader from 1964 into 1965. The song Thorneymoor Woods was one of the nine tracks that appeared on Ballads and Broadsides (Topic 12T126, 1965), one of the era’s most important examinations of English or Anglo-Scottish folksong. The song was, to some extent, overshadowed by Killen’s ‘big song’ of the period, The Flying Cloud. Mind you, most of his repertoire was overshadowed by that tale of buccaneering and slaving and final come-uppance.

Thorneymoor Woods is lighter. Frankly, beside The Flying Cloud nearly anything short of an incest ballad or a bit of infanticide would have qualified as light. Consequently, it played an important role in Killen’s live repertoire. It provided balance and light and shade, a chance for the audience to recover from being racked and ruined.

Thorneymoor Woods is a variant of The Nottinghamshire Poacher. It takes place far from where Louis Killen grew up - Tyneside - but in the same county in which Anne Briggs was raised. She sang in some ways the better-known version of the song on her LP Anne Briggs Topic (Topic 12T207, 1971). (That, incidentally was the album on which her Blackwater Side appears - the yarn out of the Minotaur’s den that leads to Led Zeppelin song of a similar name.)

Better-known version? Well, Killen’s Ballads and Broadsides went out of print and for decades was unavailable with copies changing hands for goodly sums on the second-hand market. The album’s reissue in 2009 reinforced how powerful an interpreter of traditional song he was. This song and his performance indicate why. From Ballads and Broadsides (Topic Records TSCD 126, 1965/2009)

Basant - Gangubai Hangal

“Men will be ustads and pandits. Bais will be bais.” - Gangubai Hangal, on ustads being Muslim masters/teachers, pandits Hindu masters/teachers and bais always just females until attitudes change.

Gottfried Düren made this recording in May 1991 at the Sangeet Natak Akademi in New Delhi. It may seem impertinent to say this but I shall anyway. Any singer or admirer of Hindustani classical song could do far, far worse than listen to this album of hers every so often in order to recalibrate the senses and sensitivities. She was one of a kind and her treatment of Basant, the seasonal raga that translates as ‘Spring’, is gorgeous. Top up your reality levels, springtime or otherwise.

The loss of Gangubai Hangal in July 2009 was a major blow. She was an old-school singer for whom superlatives and descriptions frequently failed and will always fail. (’Always’ is a big word but justified in her case.) She represented a generational handing-over of one specific vocal tradition amid many Hindustani vocal traditions to another generation. Her interpretations took a simpler path, not that her interpretations were simple. She told her stories without prettifying them yet added ornamentations exquisite enough to curl the toes.

Down to earth, she asks in the booklet notes to this recording that insightful question: “Where is the need for new ragas when we can’t master even half the number of our old ragas?” From The Voice of Tradition - Vocal Music from North India (Haus der Kulturen der Welt/Wergo SM 1501-2, 1991)

Reginald Massey’s obituary ‘Gangubai Hangal - Acclaimed Hindustani classical vocalist beset by caste prejudice’ from the Guardian posted on Sunday 23 August 2009 is at

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/aug/23/gangubai-hangal-obituary

Ken Hunt’s obituary ‘Gangubai Hangal: Singer who rose above her low caste status to become a grand dame of the Kirana school’ in the Independent of 15 October 2009 is at:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/gangubai-hangal-singer-who-rose-above-her-low-caste-status-to-become-a-grand-dame-of-the-kirana-school-1802616.html

Oh! Susanna - Matt Turner

Matt Turner (cello), Peg Carrothers (voice) and Bill Carrothers (piano, voice) have approached the songs of Stephen Foster (1826-1861) in a wholly unusual fashion. Or in a series of wholly unusual fashions, to be more accurate, because the trio’s treatments - various and several - are so different.

It’s hard to impossible to choose one track from this work but Oh! Susanna brings much of what they do into sharp focus. The project is a limited-edition (2000-copy) release. Get it while you can from: Illusions, 4 Passage d’Enfer, 75014 Paris, France. From Matt Turner’s The Voices That Are Gone (Illusions, ILL 313003, 2008)

www.illusionsmusic.fr

The Recruited Collier - Anne Briggs

Because Anne Briggs continues to inspire year in, year out after her supposed ‘vanishing’. From Anne Briggs - A Collection (Topic TSCD 504, 1999)

Fairytales In Feltham - Robb Johnson & The Irregulars

Years down the line, years after coupling a bunch of songs together and adding new ones, Robb Johnson has knitted together a winter suite of songs with Christmas as the denouement. This opens the debacle. It is a soap opera/social commentary set in the hallowed London Borough of Hounslow. Hard to choose one from the suite, so here’s Johnson’s opening gambit. From The Ghost of Love - A Christmas Song Cycle (Irregular Records IRR076, 2009)

http://www.irregularrecords.co.uk

Marenje - Mhuri yekwa Muchena

Raindrops from Heaven delivered by two mbiras. The album is credited to Traditional Mbira Musicians and the Kevin Volans Ensemble. This music was in my mind when I was writing the notes to the Kronos Quartet’s Pieces of Africa album, released in 1992. And this month - for reasons unknown - the overwhelming urge came to listen to World Network’s Zimbabwe - Mbira volume and the Mhuri yekwa Muchena (Muchena Family) recordings. And this track got stuck on repeat. It is very good. From Zimbabwe - Mbira (World Network 52.990, 1991)

The Magpies And The Wolf - Griselda Sanderson

This track is a mood piece for nyckelharpa, Hammond organ and percussion that reminds me of Pieces of Africa. A wonderful introduction from John Crosby. From Harpaphonics (Waulk WAULK3. 2008)

www.grissanderson.com

http://twitter.com/johncrosby1950

‘Hichki’ - Vishwa Mohan Bhatt and Musicians of Rajasthan

At Vishwa Mohan Bhatt’s concert with his son Salil and Sanju Sahai on tabla on Sunday 29 November 2009 at Kensington Town Hall - Note Asia’s inaugural concert - he played this Rajasthani folksong about hiccoughs (’hichki’) that summons images of similar folk superstitions about, say, sneezing, as an instrumental.

Desert Slide was one of the finest albums I have ever been party to. Hichki hinges on a Rajasthani folk belief or superstition. When a person thinks of somebody from whom they are separated - the one he or she is missing - they are said to get the hiccups. My grandmother spoke of sneezes and surprises. The narrator here has got the hiccups. In Rajasthan the song is set in what is commonly called Bhairavi but it is truer to Kirvani from the South Indian Hindu heartland.

It’s about sadness or melancholy, pain and pangs of separation. An emotional cocktail. From Desert Slide (Sense World Music 085, 2006)

http://www.noteasia.org/

http://www.senseworldmusic.com

Mountains of the Moon/Dark Star - Tom Constanten

Likely as not, Tom Constanten’s name produces a kneejerk reaction through his connection with the Grateful Dead. Paradoxically, he has played more gigs with Jefferson Starship’s various packages than his gig count with the Dead. This recording from Karlsruhe in Baden-Württemberg in southwest Germany reinforces how exceptional he is at tickling the ivories.

Their late 2009 European tour brought Tom Constanten, Gary Duncan (formerly Quicksilver Messenger Service), Dave Freiberg (Quicksilver Messenger Service and Jefferson Starship) and Paul Kantner (Jefferson Airplane and Jefferson Starship) to Britain. Whilst in London, Constanten suggested a preference for the Hamburg concert’s performances from the 2005 tour over the Karlsruhe concert. No matter, Karlsruhe or Hamburg this time as opposed to Hamburg over Karlsruhe every other time.

Mountains of the Moon/Dark Star segues into People Are Strange - that old-time toe-tapper from the Doors. Importantly, as this recording shows, he’s still improvising, still keeping himself and his audiences on their toes. From Mick’s Picks Volume Three - Substage, Karlsruhe 06/16/05 Bear Records bearvp103CD, 2008)

Photo: Gary Duncan and Tom Constanten, fresh graffiti at the 100 Club, London, November 2009 (c) 2009 Ken Hunt/Swing 51 Archives

http://www.tomconstanten.com/

Trouble - Inara George

“Well, I’ll write a letter and I’ll send it away/And put all the trouble in it you had today.” Lowell George’s daughter, Inara George interprets this Little Feat jewel here. It’s heartfelt; it’s got Van Dyke Parks producing; and it summons the stunned memory of how I felt when I learned about her father’s death from the cover of Melody Maker outside Sutton station in July 1979. Broke, I sloped off nevertheless to the Robin Hood to mull over Lowell George’s life and music, to mourn and nurse a solitary pint of Young’s Special. His death became a short-lived model for small celebrations of people’s lives. Later, I went to the Bishop Out Of Residence in Kingston to reflect on the lives of Jerry Garcia and Peter Cook. Still later, I mourned the demise of Young’s elsewhere in a Fuller’s pub.

Decades of work as an obituarist have largely robbed me of that immediate time for grieving. Inara George’s recording of Trouble connects me and wafts me back. “Well I’ll write a letter and I’ll send it away/And put all the trouble in it you had today.” Sometimes I can’t help but change the pronouns in my head. From Rock And Roll Doctor - A Tribute to Lowell George (CMC International 06076 86242-2, 1997)

PP&M’s performances entered the Anglophone popular consciousness and became karaoke staples to this day. In Britain Blowin’ In The Wind reached the Top 20 in 1963, Tell It On The Mountain and The Times They Are A-Changin’ the Top 50 in 1964 - earning them an appearance on the UK’s foremost TV programme of the day, Ready, Steady, Go! (way cooler than the BBC’s Top of the Pops) - and Jet Plane the UK Top 5 in 1970. Paradoxically, their best-known song Puff (The Magic Dragon) never did chart in Britain, yet it remains a continual source of parody and cartoon. Marlene Dietrich ducked Mary Travers’ high-soaring notes on her languid Paff, der Zauberdrachen - rechristened because in German Puff means brothel - but the song remains the same.

“I never wanted to be a professional singer,” Travers told Barry Alfonso in an interview for PP&M’s boxed set Carry It On (2003). “To me, folk music was more a social thing you did. It was great fun to sing, but it was not something I wanted to do for a living.” In mid 1960 Grossman signed Yarrow initially with a view to him performing as a soloist before convincing Yarrow that in the right group he would have immediate success. Visiting Izzy Young’s Folklore Center early in 1961, Grossman and Yarrow clocked Travis’ picture and, even before hearing her astonishing voice, decided she was right.
At this point Travis was on the way to divorcing her first husband - a writer whose name has been struck from the historical record - with a tiny daughter and living on Greenwich Village’s MacDougal Street. When Yarrow finally met her at her apartment things did not click personally or musically. Early in 1961 Grossman had tried to interest the stand-up comedian and musician Noel ‘Stook’ Stookey in joining this vision of a group he was attempting to put together - ‘manufacture’ would not be too strong a word. Stookey turned the idea down flat, only to have it reactivated about three months later when Travis rang to ask if she could bring somebody over to sing. Harmonizing on Mary Had A Little Lamb they discovered a vocal chemistry and that was how the trio’s ‘Paul’ came to complete the line-up.
After a few months’ rehearsals, they did a one-off public appearance at Folk City, then an extended engagement at the Bitter End club. Gambling, Grossman brokered a no-advance contract with Warner Bros. Records in January 1962 and by March 1962 their album was in the shops. Reviewing that eponymous début in the UK monthly magazine Gramophone, Charles Fox called them “a very well-drilled group” “sounding closer to the conventional close-harmony trio than to a folk ensemble. [T]he group must be praised for not spoiling the songs with gimmicks or jokes - as, for instance, the Kingston Trio are inclined to do.” Peter, Paul & Mary’s In Concert (1964) redressed any such omission by including Stookey’s stand-up routine, PaulTalk.
That “run-of-the-mill LP” sold over two million copies and became their calling-card. In 1963 they sang for JFK’s inauguration anniversary and at the Lincoln Memorial prior to Martin Luther King giving his I Have A Dream speech. (”We knew we were listening to history,” she said later. The trio toured incessantly, championed Dylan’s work, played civil rights bashes and anti-war and pro-peace benefits, received bomb threats and abusive letters. Nevertheless, gradually rifts appeared, professionally and personally, leading to the decision to split in October 1970.
Stookey had become a born-again Christian in 1967 and, to the other two members’ annoyance, had taken to preachifying his glad tidings from the stage. Musically, Yarrow was into “music as a vehicle for stopping the [Vietnam] war” and in March 1970 pleaded guilty to “taking immoral and indecent liberties” with a 14-year-old girl. “Terrible for the image,” Travers said archly in a 1978 interview. The trio went its own ways.

Between 1970 and 1978 - when PP&M reformed - Mary Travers made five solo albums, most notably the first Mary (1971) and Circles (1974), the latter with a post-Alfons Mucha cover. After 1978 when PP&M reunited, she sang with them until 2006 when ill-health stopped her performing.
Travers’ marriages to “a writer”, the photographer Barry Feinstein and next National Lampoon and Spy publisher Gerald Taylor ended in divorce. “They weren’t mistakes, but attempted relationships,” she drolly admitted. Her daughters Erika and Alicia are from her first two marriages. In 1991 she married Ethan Robbins. She died in Danbury, Connecticut on 16 September 2009.