RSS feedArchive for April, 2010
The June 2010 Songlines podcast is now available through iTunes
Posted on April 27th, 2010 in Recent Posts by Songlines.
This podcast includes highlights from the June 2010 issue of Songlines (#68) opening with an excerpt from Jim Moray’s new album In Modern History (available free, exclusively with this issue of Songlines). Editor in chief, Simon Broughton, plays an extract from Mulatu Astatke’s latest album Mulatu Steps Ahead on Strut.
Features include: Nigel Williamson with a tribute to the late Charlie Gillett, Nasim Masoud with the winners of the 2010 Songlines Music Awards and Simon Broughton on Sudanese/Egyptian instrument and band Rango. Nathaniel Handy brings you the latest news with the Official UK World Music Album Chart, as well as music from Vieux Farka Touré and new project UNITE. The podcast ends with an extract from Victor Démé’s new album Deli on Naive.
The next Songlines podcast, featuring highlights from the July issue (#69), will be available from June 11 2010.
WOMAD Festival Abu Dhabi 2010
Posted on April 27th, 2010 in News by Songlines.
Despite volcanic ash clouds, last-minute cancellations and hurricane-like desert winds, WOMAD managed to pull off a fantastic free event in Abu Dhabi. It’s very satisfying to see some of the UAE’s oil money being spent on a WOMAD festival for an audience that was an eclectic mix of music fans, sheikhs, the curious and passers-by.
‘Desert Cultures’ was the theme and Justin Adams picked out bands to represent the ‘sound of the desert’, which he describes as: “remote… all that space and the slowness of time in a desert creates certain kinds of atmospheres.”
Mali’s Tinariwen were on his list, topping the bill on the final night with an interesting collaboration with Kyp Malone and Tunde Adebimpe from New Yorkers TV On The Radio. The latter are huge fans of the desert blues rockers and Malone said the collaboration was “beyond their wildest dreams”. Algerian oud impresario Mehdi Haddab also joined them on stage, his energy and charisma making this an undoubted highlight.
Adams also programmed Namibia’s The Gubi Family, Al Ayala, outstanding connoisseurs of the traditional Arabic stick dance, and the Musafir Gypsies of Rajasthan, whose melodies are centred around a Jewish harp and the rhythm of the dholak hand drum.
The stars of the weekend, however, were Rango, Cairo-based Sudanese desert musicians, whose thumping beats and outrageous frontman had the crowd jumping. The rango is an ancient, controversial, nearly lost-and-forgotten voodoo instrument now being revived by this band. Performing again on the final night, thanks to a last-minute drop-out by a poorly Damian Marley, Rango were joined on stage by the inimitable Zawose Family, a staple of WOMAD’s past and surely of festivals to come. A sheer delight.
Ruth Barnes
East London music venue gets last chance to be saved from oblivion
Posted on April 26th, 2010 in News by Songlines.
The opening of the state-of-the-art 2,000-capacity music venue Ocean in Hackney in east London in 2005 seemed like a dream moment. Placed as it was in the heart of London’s creative hotspot in the newly regenerating east end, it was sure to be a success.
Since then, mismanagement has left it semi-closed and now the people behind Tabernacle Live in Notting Hill have raised the money to bid to reopen Ocean to live music. A spokesman for Hackney Council said: “The Council is considering two options for the lease to occupy Ocean, one from a music promoter, the other from a cinema operator, and it is expected that Cabinet will make a decision in June.”
The final decision will be made in June, and a campaign has been launched to support the bid and save Ocean for live music. If you would like your voice to be heard, let the Hackney Borough council hear it.
Though the public has yet to be consulted, it will require the council to feel people want a music venue at Ocean for it to be saved. Make your first stop the campaign Facebook page…
www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=105021606203086&ref=ts>
Billy Bragg heads new play Pressure Drop in London
Posted on April 13th, 2010 in News by Songlines.
Always a man at the forefront of the debate over English identity in the post-imperial age, folk singer Billy Bragg has been one of the most articulate artists championing a tolerant, inclusive yet proud English sense of self. He is once again delving into the question of Englishness in a new collaboration with the theatre group On Theatre and Mick Gordon. Part play, part gig, part installation – Pressure Drop is a drama exploring the passions and prejudice at the heart of English identity.
The name – Pressure Drop – is taken from a 60s track by Jamaican reggae band Toots and the Maytals recounting the hardship of life in Kingston, Jamaica. As Bragg explains: ‘The pressure now seems to be on the white working class. What does it mean to belong? If your town is changing beyond all recognition, the things that you use, not only as a physical landscape, but also as a moral landscape, are disappearing…are being passed by by the new people who’ve come to the town, then what does it mean to belong? Do you belong there anymore? Do you belong somewhere else? Or do you belong anywhere? Do you belong in the past? What’s in the future for you? They’re the problems we should be addressing in this play.’
Charting one white, working class family’s struggle to define home for themselves, the production takes place from April 19- May 12 at the Wellcome Trust in Euston, London.
