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T
he last twelve
months – I write this
at the end of Jan-
uary – have been
invigorating ones around here.
Photo: Judith Burrows
They included the 30th
anniversary of founding the
beast that became fRoots, and
the 40th of the release of my
own first album, so there has
been quite a bit of enjoyable
and fascinating reflection on
the past going on. At the same
time, things moved ever onwards as we got our first seri-
ous Arts Council funding for a project, the Looking For A
New England CD, and promoted the biggest live music
event that we’ve ever been involved in, our Roots @ The
Roundhouse (a.k.a. the fRootsenanny) spectacular.
I’m still recovering from the afterglow of the latter as I
type. That was one amazing night, especially considering
that by mid-afternoon on the day we were three hours
behind with our meticulously scheduled sound checks and I
was planning the quickest route to Beachy Head. Thanks to
all the brilliant artists and crew who gave their services and
pulled it all together in the cause of the good ship fRoots,
especially to our sound supremo Jamie Orchard-Lisle, with-
out whom. There’ll be a proper report next issue with lots
of photos, and by then I’ll have had a chance to check the
raw webcast footage which people reported – from all over
the world – looked and sounded great too. The much
repeated comment on t’interweb afterwards was that a
concert in which every single artist is outstanding is like the
proverbial hen’s teeth. Meanwhile, events proved inspira-
tional to some of the artists too – re-unions, new playing
formats – who knows what we started?! Inevitably the
Roundhouse want us to do another one next year. Maybe…
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Meanwhile, what we catalysed with Looking For A New
England has upped and run too. Following the distribution
of the CD and magazine to all the delegates at 2009’s
Womex and AFO, a package of artists featured on it – Jim
Moray, Jackie Oates, Olivia Chaney, Gadarene and the
Unthanks – have been invited to wing off to the colonies
and wave the flag at a New York gig and a special show-
case at this year’s South By Southwest in Austin. So at last
England gets to experience the way that the Scottish and
Irish arts organisations have been promoting their own
local music for years. We’re proud to have played a key
role in getting this to finally happen.
There’ll be more too. If funding is confirmed, Looking
For A New England 2 this autumn will be an overview of
the best current things happening in the many other folk
traditions thriving in 21st century England: this’ll not be a
surprise to people who attended our Expanding The Gene
Pool panel at AFO. And after that we hope to be catalysing
some natural meetings of minds across those resident tra-
ditions. Onwards (in all directions!)
NEW! DIGITAL EDITION!
Meanwhile I’ve been back in nostalgia land re-finding
with a full sample issue to read online all the artists who recorded for the Village Thing label
which was my early 1970s diversion. Expect a 40th anniver-
sary celebration of that in September. I am as a bee…
Ian Anderson
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