[by Ken Hunt, London] The Grateful Dead were a band that polarised opinion. How you took them over the course of their 30-year lifespan probably got entrenched. Mind you, given the band’s archival revelations, the present tense ‘take’ still seems pertinent, even all these years after their linchpin Jerry Garcia’s death in August 1995 and the band’s subsequent folding that year.
2. 7. 2007 | číst vše...
[by Ken Hunt, London] ‘Peerie’ Willie Johnson’s birthplace was the Shetland Islands. They are home to one of the most fascinating of Scotland’s indigenous folkways. The Shetlands are a cluster of islands and a cultural staging post. Head south and before you reach the Scottish mainland you come to the Orkneys. Head north and you’ll reach the Arctic Circle. Head east and you make landfall in Scandinavia. To the north-west are the Faroes and then Iceland. To the west is North America. The geographical position and isolation of the Shetlands were what created ‘Peerie’ Willie Johnson’s consummate self-taught guitar style.
1. 7. 2007 | číst vše...
In the world-music-jargon of melting-pots and cultural crossroads Israel holds a prominent place. This March, the Israeli ministery of culture invited several dozens of festival organisers and journalists for a marathon series of showcases in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Surprisingly, the opening night was focused on klezmer, a style considered by many Israelis to be a dying phenomenon of past – along with the yiddish language.
1. 7. 2007 | číst vše...
[by Ken Hunt, London] This review though concerns one of the Czech Republic’s great future exports. Namely Dan Bárta & Illustratosphere. Currently they are little known outside their homeland. However, in the Czech Republic Bárta’s reputation as a major vocalist is a given. If talking to Czech friends and strangers in a biased audience counts as a straw poll, then everyone knew him. The rub was that every one of them had previously failed in their attempts to buy tickets for the band’s concerts in Prague – Bárta’s home and base. It meant most of the crowd braving the showers was Czech.
25. 6. 2007 | číst vše...
[by Ken Hunt, London] The Grateful Dead turned Kris Kristofferson’s Me And Bobby McGee into a road movie. With the Full Tilt Boogie Band, her finest ever band behind her, Janis Joplin turned the song into an increasingly urgent love song. Beginning with Joplin’s acoustic strumming and voice, the song built, propelled by Clark Pierson’s drums and Ken Pearson’s Hammond organ. Then nearly three minutes into the song, Richard Bell’s piano slides in unobtrusively. From there on in, the ensemble interpretation steadily steps up its frenzied energy. Together, the whole band delivers one of the Pearl album’s – and Joplin’s – defining statements.
25. 6. 2007 | číst vše...
[by Ken Hunt, London] As much as the films, Disney songs are the stuff of English speakers’ dreams (and nightmares if Fantasia‘s demon king counts), the common ground, the warp and weft of Anglophone culture. Hal Willner’s 1988 Stay Awake project was a fresh, ripe look at the Disney Songbook. Its cast included Los Lobos, Ken Nordine, Sinead O’Connor, Sun Ra, Bonnie Raitt, Syd Straw and Suzanne Vega. But one Stay Awake interpretation re-set the bar height beyond Sinatra’s wildest imagination.
25. 6. 2007 | číst vše...
The Barbican centre, well known for its flexible and multi genre programming, hosted this year’s BBC Radio 3 Awards for World Music ceremony. The nearly 5 hour long show with 2 intervals was opened by the winner in Asia Pacific category, the Indian classical musician Debashish Bhattacharya, switching between 3 different instruments, all based on the lap steel guitar.
25. 6. 2007 | číst vše...
[by Kate Hickson, UK] Joe Boyd, the author of White Bicycles (subtitled “Making music in the 1960s”) did a great deal when it came to acting a midwife to the soundtrack to many people’s lives during the 1960s. He produced era-defining music by the likes of Eric Clapton & The Powerhouse, Pink Floyd, Soft Machine, The Purple Gang, Fairport Convention, the Incredible String Band, Nick Drake and Brotherhood of Breath. Then he went on to do it again, overseeing recordings by the likes of Richard & Linda Thompson, Kate & Anna McGarrigle, Maria Muldaur, Dagmar Krause and 10,000 Maniacs. With his Hannibal hat on, he brought Hungary’s Márta Sebestyén and Muzsikás and Bulgaria’s Bulgarka Vocal Trio to our attention.
18. 6. 2007 | číst vše...
[by Ken Hunt, London] There’s a good chance that you’ve read or maybe attempted to read The Lord of the Rings either in Tolkien’s idiosyncratic and often highly time-warped English or in translation. It’s much translated. It’s gone into many other languages and Peter Jackson successfully translated it into visual language in his masterful film trilogy (2001-2003). Turning the trilogy into a vehicle for the London stage has produced a lavish affair of a very different kind.
15. 6. 2007 | číst vše...
[by Ken Hunt, London] For me, over 25 years, several incarnations and in many lands, the Oysters have revealed themselves as capable and incapable of many things. As my silver-backed friend Mike Kamp of Germany’s guerrilla folk magazine Folker! has observed of things that will not happen, the Oysterband will never land a great big hit. Mind you, that is so far off their agenda to be risible.
5. 6. 2007 | číst vše...
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