f52 Subscribe!


“I doubt if the huge audience that now exists for world and roots music would be there if it weren’t for fRoots.” Joe Boyd


““Incredibly stimulating.” Robert Plant


“No effRoots, no effing comment!” Ian Telfer, Oysterband


fRoots magazine is the essential resource for folk, roots and world music – local music from out there. We’ve always been central to the UK folk scene and were the pioneering, original world music magazine from year zero. We constantly support new young artists while celebrating the established: joining up the dots.


Every issue is packed with news, in-depth features and interviews, reviews, opinion, insights – backed by more than three decades of experience, activism and enthusiasm. You can’t afford to miss one!


To get your regular supply of fRoots you can place an order at your newsagent (tell them that we’re distributed by Seymour). But better still, relax and have fRoots appear through your letterbox early each month. UK postage is included free of charge and fRoots is posted to you a week before street date. Overseas airmail subscribers also usually get it ahead of UK street date.


Each full year includes the festival special and all the double issues with exclusive albums.


U.K: 1 year £47.00 (2 years £94.00)


Airmail Europe, Scandinavia, Ireland and Surface Mail elsewhere: 1 year £63.00, 2 years £126.00 Airmail rest of world: 1 year £80.00, 2 years £160.00


Digital (online or download, inc double issue mp3s): 1 year £36.00, 2 years £68.00 Digital supplement to paper sub: add £9.00 per year Lifetime! See column opposite.


STUDENTS! Special introductory deal for UK students! 35% off the paper magazine. Just £30! 75% off the digital edition. Only £9.00!


We have secure online ordering for new, gift, renewal and lifetime supporter subscriptions on our web site at www.frootsmag.com Or you can pay in £ Sterling cheques/ postal orders/ IMOs, payable to ‘Southern Rag Ltd’ and drawn on a UK bank. Post to fRoots, PO Box 3072, Bristol BS8 9GF. See opposite for FREE! offers!


Try the full DIGITAL EDITION!


A full digital edition of fRoots with is available on secure subscription, providing an economic alternative to readers who find overseas postage rates prohibitive. See a full sample atwww.frootsmag.com


www.frootsmag.com or tel (+44) (0)117 317 9020


recorded it, Antony Hegarty’s For Today I Am A Boy was for a while a startling regular in their live set (both are featured here). From there the idea gradually germinated to play a concert of Hegarty and Wyatt songs and this is the live evidence of their performance at London’s Union Chapel. Not so much homage as an encapsulation of the bonkers wilfulness to confound expectations and do the hell what they like irrespective of commercial potential – which is exactly why they’ve struck such a potent chord with crossover audiences, if not the unanimous acclaim of the folk world.


In truth, this is hardly flawless. It is, after all, a live album with all the warts’n’all ingredients and the sound limitations such an animal invariably entails and – largely piano-led – the nature of the material is mostly one-paced and doomy. That’s the nature of the beast when you start explor- ing Hegarty and Wyatt, though we do get a vigorous burst of clog-dancing and enthusi- astic audience handclaps on Dondestan; and even if most of the music is wrist-slitting stuff, the Unthank humour is alive and well in the introductions. If Rachel Unthank occa- sionally struggles with this material, sister Becky is a revelation, making light of often complex and demanding material and deliv- ering full emotional impact. Mr Hegarty and Mr Wyatt must be amazed.


One day the mavericks will inherit the earth and when they do this will be deemed a classic. In the meantime it’s admirably oddball.


www.the-unthanks.com Colin Irwin


LOXANDRA Meyhane : Kafe Aman Polyphonon LM105


CAFÉ AMAN ISTANBUL Fasl-i Rembetiko Kalan 8 691834 009721


Café Aman, rembetiko’s early, more elabo- rate, multicultural and Eastern-sounding form, is well served by a rich legacy of classic recordings and songs especially from the 1920s and ’30s. Popular everyday musical cur- rency back then, and still widely known, loved and performed to this day, recordings by the likes of Roza Eskenazi (this genre’s equivalent of Billie Holiday, Amalia Rodriguez and Edith Piaf) are still ear- and emotion-snagging works of genius, although telegraphed through the sound limitations of earlier recording equipment.


How exciting, then, to hear two contem- porary groups – both featured this issue – who are playing and updating the Café Aman tradi- tion in different ways, and whose sound and aesthetic places the music firmly in the 21st Century while remaining true to the heart, soul and essential musical style of this reper- toire: largely acoustic and sensitively virtuosic.


Loxandra are Thessaloniki, Greece- based, but equally or more oriented east to Smyrna (as was) and Istanbul/Constantinople; whereas Café Aman Istanbul are Istanbul- based Turks who choose to draw on the Greek language and musical traditions of Turkey and the Aegean, looking south west toward Thessaloniki, Smyrna, the Aegean Islands and Athens. They prove to have equal- ly complementary yet refreshingly different approaches to the recorded performances and song choices.


Loxandra, a six- piece instrumental band led by kanun player Dimitris Vasil- iadis and percussionist


Loukas Metaxas, have invited in the cream of the (mostly) younger generation of Greek and Turkish vocalists and musicians to give each


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84