Posts Tagged ‘bellowhead’
Jon Boden launches new website to promote social singing tradition
Posted on June 19th, 2010 in World Music.
Folk singer Jon Boden (BBC Radio 2 Folk Singer of the Year) is to launch a new website where he will upload a new folk song every day for a year.
The Bellowhead founder and one half of folk duo Spiers & Boden sees himself as first and foremost an unaccompanied folk singer. ‘In the 60s and 70s the status of unaccompanied singing was much higher within the folk scene, and most of my favourite albums from the revival are albums where the majority of the material is unaccompanied,’ Boden explains. To rectify this loss of status, he is launching the website on Midsummer’s Day.
‘My current repertoire is something like 240 songs, so to complete the whole year I will have to learn half as many again,’ he says. This ambitious project sees modern technology brought to the aid of ancient culture, allowing people to hear folk songs streamed through the site, on a free downloadable podcast from iTunes, and at the end of each month, buy a digital album of that month’s songs through Navigator Records.
Boden hopes that the resulting 12 digital albums, containing 365 folk songs, will provide a unique resource of English traditional song for a generation to whom social singing in pubs is almost unknown, and where it has become virtually the sole preserve of football stadiums and places of worship.
Bellowhead set sail for 2010 with a special night at London Southbank Centre
Posted on December 21st, 2009 in World Music.
They are firmly established as one of English folk music’s most charismatic and unusual acts – 11 musicians playing more than 20 instruments and driven by the prolific folk duo John Spiers and Jon Boden, they are folk’s bold, brassy big band. Their repertoire often takes in the seedy side of old English life – such as in their Dirty Weekend night at the Royal Festival Hall on Valentine’s Day full of filthy ballads – and on New Year’s Eve they host Set Sail for 2010 with Bellowhead.
The nautically-themed night at the Southbank Centre’s Clore Ballroom and foyers will include sea shanty singalongs, old pub games, a twisted ceilidh, a casino and a silent disco alongside three sets from Bellowhead. And how better to end a salty dogs’ evening than out on the side of the Thames watching the London fireworks.