Posts Tagged ‘songlines music travel’

Traveller Gareth Richards has just returned from our Songlines Music Travel trip to Cuba for the New Year and has been kind enough to share his photos and experience with us.

Just back from the Songlines Cuba trip, my second trip with Songlines – I went to Mali last year. It was a great way to see Cuba and experience its music. Most days we linked up with musicians in the afternoon and then went out to venues in the evening to see live sets. Some particular highlights:

• We were hosted by Pablo Menendez of Mezcla at his home in Havana, where we got an introduction to Cuban music and to life as a musician in Cuba.
• New Year was celebrated at our hotel in Havana where the band of the late Arsenio Rodríguez performed along with an excellent dance show. We even had a display of synchronised swimming in the hotel pool!
• We met a young Cuban rapper who came with us to see a show by the excellent Septeto Santiaguero at the Casa de la Trova in Santiago de Cuba.
• We saw Guasimal, a rootsy band featuring percussion and accordion, on the outskirts of Manzanillo.
• We visited the Cabildo de los Congos Reales de San Antonio in Trinidad, where we learned about Santería and about how strands of African culture survive in Cuba long after the end of slavery.
• Then there was Azucar Negra in Havana, Los Soneros de Canacho in Camagüey, Septeto Caribe Son in Trinidad, and many others!

All in all, a fabulous way to spend a couple of weeks.

Gareth Richards

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Tags: azucar negra, cuba, gareth richards, guasimal, los soneros de canacho, mezcla, music travel, pablo menedez, santeria, septeto caribe son, septeto santiaguero, songlines music travel.

With a new generation of singers including Mariza, Ana Moura and Carminho, it should come as no surprise that Portuguese fado is having a successful revival. The distinctive music has drawn hundreds to concerts here in London, but fado is best experienced in the small fado houses of Lisbon, where the intimate setting draws you further in dark, melancholic music.

This September Songlines Music Travel will be taking travellers to the home of fado – Lisbon – to hear it as the locals do, in some of the best fado tavernas and clubs in the city. Here are some photos from travellers who recently returned from our June trip.

Alfama

Amalia Rodrigues' house

Calu Moreira and his band

Calu Moreira's band, Toy Vieira (keyboard), Stefan on guitar (son of Bau, a very famous Cape Verdean musician)

Rossio, Lisbon - Preparation for the opening night of the Lisbon festival

Sr Vinho Fado restaurant

Gisela Joao chatting with the group at Sr Vinho

The street where Maria Severa lived, Mouraria

São Jorge Castle and the hill of Alfama

For more information on the Songlines Music Travel trip to Lisbon, please visit: www.songlines.co.uk/music-travel/tours-festivals-2011/lisbon-fado-09.php

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Tags: ana moura, carminho, fado, lisbon, mariza, music travel, portugal, Portuguese, songlines music travel.

The annual brass festival in Guča has been going since 1961 and is one of the wildest parties in Europe. Taking place over four days in August, the festivities see more than 300,000 people descend on the village – usually home to just 3,000 inhabitants – where revellers can feast on spit-roasted lamb and pork, sup alcohol aplenty and enjoy some of the 40 brass bands playing the local dances – the kolo and the cocek.

Here’s a quick taste of the Balkan madness experienced last year by Joe Walker and Marc Engel – who ventured to Guča on one of the  Songlines Music Travel trips.

To join us for the madness of Guča 2011 or for more information, please visit www.songlines.co.uk/music-travel/tours-festivals-2011/serbia-guca.php

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Tags: balkan, balkan brass, Boban Marcovic, boban markovic, Brass Band, goran bregovic, guca, guca festival, Serbia, songlines music travel, Travel, World Music.

“I don’t get it,” said Nell, eyeing me with that expression of untraversable cultural distance which 16-year-old girls reserve only for their fathers. “You’re going to a festival of brass band music with seven total strangers. Like searching for Wallace and Gromit music. With all your goatee mates.” Clearly my attempts to fill the house with Gypsy brass music over the years had failed to provide evidence of the kind of wild sounds I was seeking out by travelling to Guca, deep in the overgrown forests and orchards of west Serbia. I’d been wanting to visit Guca for ages. But this year, its 50th year, was going to be something special and Songlines were planning a tour.

I’d encountered Balkan brass music years before, through the Rough Guide CDs. Its sticking power for me was its perfect tempo for keeping a steady pace on my local gym’s treadmill machines. I can’t tell if that sense of hurtling forward in the music is in its nature or because I heard so much of it while desperately trying – and failing – to keep my desk-job belly at bay.

I’d built up some fear myself of ‘the goatees’ but as it turned out, the group was far from it. A mixture of hardened gig-goers and part-timers like me. By far the most exotic were (as they were to be affectionately referred to throughout the week) “the Americans,” – a retired professor of music, his wife and son from North Carolina. They turned out to be the source of some of the best timed and most urbane jokes of the week.

After a great meal in Belgrade under the wing of tour guide Vlad, it was soon apparent that we were in for something amazing. Namely, Vlad. No quick sketch can do him justice. A man physically halfway between Borat and Bruno, his razor-sharp humour with a definite camp edge had us crying with laughter the whole week. On our first night I learnt a valuable tip from him: how to quickly get rid of those annoying flower sellers that sidle up to your restaurant table offering plastic-looking roses, and more often than not barge into the middle of a great conversation. They always manage to either make you look cheap and tacky for buying their roses – or unromantic and Neanderthal for refusing them. Vlad simply pointed to his female companion: “Allergic,” he said. The salesman slunk away. This was one of those staccato ripostes that cropped up many times during the week; to one hapless flower salesman, Vlad pointed round to a whole table of us. “Allergic,” he said.

Us honorary pollen intolerants had much to thank him for. Vlad was a man who managed to make things happen. The morning after an amazing gig by Boban Markovic with DJ Shantel from Germany, we spotted Boban sauntering through the town. “Boban! Bobay!” shrieked the crowd around him. Boban sauntered on, in his own bubble. “Songlines!” shouted Vlad. Boban turned on his heels and beamed. Seconds later, all of us are posing with the great man for a photo. A few hours before the Goran Bregovic concert to a crowd numbering tens of thousands, Vlad managed to shepherd us all backstage to natter with the legend about projects past and future.

The highlight of it all, though, was an evening when Vlad told me, in a low voice: “Stay here, in this café, trust me.” Looking out over the town I could see revellers partying in every direction. Shots of rakia being hawked in test tubes by leggy girls and necked by good-natured youngsters, bopping along to hundreds of vein-bursting brassmen. I could see flag-waving from a kid perched on top of the town statue. I’d promised to meet up with a lady photographer I’d met, and somewhere out there was beautiful Maryam, from the Persian section of the BBC. There was a lot tugging my centrifugal nature away from this rather boring café. “Please Joe, trust me. Sit here, at this table,” said Vlad. Moments later, I could see bouncers appear at the doors, keeping newcomers at bay. And then it happened. A Montenegrin millionaire’s party at the table four feet from ours was suddenly joined by the entire Markovic band with Marko leading a three-hour private set into the wee hours, his golden trumpet just an arm’s length from us. Our little Songlines tour group spent the night dancing on the tables – it had to be the most euphoric musical atmosphere I have ever been a part of.

I’m in the film business and my current project, Life in a Day, involves masses of material gathered by amateur filmmakers, so I was inspired to try my hand at documentary camerawork and capture something of the festival. I arrived at Guca tooled up with a little digital camera and a sound recording device. Like the Ancient Mariner, I now corner friends and show them my little shot of Marko Markovic, taken between the bouncing legs of the Serbian giant on the table in front of me, the sound emerging from a poxy, pinhole speaker. How can one capture this way the unbelievable noise of two Gypsy brass bands fighting to be the loudest in one tiny enclosed space? Or the vision of girls dancing on the table as their boyfriends slap spittle-wettened banknotes on horn-players’ foreheads to urge them to play on? If I’ve learnt anything significant from my experience in Guca this August, it was this: put the camera down. Don’t be at any remove from such experiences. Take part!

www.songlines.co.uk/music-travel

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Tags: Boban Marcovic, Brass Band, goran bregovic, guca, music, Serbia, songlines, songlines music travel, Travel, World Music.