NEWS BY KEN HUNT
NEWS BY KEN HUNT
NOVEMBER 1998
An introduction
"Imagination like a muscle will increase with exercise." The American songwriter Peter Blegvad wrote that. "Music is a sovereign embrocation for keeping the imagination supple." I wrote that.In April 1971 I turned 20 working for Northern Germany's biggest and most important magazine publishing company situated in a bilingual region called Schleswig-Holstein, the northernmost Land (Federal State) where Germany meets Denmark. On my birthday I telephoned my parents and attempted a conversation in broken English. It was a language which felt strange on my tongue after speaking nothing but High German and its cousin language, Low German, for two months. It was a peculiar day because that day I articulated a personal revelation for the first time (in German, of course). I no longer defined myself in terms of being English or British. Foreign language and culture had caused me to reappraise my mother culture. Patriotism had never been an issue for me. The Great War had rid our family of any notions in patriotism because that was something my paternal grandfather associated with the military. The 1914?1918 war had been a bosses' war. National Socialism was another matter but only after the bugle calls of patriotism had decayed and as news of the death camps began to appear was the family's pacifism shaken. National pride, however, was deeply rooted in the family through culture, working-class culture in particular.
Looking back the way to that transformation in April 1971 had been prepared by music. I had sort of incorporated the Afro-Caribbean and West African music I heard rumbling down "Commonwealth Street" (as our road was nicknamed) every weekend into my sound world. Every weekend rent parties and weekend-long bashes took place. Every weekend bass lines from Jamaican R&B and unnamed Nigerian records, distorted by the outer limits of Dansette technology, lulled me to sleep and drove my mother to distraction. They merged with my saxophonist father's jazz and swing from the 1930s and 1940s and all that unremarkable and never consciously absorbed musical wallpaper on the BBC. Circa 1965?1967 the hours and hours spent listening to pirate stations like Radio Caroline, Radio London, Radio Essex and all the rest wafted the sound and spirit of the Beach Boys, Kinks, Stones and all the peculiarly named others into my life.
Most important of all, I would be knocked sideways by folk music. Bob Dylan lanced conservative thought, whether he was speaking plainly or in riddle. Buffy Sainte-Marie spat Native American consciousness (although in those days we still called Native Americans Indians or Red Indians) or seduced with some of the finest love songs ever written. Shirley Collins sang with a Southern English lilt and through her and the Young Tradition I backtracked to Bob and Ron Copper, who, like Shirley Collins, came from Sussex. Sussex was the county beneath the one in which I lived ó Surrey ó and their voices, like the Beatles (Penny Lane) and the Kinks (Waterloo Sunset), reminded me that there was more to music than bogus American voices around. Annie Briggs was mesmerizing when she was focused ó otherwise she would stalk off stage.
I played truant from school at least once a month in order to visit the folk shops in London. In one, Collett's Folk Shop, a benign character called Hans Fried (the son of the German poet and Shakespeare translator Erich Fried) played me a record that changed my life, caused me to re-align my ears and put me on my present, life-long path. He played me the Nonesuch album, The Real Bahamas, recorded in 1965 by two people who later became friends of mine, Peter Siegel and Jody Stecher. Hans played me the Pinder Family's I Bid You Goodnight. I was heaven-sent and that lowering down hymn remains an all-time desert island disc for me to the present day.
This autumn this all came back to me. Dissidenten provided the impetus for me to focus on cross-cultural and multicultural matters. If you have lived in more than one culture, it makes acceptance of other peoples' cultures that much easier. It was the wonderful American banjo player Bill Keith who first introduced me to an old adage. Every language you speak, he said, confers another soul on you. (I used the image on a set of Kronos Quartet CD notes.) You view the world through descaled eyes. The mental conditioning that each language brings causes you to think differently. An elementary example is mental arithmetic. Because tens and units are round the other way in different languages, that is, of the twenty-four and four-and-twenty sort, you calculate differently. Other cultures traditionally went up to 20 and then, having no need to go further, had "lots". Once the sluice gate of language is opened, ideas pour in to populate our dreams.
Talking to Dissidenten at Glastonbury this summer seeded many ideas as listening to them. The richness of Dissidenten's music is derived from a similar series of experiences. At times members of the group have spent considerable time in the Indian subcontinent and in Tangier. Indian and North African idioms and inflexions were absorbed and laid over a German foundation. It may be pure coincidence ó I'd prefer to think not ó but Dissidenten's Curaçao-born singer Izaline Calister lives in the Netherlands. Their Casablanca-born vocalist and mandolincello player. Noujoum Ouazza is now based in Belgium. Manickam Yogeswaran, who is Tamil by birth, now lives in Surrey. All three have their mother cultures spliced with adopted cultures to blend into the musical mix. Call me an old romantic but I believe that sort of blending of minds is what sets Dissidenten's World Beat apart from pack music. With so many people jumping on the World Music band wagon it is good to hear something that comes from the heart and is good music.
November news
Some words about qawwali
The contemporary world's fascination with the cult of personality has tended to focus on, without diminishing the scale or worth of their achievements, `name' qawwals (qawwali singers) such as Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan or the Sabri Brothers. Qawwali, however, remains at heart a devotional music with a taproot drinking deep from Sufi mysticism. That qawwali was press-ganged into the service of the subcontinent's film industry should not detract from the music's inherent spirituality. Seated lines of competing qawwals and their parties (as the accompanying vocal and instrumental collectives are known) engaging in the cinematic equivalent of the Battle of the Qawwali Bands is purely celluloid spectacle. It was probably Shaukat Hussein Rizvi's film Zeenat from 1944 that contained the first filmi qawwali ó sung by three female playback singers, namely, Amirbai Karnataki, Noor Jehan and Zohra Ambalawali. After that it became fair game and hence filmi qawwali became no different from any other sound co-opted for the purposes of profit. Bollywood's commodification of qawwali is superficial and so long as people treat it no differently from stolen western melodies everything is in order. Unfortunately I have met Muslims from Pakistan who could not make the distinction between the two. Sure, they could say Sufi-this and Sufi-that but for them Bollywood's version was as pukka as Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan's. If you want to see a real stinker, seek out Manmohan Desai's lavishly produced Amar Akbar Anthony from 1977 to discover what qawwali became in Bollywood hands.An indication that all qawwali in film doesn't have to be pure celluloid fluff can be found in an interlude in one of the best films out of India in 1998. (M.S. Sathyu's Garm Hava from 1973 is another notable exception.) At the risk of turning this into a film column, director Deepa Mehta's Fire starring Shabana Azmi and Nandita Das is unmissable. While the salacious have focused on one of its subplots ó the lesbian one with the nipple shots, since you ask ó the film presents Desire in various manifestations. A.R. Rahman, the music director of Roja (The Rose) and 1942 ó A Love Story and the music director most likely to succeed Naushad Ali when it comes to tastefulness and tunefulness, has done the music. In one scene the two sisters-in-law are seen enjoying the Miraj Ahmed Qawal ó qawal is an alternative spelling of qawwal. It is ironic that a Tamil music director can do what most Northern Indian filmi merchants have proved singularly useless at doing. Using qawwali in an Indian film in a proper context without resorting to glitz and glamour.
This November the London-based duo of Aki Nawaz and Dave Watts, collectively known as Fun<Da>Mental, continued their experimental path. Since October 1995 they have been fusing elements of hip-hop and qawwali in concert. That period saw them play a string of British dates with the qawwal Aziz Mian and Party. This November Fun<Da>Mental debuted a new collaboration with Bakshi Javaid Salamat Qawwal in a series of collaborations under the banner headline of "Qawwali meets Hip-Hop". The one appearance ("Friday 13") in Brentford in West London that we caught was about 70 per cent effective which was not bad considering that it was a new partnership.
More Indian news
Naushad Ali was the guest of honour at a ceremony at the Indian High Commission in London on 15 November. It marked the release of his new album, Qathwan Sur (Navras NRCD 0102). Based on Naushad's poetry of the same name (it means The Eighth Note), the music has been realised by arranger Uttam Singh and singers Hariharan and Preeti Uttam. The ceremony also marked the release of Naushad presents The Last Journey of Mohammed Rafi (Navras NRCD 2001) which rounds up hitherto unreleased material from the famous playback singer but which ranks as only two out of five stars in my book. The Lucklow-born music director is filmi's equivalent of Ravi Shankar when it comes to popularising Hindustani classical music beyond its traditionally elitist base. Among the people who gave speeches was Lata Mangeshkar, the subcontinent's most famous playback singer. Naushad incidentally also attended the 75th birthday celebrations for the wonderful classical vocalist C.R. Vyas in Mumbai (Bombay) in November. Among the others who paid tribute were tabla maestros Kishan Maharaj and Alla Rakha, the santoor pioneer Shivkumar Sharma, the flautist Hariprasad Chaurasia, fellow vocalist Pandit Jasraj and the sarod virtuoso Amjad Ali Khan. Incidentally for those who have seen my entry on Naushad Ali in the second edition of The Penguin Encyclopedia of Popular Music I must apologise for getting his year of birth wrong. He was born in 1919.Chitra vina or gottuvadyam is a South Indian fretless stick zither played with a slide. It produces an array of sonorities which blend good decent organic sounds with the otherworldliness of theremin or Trautonium. Its most prominent player is Chitravina Ravikiran. (There is a South Indian convention for musicians to add the name of their instrument to their name as in Kit Drum Marlon Klein.) Ravikiran mentioned in a recent telephone call that he is preparing to record his label debut for the British-based Nimbus label. This is scheduled for January 1999 whilst he is in Paris. In addition to being a Karnatic (South Indian) classical virtuoso, he has recorded with Vishwa Mohan Bhatt and Taj Mahal and played privately with Ry Cooder.
The Indian weekly magazine India Today ran a piece in its 16 November issue which is worth dwelling on. The Indian engineer turned flautist Dinesh Shandilya has decided to exceed his own Limca Book of Records entry for the country's longest and largest playable flute at five feet in length and 3_ inches in diameter. He is now working on a flute six feet in length and a cunning plot to get into The Guinness Book of Records.
Bartók revisited
The Hungarian group Muzsikás completed work on their next album for Hannibal in London in mid November around the time of their London Royal Festival Hall and Cambridge Corn Exchange recitals. Both featured a performance piece called The Roots of Bartók and in effect trailered that next album scheduled for February 1999 release. Sessions for this recording, a good old-fashioned concept album based on the folk roots of the noted Hungarian composer and folklorist Béla Bartók, started in February 1998 in Budapest although Muzsikás had been developing the programme in concert over several years. The album's title seems settled on The Bartók Album.Additional sessions took place this September at Livingston Studios in North London. Unfortunately their vocalist and since her vocals on The English Patient soundtrack, Hungary's most famous singer, Márta Sebestyén was troubled intermittently this year by recurring throat problems and these prevented her from singing. The September sessions found Muzsikás joined in the studio by a Rumanian guest, the British-based classical violinist, Alexander Balanescu who also guested at their two English concert dates. In concert they interwove dance into many of the performances. They also judiciously played samples of Bartók's field recordings before playing their own renditions.
Musings in the studio
This autumn the former Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart completed work using Chris Blackwell's new equipment on a single using DVD (Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc, the next CD/CD-ROM generation) technology. Hart used two tracks from his album Supralingua for the pioneering development. He mixed Indoscrub and Endless River in 5.1 channel digital sound for the project for what I suspect is the first DVD single. (Corrections to dissidenten@exil.de) The tracks are remixed audio with a new video component using time-lapse photography and motion footage. Of Supralingua itself, Hart told me in September, "It seems like, to me, a natural evolution in an evolutionary chain of musical development in an artist. Being in the Grateful Dead has allowed me to develop in many areas without the constraints of the commercial world, without having to sell units or to make commercial or formula music."Hart has also finished work on the live debut from The Other Ones. The Other Ones are the first world-class band to emerge from the Dead axis since Jerry Garcia's death in August 1995. The album derived from concerts this summer finds a Core Four from the Dead, that is, Bruce Hornsby (keyboards/vocals), Mickey Hart (drums/percussion/vocals), Bob Weir (guitars/vocals) and Phil Lesh (bass/vocals) in the excellent company of John Molo (drums), Dave Ellis (saxophones) and Mark Karen and Steve Kimock (guitars/backing vocals). The album's release is being prepared for Grateful Dead Records.
The singer-songwriter Richard Thompson went into Capitol Studios in Hollywood this November to cut his new album due out this coming spring. Among the accompanists were bassist Danny Thompson and the former Fairport Convention drummer Dave Mattacks and his son Teddy. Co-producing were Tom Rothrock and Rob Schnapf who apparently have worked with Beck and the Foo Fighters. Apparently REM's drummer Jerry Waronker was also due to take part in some capacity. Teddy Thompson meanwhile is signing to Geffen, having already appeared on the soundtrack for the remake of Psycho. Richard Thompson has a new newsletter, available from Richard Thompson News, PO Box 23402, London SE26 4ZP, UK. Send your name and address to them if you wish to receive information and mention where you found out about the newsletter.
The Alaskan singer-songwriter Jewel (Jewel Kilcher) whose debut album Pieces of You supposedly sold some ten million copies, has finished filming for Ang Lee's upcoming film Ride With The Devil set for release in 1999.
Deaths
The blues musician Lonnie Pitchford died 8 November 1998. Pitchford, born in October 1955, featured in Alan Lomax's documentary film, The Land Where The Blues Came From. He contributed to several blues anthologies, including Axel Küstner and Siegfried Christmann's recordings released on the German L+R label, before recording his debut solo album, All Around Man for Rooster Records in 1994. He was an able guitarist and diddley-bow player (a primitive one-string folk instrument, cousin to the mouth-bow). He died from complications after contracting pneumonia.In the dark days of the late 1950s folk music in Britain was given a tremendous fillip by the Scots duo of Robin Hall and Jimmie Macgregor. Most weekday nights they appeared singing topical songs and ditties on Cliff Michelmore's BBC magazine programme Tonight. Their songs often had a sort of leaden Music Hall-style humour to them, as evidenced by one such title, Ye Cannae Shove Yer Grannie Aff A Bus (Glaswegian for You Can't Shove Your Grannie Off A Bus). Glasgow police found Robin Hall's body on 18 November although quite when he died is unknown. It was an indication of a life in decline from the heady years of national television. Born in Edinburgh on 27 June 1937, he met Macgregor at the World Youth Festival in Vienna in 1959 where they were encouraged to team up by Paul Robson. Tonight followed soon after. Vehemently of the Left, they were more than televisual puppets and Hall stirred up controversy by refusing to remove his CND badge before going on air. CND, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, was defiantly not of the establishment. The duo became enormously famous owing to their television exposure on Tonight (which lasted until 1965) and then as hosts of the never-to-be-forgotten-blight-on-the-Scottish-landscape White Heather Club. They lasted together until 1979, although they reunited in 1994 for one last performance. Nothing in Hall's career matched his heyday years with Macgregor although after they parted ways Hall worked as a broadcaster with the BBC World Service and on Scottish regional radio.
Right now all over American television, supported by newspaper adverts, they are promoting Elvis Presley's The Elvis Presley Gospel Treasury two-CD set. "Elvis Presley Loved These Wonderful Songs And You'll Feel His Joy In Every One!" they are proclaiming. "You'll Love Hearing Elvis When He Was Young And Filled With Hope!" Gospel was a big part of Presley's music. It is a shame that more column inches couldn't have been devoted to the death of the U.S. white gospel bass vocalist, songwriter and manager J.D. Sumner. He died on 15 November 1998 at Myrtle Beach in South Carolina. John David Sumner (nicknamed Jim Dandy) first saw the light of day in Lakeland, Florida on 19 November 1924 and gravitated to the Saviour's music, singing first in church. With puberty his voice broke and he was able to join the Sunshine Boys and later the Blackwood Brothers as their bass voice. Sumner became a favourite vocalist of Elvis Presley's and Presley called on Sumner's then group, the Stamps, to accompany him supposedly on the condition that Sumner was there singing that bass which earned him a place in The Guinness Book of Records. They remained with Presley from November 1971 to his death on 16 August 1977. While they were with him, they contributed distinctive vocals to gospel material such as Why Not Lord and Nearer My God To Thee and the year of Presley's death made a homage anthology with the marvellous title, Elvis Has Left The Building. Later titles, the cynic might contend, milked the connection a little: Elvis's Favorite Gospel Songs and Memories Of Our Friend Elvis ó released in 1977 and 1978 respectively. Sumner's own account of his life was published in 1971 under the title Music Is My Life. One of the great voices has left the building.The Andalusian oudist and vocalist Reinette l'Oranaise died 17 November 1998 in the French capital. Born Sultana Daoudi in Tiaret in Algeria in 198 she lost her eyesight after contracting smallpox as a small girl. She began learning Andalusian music, a synthesis of Jewish and Moorish music, at her mother's suggestion, as her mother was fearful for her daughter's future. Along the way she was nicknamed Reinette, meaning Queenie. Her repertoire included hawzi (a popular Andalusian musical style) and qasidah (a popular music form found throughout the Arabic sphere of influence from Egypt to Indonesia). She became proficient on oud (lute), derbouka (a drum) and mondola (mandolin) and committed hundreds of songs to memory. In the 1930s she cemented her reputation performing in her teacher Saoud Medioni's cafe in the Jewish district of Oran ó in Arabic, Wahrane. She became especially associated with a repertoire that failed to kow-tow to Algerian conservative society ó much as rai would do from the mid 1970s onwards in the hands of Khaled ó and controversially she was an unveiled woman playing music in conservative Islamic society. After a period in France where she narrowly escaped death for being Jewish, unlike her mentor Saoud Medioni who died in a Nazi concentration after first sending her home to Algeria, she built a career at home and broadened her repertoire to include classical Arabic and semi-classical Andalusian repertoire items. She fell foul of rising Algerian nationalism and emigrated to France where her career declined and levelled off to performing mainly within the Jewish community. A turning point occurred in 1984 when Radio Beur featured her in a programme about Arab-Jewish women. From that point her career steadily revived. Recommended listening: Memoires.
The noted Jamaican saxophonist, session musician and arranger Roland Alphonso has died at the age of 67. Alphonso, a "graduate" of the Skatalites and the infamous Jamaican studio system, was born in Havana, Cuba on 12 January 1931. He moved through Jamaica's changes of style with consummate ease, recording and playing mento, ska, jazz, supper-club mood music ambience and whatever was required of him. Although he started out playing marching drums with his school marching band, it was for his tenor sax playing that he will be best remembered. He died on 20 November 1998.
Ken Hunt, November 1998
