83 f SARAH-JANE SUMMERS
Highland Strathspeys for Fiddle DVD and booklet Dell Daisy Records Dell002
Sarah-Jane is a great teacher, as well as a superb, warm-spirited, real-deal Highlands fiddler, and she has produced a stylish and practical DVD/booklet tuition package. She herself was taught by the famous Donald Rid- dell, who also has members of Blazin’ Fiddles, Lau and Kan to answer for, and she even has a family link to Alexander ‘Sandy’ Battan, Don- ald Riddell’s own teacher, and founder in the year 1903 of the Highland Strathspey And Reel Society. With such illustrious pedigree comes a degree of noblesse oblige, I imagine. At any rate Sarah-Jane passed on some of that rich heritage as director of the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama (RSAMD) Junior Academy traditional music course in Glasgow, in the process honing her teaching skills. Like others with a secure anchorage in a native
style and tradition, she is a free-spirited and outgoing musician and composer, who else- where plays hardanger fiddle to powerful effect. (Her engagement with Norwegian folk music has already borne memorable fruit in her CD Nesta.) Here, however, she focuses on her native Highland strathspey (accent on the second syllable, please), in her view, “perhaps the most complex, and underplayed, form of Scottish fiddle music”.
In a friendly introductory chat, she distin- guishes the “slower and more elegant two- pulse strathspey” from the faster, more driv- ing “four-pulse” type, thereby addressing at once the nagging question of which beat you tap your foot on. Modestly enough, she notes that “this is just how I think about it,” but you tend to believe her. Of the five strathspeys, three are of the former, two of the latter type, and the five lessons, each about 15 minutes long, carefully analyse the tunes bar by bar. With camera angles changing as phrases are repeated, eg slower and faster, she gives clear
technical explanations of the “scrunch”, “strike” and “1310” left-hand ornaments employed, and of the “loop”, “snap” and “arrow stroke” (or “up-driven”) bowing.
The accompanying booklet, as well as providing notation for the tunes, repeats and summarises all this. The tunes she teaches are Lady Mary Ramsay, The Little Old Men Of Abriachan, Highland Whisky, Lady Madelina Sinclair and Donald Morison. Corresponding to each lesson are five exemplary perfor- mances, with guitar backing by Juhani Sil- vola, with parallel performances, in the case of lessons two, four and five, by Gaelic singer Margaret Stewart and dancer Sheila McCutcheon. The tuition is aimed at ‘lower intermediate to advanced’ level fiddlers, but even non-players may enjoy Sarah-Jane’s playing and discussion of the tunes and their origins. An inspiring piece of work.
www.sarah-janesummers.com Pete Cooper
a story that also includes Fred Wedlock, Lauri Say & The Island Folk (the island in question being the Isle of Wight), Mike Absalom, Robin Huw Bowen, Peter Kennedy’s record- ings of Seamus Ennis, Sarah Makem and the McPeakes, plundering from Albanian State Radio’s archives, Blind Willie McTell, Wizz Jones, Sun Also Rises and Dave Peabody. More than a list. Only an index is lacking.
www.bristol-folk.co.uk
Ken Hunt
Sweet Honesty: The Beverley Martyn Story
Beverley Martin Grosvenor House Publishing ISBN 978-1-907211-88-1)
A painful read this: the testimony of a trou- bled and unfulfilled life from the muse and partner of the late John Martyn. From a vio- lent and damaged childhood to a violent and damaged marriage, Beverley writes of how she has been trapped by the choices she has made (or, more sinisterly, have been made for her) over the years which, in a parallel world, could have lead her to lasting musical glory.
Beverley Martyn was/is firstly a singer, guitarist and songwriter in her own right. In the late ’60s, she sat on the brink of great- ness, a key player in the ’60s revival scene. However, she was also subsumed, by her own admissions, into being a bit-part player as partner of Bert Jansch, Paul Simon and Mar- tyn. Through her solo work, and with The Levee Breakers, she had come to the atten- tion of many movers and shakers of that scene: agents, musicians, and producers. Among her achievements were an appear- ance at Monterey Pop Festival in 1967 and later, a deal with Joe Boyd (one of the few good guys in this account) to go to Wood- stock to record. The story to this point offers an interesting insight into that era and the buzz and characters (particularly Nick Drake) that existed within the scene.
It was at this crucial juncture that she met John Martyn and the solo album mutat- ed into a joint project with him, Storm- bringer, the launchpad for John’s career and the end of Beverley’s. What follows is a dis- tressing recount of abuse, control, addiction and depression, with only a flicker of light at the end of the tunnel. Not well-written cer- tainly and clearly a story told by a broken voice, but a moving and troubling account.
Beverley is currently recording and per-
forming again.
www.beverleymartyn.com
Sarah Coxson Beverley Maryn, 1970
The Saydisc & Village Thing Discography
Mark Jones TRP/The Record Press ISBN 978- 0-9563531-2-2
This book examines and details the activities of Saydisc’s labels and their wider affiliates – notably Matchbox – that bundled up a small parcel of discographical history. The labels ranked second or third in the scheme of things, not least of all because Saydisc seemed post-Argo in its bells and whistles output. In the context, that would be hand bells, steam and choo-choos.
The first to make its mark was Blues Like Showers of Rain (1968). Like The Rock Machine Turns You On sampler of the same year, it was one of those LPs that was around. It is an album remembered with great fondness, espe- cially given its talents such as Jo-Anne Kelly, Dave Kelly, Mike Cooper and Ian Anderson (of this parish pump). As Mark Jones’ discographi- cal endeavour reveals, the hits, disproving Mike Nesmith, just didn’t keep on a-coming. But that wasn’t the point to these labels exact- ly. Amid such off-putting titles (for some) as the Monks & Nuns of Prinknash & Standbrook Abbeys’ Christmas Chant and Mechanical Music: Musical Box Dances Played on Victorian Instruments (both 1988), there were seeds sown with Maddy Prior With The Carnival Band doing A Tapestry Of Carols (1987) and Sing Lustily And With Good Courage (1990), Bonnie Shaljean’s Farewell To Lough Neaghe (1988) and Nigel Eaton and Friends’ The Music Of The Hurdy-Gurdy (1988).
Just reading the titles in the discographi- cal section wafts in bygones of all sorts. This book is a labour of love. Fair enough. But it is
Un Monde Qui Bourdonne Ou La Vie Palpitante Des Cornemuses
Presented by Daniel Loddo & Claude Ribouillault CORDAE/La Talvera ISBN 978-2- 918234-01-2
The main movers of CORDAE/La Talvera, those hyperactive workaholics Daniel Loddo and Céline Ricard have added another string to the very many on their bow with this book (in French).
In 2008 they organised a conference based around traditional bagpipe playing in France and Iberia inviting 12 experts on the very varied pipe instruments to speak, and the transcriptions of these papers, along with many fascinating illustrations, make up this delightful book. Daniel himself presented on the Craba and Gaila de fole.
What a varied range of aspects of the central subject these speakers brought to bear! As well as considering the musical back- ground of the various bagpipe traditions, how the form and repertoire of each devel- oped and how the makers worked to develop the modern instruments, there is considera- tion of the historical position of the bagpipe in local cultures through many old illustra- tions, Pierre-Alexis Cabiran presents a section on how pipers have inspired sculptors and artists in a nicely-titled piece, Muses & Corne- muses. Elsewhere there are considerations of the extensive use of bagpipe carvings on French churches – not that pipers are widely considered as saintly personages! Daniel Loddo has a section called La Mauvaise Répu- tation De l’Instrument Et Ceux Qui En Jouent.
Beyond the specialist interest that will make this book indispensable to those with anything more than a passing interest in con- tinental bagpipe traditions, this book is likely to appeal to those who would want to cele- brate diversity in local culture. It certainly does this in a most enthusiastic way. The Tarn and the Occitan speaking areas in general are very lucky to have Loddo and Ricard operat- ing in their interests.
www.talvera.org/
Vic Smith
Photo: Keith Morris
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