f34 THE INSTRUCTIONS!


Point your web browser of choice at www.frootsmag.com/reports/01sqrts373


Click the ‘Download’ link and it’ll transfer a Zip file to your computer. When the download is completed, dou- ble click that Zip file to unpack it. Inside the resulting folder you’ll find fourteen mp3 files which you can play on your computer or load onto your iPod or other mp3 player, plus artwork for CD.


Original 1987 sleeve note by Andy


Kershaw: Folk Roots magazine came just at the right time. Post Pogues and Billy Bragg, there were many new enthusiasts for simplicity, soul and spontaneity. The weekly music press couldn’t help much. Their alternative to studio-constructed ‘rahk’ was, save isolated aberrations, to build a ghetto in which the largely ambi- tious but talentless huddled together around the musically irrelevant notion of being ‘indie’. Ian Anderson, a tireless indie if ever there were one, recognised that something else was going on. His front-room fanzine Southern Rag made sense of the activities of many unwitting conspirators: Alexis Korner, WOMAD, Glastonbury, broader-minded British folkies, GLC concert promoters, Charlie Gillett, Joe Boyd, Arts Worldwide, labels like Topic, Making Waves, Demon, Sterns, Earthworks, GlobeStyle, and a thousand other undercover operators.


Ian took his fair share of flak from trainspotters, pewter tankard owners and those who believe Britain is the only country on the planet capable of produc- ing a tune. Some senior observers in the music media sneered “We’ve been through all this before,” and much of it they had. But there was a growing num- ber of listeners, Stiff generation down- wards, who had not been through it before. Discovering that some bloke called Dick Gaughan was harder than the Redskins was quite traumatic. Equally, there were those who bought Freewheel- in’ back in ’63 and liked Billy Bragg for the same reasons.


With this size of support, Ian moved his operations and two staff to a spacious two-room garret, went onto the national news stands and renamed the paper Folk Roots. Producing a substantial magazine, playing in a band, presenting a radio show and organising the odd festival is not enough to keep Ian busy, so here’s the first of his Square Roots compilations. Like the equally eclectic magazine, it presents a variety of music from around the world and puts the emphasis entirely on the music. I hope it’s the first of many.


Square Roots was compiled by Ian Anderson. Final master produced at Ideal Sound by Ian Anderson, Andrew Cron- shaw and David Kenny. Remastered 2014 by Nick Freeth. Special thanks to all partic- ipating artists and their record companies, Andy Kershaw and Tony Engle at Topic.


We were unable to trace the owner of


the late Ted Hawkins recording of Dock Of The Bay which appeared on the original album, in order to gain permission for this re-issue. Listen to the July 2014 edition of fRoots Radio to be reminded of it. We have replaced it here with the classic Jumpleads track from the same era.


Square Rootsters Konte & Kuyateh, Billy Bragg and Oyster Band on ‘Folk Roots’ covers.


what was increasingly being called ‘roots music’. And, crucially, there were allies to play these records on mainstream radio: not specialist programmes hidden away on minority stations but on BBC Radio 1. The nation’s biggest and most influential sta- tion had John Peel and Alexis Korner regu- larly playing our music, and then after Korner’s sad passing at New Year 1984, up popped Andy Kershaw to take his place.


Looking back now, everything seemed to come in all directions with a rush – indeed ‘Forwards In All Directions’ was the motto of the 3 Mustaphas 3, one of the great and much-missed bands of the era. Pitched to a belief-suspending public as a posse of eccentric, fez-wearing refrigera- tion specialists from the Crazy Loquat Club in Szegerely, somewhere in the Balkans, the Mustaphas had everything – instru- mental skills that allowed them to play anything from anywhere (often at the same time) and a supremely entertaining live act. When I asked them if they’d have a crack at Speed The Plough, the national anthem of the new wave of English coun- try dance bands, for Square Roots, the resulting version nearly burst the seams with cultural reference points.


Elsewhere, the appalling Thatcher had done the seemingly impossible and re - kindled the political commitment of the folk scene, just in time for the belated arrival of a whole bunch of artists from out side like Billy Bragg, the Pogues and the Boothill Foot Tappers who this time were welcomed with reasonably open arms.


then at the National Sound Archive, and discovered that she was organising a trip for a small group of questing people to spend time visiting and staying with musi- cians in the Gambia and Senegal in West Africa, so I’d signed up for it. Andy Ker- shaw had meanwhile been burning his ends with both candles organising a tour for one of his many enthusiasms, Los Angeles street singer Ted Hawkins. The day after my booking for Lucy’s trip, Ker- shaw arrived at the reception he’d set up for Ted before his first date at London’s 100 Club, looking like a man in dire need of a break. When I told him about the Gambia trip, his eyes glazed over, so the next day I called up Lucy and made sure there was another place still available. (“Who’s Andy Kershaw?” asked the then more academically sheltered Duran!) The resulting adventure that Christmas / New Year was my and Kershaw’s first ever foot- fall in Africa, and a trigger for a number of extremely successful tours by kora mas- ters Dembo Konte and Kausu Kuyateh.


A


Back in those pre-internet days when there was no way for the opinionated to get instant gratification, we used to have a famously fractious letters page titled Come Write Me Down after a Copper Fam- ily song. The old-core folkists didn’t want any of this “funny foreign-coloured rub-


The staff of the day, still on board. Caroline Walker, Beverly Hill and (opposite) Ian Anderson.


ll sorts of things went off to crank members of the new roots community into action. Somewhere in 1986 I’d been introduced to Lucy Duran,


Photos: Ian Anderson


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