Nuit Sans Lune
Radical Roots
Large men playing tiny lutes. To Cargo in Shoreditch last night for Luc Bongrand’s Nuit Sans Lune, a documentary on rebetiko, the Greek blues.
SOAS Rebetiko
After the movie, soaked in the pity of Greek modern history, a dozen members of the SOAS Rebetiko Group set chairs in a circle for a jam session.
DJ Seb Merrick picked up his fiddle to join Luca Gatti’s Dr Cat Experience while Elif Tarakçi belly danced hypnotically. (You can see her at Luca’s Myspace page.)
Jewish hip-hop klezmerbass group Emunah were still playing when pumpkin hour struck. I hadda headfa bed, but not before hearing their two men vocalists, one Jewish, one Palestinian, perform a magnificent unsentimental piece about reconciliation.
Miranda Barber writes, performs and publishes her own music. She’s just posted new songs at www.myspace.com/mirandabarber. Definitely worth listening to and for.
While on the subject, Seb Merrick of Kazum! just laid a stack of Balkan and Levantine music on me. Early favourites are Are You Satisfied? from Turkish band Rebel Moves and Fantazia’s Mul Sheshe. Rockin’.
1977 was my last summer in England before the many years abroad. I used to like stopping after work at the café at the ICA in the Mall for a drink and some live music. I was enthusiastic then about Phil Ram, who sang rock, and Kit Hain. For years I used to listen to a tape I’d made from one of her sessions; I was particularly fond of her voice, especially on a cover of “City of New Orleans”.
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Mad about Madeleine Journalism is its own reward. And then Miki, listings editor at UK Jack, a Japanese newspaper in London, scored last-minute comp tickets and VIP passes to last night’s Madeleine Peyroux gig at the Tower of London. Wonderful.
Balkan ska To Islington and the Bar Academy for the first Balkan edition of the now twice-monthly Orient Express dance. The Baghdaddies, a Geordie band, played a lively blend of Balkan ska. Hats off to Seb & Aysegül for a great night.
Oscar ceremony Doug Yeager writes fom New York: Ever-youthful, energetic and inspirational Oscar Brand has recorded his 60th-anniversary Weekly radio show Folksong Festival. This special show will be broadcast seven times on WNYC-RADIO in New York between December 10th and the 31st. You can catch it via the Internet on www.wnyc.org. Folksong Festival is the longest running radio and/or TV show in our history, and has been a home to every major folk and blues star over its six decades. During the terrible paranoia of the McCarthy era Oscar’s show was the only media forum in the country that didn’t cave in to the pressure, and allowed his blacklisted friends a haven where they could perform their songs and speak their minds. Celebrate the event by spending an hour with this American treasure.
Fairytales Twenty years ago Cecilia Bjärno pressed on me a tape, Fairytales by the late Radka Toneff. Her interpretations of melancholy standards like “My Funny Valentine”, “The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress” and “Lost In The Stars” haunted me for years and more than almost anything else, inspired me to sing myself. Decades later, when Barb Jungr asked me to sing something, I attempted a song I had learned from the album by ear, apologising that I couldn’t identify it. (Neither could Barb, but that might have had something to do with my singing before her lessons.) Of the entire magical album, this was my favourite.
Seek and ye shall find. When I turned to the Web I found that Fairytales could not be had even from Amazon, but iTunes delivered a copy in minutes. And I discovered that my much-loved song, note-for-note as I remembered it, is called “Before Love Went Out Of Style” and is credited to our very own Fran Landesman and the late Dudley Moore. This remains my all-time favourite jazz album; find it if you can.
Girl Talk Claire Martin, Barb Jungr and Mari Wilson opened their new show Girl Talk in Stevenage last night. I’ve been listening to Barb on CD instead of live for too long: I’d forgotten what a comic she is. Huge fun — get the CD but see the show.
Going digital Almost completely stopped using tape cassettes now. Most of them were copied from CDs for use in the car, which has no CD player. Now we’ve jumped a medium: the iPod connects to a spoof cassette, and so plays into the car’s tape player. A few cassettes are not CD copies, and it’s time to digitalise them and add them to the growing collection on the new 230Gb drive. First up was David Whyte’s lecture on Poems of Self Compassion. I’ve used my low-concentration ’flu time learn how to record this and make an audio CD and digital versions.
Radio Britfolk Folk-singer Anne Lister announces Radio Britfolk, a new web-radio station for British folk music.
Dr Blues Privileged last night to meet former neurosurgeon Dr Ika, guitarist with the Grapevine Blues Band. Great music, doc and thank you for the introduction to the Georgian 33-character alphabet and its typography.
Su To Waterloo last night with Arthur Whitney & Janet Lustgarten, or what was left of them after an intensive week visiting their London customers. Ray & Wendy Cannon, Clara Inez Diaz and Caroline Mawer joined us for dinner before we went dancing at this month’s Istanbul Nights: the UK launch party for Su, the new Mercan Dede CD, a blend of Sufi and contemporary dance music. Promoters Sebastian & Aysegül of Doublemoon Records again made everyone welcome as we danced our socks off. In Turkish su means water: we drank lots of this.
Dancing fools To Clerkenwell again last night for Istanbul Nights at Darbucka. Where else can I dance like a fool to wild Turkish and Balkan music and still have my hearing the next day? Once again Sebastian & Aysegül welcomed everyone personally, once again Nurtan danced with a fire and spirit unmatched by anyone — except perhaps Handan?
Take me to your lieder A tip of the trilby to Kai Jäger in Nuremberg, who sent me baritone Thomas Quasthoff singing this lovely collection by Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Wolf, Loewe and Strauss, and so opened this genre up to me at last. Liederprinzip — rocks! Thank you, Kai.
Sweet Madeleine Is everybody raving about Madeleine Peyroux’s album Careless Love after her recent London gig? I know I am. Strong flavours of Billie Holiday and Edith Piaf, jazz and blues, cool and muted. Lovely cover of Bob Dylan’s “You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go”.
» Dance Me To The End Of Love MP3 3.8MB
More goodies I’ve expanded the listings and uploaded more music samples to the Goodies page.
Jiminy Cricket entertains Last night to Carnegie Hall, must-see feature of Miki’s American mythscape, to hear merry Texan Randall Atcheson at the old joanna, in this case a Steinway grand. I discovered I should listen more to the honky-tonk Chopin of Scriabin’s etudes. Atcheson treated us to a Beethoven sonata and a Chopin scherzo in florid style, then reappeared after the interval having donned red socks, which you need as protective clothing when playing Liszt. I can still only take Liszt when half-asleep (him, not me) as in his Anneés de Pélerinage, so I enjoyed the Consolation No.3. Finding his keyboard had survived Liszt, Atcheson slipped on purple trousers and a yellow waistcoat to give us five encores, including “Amazing Grace” and a Cole Porter medley. In New York, it’s all show business.
La Machine Moule The statistics say marriage is good for your health — if you’re a man. But single women live longer than their married sisters. I hadn’t heard Sarah Moule sing since her last album It’s A Nice Thought came out a year ago. So it was a pleasant surprise to hear and see her at the launch last night of her new album Something’s Gotta Give at the Pizza Express Jazz Club in Soho, looking younger and lighter: her marriage must be agreeing with her. Mind you, I’d marry Simon Wallace if he'd be my composer and accompanist. The new album offers classics by Johnny Mercer, plus some more Fran Landesman lyrics with Simon Wallace settings.
Music downloads I’ve recently been adding to the Goodies page recommendations for nice things I’ve found that you might not know. They include some of my favourite not-well-known albums, and there are now also some sample tracks you can download.
Sarah Moule launches her new album Something’s Gotta Give (Linn Records) at Pizza Express Jazz Club at 9pm on 2nd November, with more Fran Landesman lyrics set by Simon Wallace.
» Box office 020 7439 8722
Dancing fools Hats off to Sebastian & Aysegül of Kazum and Doublemoon Records. Their Istanbul Nights at Darbucka in Clerkenwell are the dance venue I’ve been looking for these past several centuries. Friendly atmosphere, wild Balkan and Turkish music and dancing fools. There was a party mood almost touchable quite early. Nurtan’s belly dancing brought it to the surface, and then the dancing never stopped. A tip of the trilby too for lovely couple Hayati & Çigden, recently engaged, who danced together like two people in love, like you always wanted to see lovers dancing — almost sweet enough to give Romance its good name back. See you all next time.
Musical studies 101CD is pumping out back-catalogue CDs at under £5 apiece; I'm replacing lost loves.
Music on demand Twenty years ago I could see cheap copying would end copyright as the most convenient way to pay musicians. Whoever could replace it stood to make a fortune. Two decades of pondering it produced no fortune, then an article I read last year revealed the assumption to reverse…
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Magyar Magic Thanks to Nick Sowicz, found myself last night perched on a chair in a packed room at the Hungarian Cultural Centre in Maiden Lane, listening to fabulous jazz by Arnie Sornogyi (bass), Béla Szakcsi Lakatos (piano) and Winston Clifford (drums & percussion) of Improvokation.
» Magyar Magic
Late Junction is always good, and some nights they excel themselves. Check out Monday night's broadcast.
To party, to party last night to celebrate the launch of Oojami's new album Urban Dervish. It was a typical Hubble Bubble event, with belly dancers and trapeze and Sufi dancers performing to the band's hypnotic "belly dancing breakbeat". Place was packed, but still ran into Asu Aksoy and madly-dancing sister Gulsen, Claire Dowsing, and Andrew from the late-lamented Barefoot Boogie. Just what I needed after a day spent in jury service.
Ed to Joy When I lived in a religious cult in the mountains of South Korea, one of my many surprises was to meet a local fan of the poetry of Robert Burns. Deceived by the apparent 'foreignness' of Lallans (the Lowland Scots dialect of English that Scots inists is a distinct language) I had not appreciated how far the intimate voice of Burns travels.
Now Eddi Reader has done a lovely thing, and recorded The Songs of Robert Burns. This is the sunniest album I've heard since John James' 1969 Morning Brings The Light. Celtic music is traditionally long on wild melancholy; but Reader brings Burns' familiar lyrics alive with a fresh and radiant tenderness. Buy and play it often.
Ce n’est pas normal de chanter en public. C’est normal de chanter dans la salle de bains, parce qu’on est heureux, parce qu’on est seul, mais en public, non!
Jacques Brel
Missed getting wet at last weekend's WOMAD festival, listening to the highlights now on replays of the BBC's Late Junction show.
During his temporary blindness, Paddy McAloon spent long hours listening to short-wave radio.
And so I rake the sky, but my net is not fine enough, and I miss you.
Of course, there is another way to look at this. Your daddy loves you.
I said: Your daddy loves you very much. He just doesn’t want to live with us any more.
» Paddy McAloon I Trawl The Megahertz