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Shirley Collins Film Fundraiser
Cafe Oto, London. Sunday 22 June 2014
Tim Plester and Rob Curry, the makers of Way Of The Morris – a film much loved by Shirley herself – have a new project, The Ballad Of Shirley Collins. Setting their sights high, they want to make the film that Shirley’s fascinat- ing and complex life deserves, tracing her story from her early life in Hastings, her famous collecting work with Alan Lomax, her pioneering work as a singer, through to her disappearance from the world stage – and, more than three decades later, her tri- umphant reappearance. As part of the cam- paign to raise the money for the film, they kicked off with a gala fundraiser in London.
Presided over by Stewart Lee, a huge fan
of Shirley’s who once said about her that “Collins doesn’t inhabit a song so much as surrender to it”, the night led the packed and sweaty audience through examples of her far-reaching influence. Many if not most of the performers were touchingly nervous to perform in front of Collins herself, sitting as she was on the front row with friends and family. Starting with Shirley giving a cut- down version of her talk America Over The Water with Pip Barnes, the rest of the evening saw familiar collaborations like Alas- dair Roberts and David McGuinness on Lord Gregory, new pairings like Stuart Estell and Stewart Lee with Polly On The Shore, and some stunning solo performances. Lisa Knapp’s could-have-heard-a-pin-drop murder ballad The Oxford Girl was one of the partic- ular stand-out moments, as was Graham Coxon’s lovingly arranged The Cruel Mother (lead guitarist with Blur, he presented Shirley with an award at the 2008 BBC Folk Awards).
We also saw Olivia Chaney’s bare-footed adaptation of Purcell, Sophie Williams accom- panying herself on the cello with a delicate Pretty Saro, a preview of James Holcombe’s evocative Super 8 films exploring seasonal traditions and calendar customs plus a brief example of some of Rob and Tim’s other film work. The Belles Of London City made an appearance too, dancing in the east London street at the interval and successfully drawing in passers-by (although that might have been down to the charisma of Betley the Wonder Horse as much as the dancers).
The night culminated with Sam Lee bringing all the evening’s performers on stage – including Shirley herself – for an emo- tional round of the Copper Family’s Thou- sands Or More. With such a mixed audience, it was a perfect choice to finish with that got everyone on their feet and singing.
Shirley has always been outspoken about how singers should be a conduit for the song, how it’s about something bigger than any individual, saying “these songs are about people, not a person”. On this occasion, the whole evening was – unavoidably – about one person, her influence, and the love that so many performers have for her. But in focusing on Shirley, they created an evening that felt like a group of friends sharing songs between themselves, and formed something intimate and very special.
www.shirleycollinsmovie.com Jo Breeze
Swedish Folk & World Music Awards Gala, and Umefolk Festival Umeå, Sweden
Sweden’s Folk And World Music awards integrate Swedish folk music with the music of Swedish-resident immigrants; for the gala awards concert, imagine a sort of mix of the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards and fRoots’ 2010 Looking For A New England concert. Very healthy.
The event has moved around Sweden; for this, its fifth year, it was elegantly staged by several folk and roots organisations and Swedish Radio P2 in February in the northern town of Umeå, at the beginning of Umefolk, one of Sweden’s major folk festivals.
In Sweden young folk musicians tend to be multi-ethnically comfortable, partly because a large number of them have been to an Ethno camp and so played with and befriended young musicians from around the world. The Swedish Ethno was the first, and has been run- ning for 25 years since its inception by Magnus Bäckström at the now departed Falun Folk Fes- tival, and it’s really had an effect.
Indeed I was in Umeå not just for the Gala and festival but to be involved in “Music As Vaccine Against Xenophobia” discussions between movers and shakers from around Europe about a possible Europe-wide net- work for the encouragement and support of such multi-ethnic things, and to continue to fend off attempts by right-wing nationalists to drag traditional music into their image.
The international Ethno organisation
won this year’s tvärspel (‘cross-play’) award. The other winners, from a wide-ranging list of nominees, were: Album: Swedish/Norwe- gian nyckelharpa and hardingfele duo Erik Rydvall and Olav Lukensgård Mjelva’s Isbrytaren. Tradition Bearer: Iraqi-Egyptian singer Nadin Al Khalidi , who arrived in Swe- den in 2002. Artist: Sámi singer-songwriter Sofia Jannok. Group: Swedish fiddle / Sene- galese kora and vocals / Mexican percussion trio Ellika Solo Rafael. Newcomer: Fiddle / sax/ guitar / drums quartet Bjäran. Organiser: west Swedish world music and dance net- work and festival Planeta. Honorary award: veteran fiddler Ole Hjorth
As well as presentation of the awards, the Gala Concert had eleven short sets by musicians and dancers from across Sweden’s folk and world music spectrum, including for- mer chart-topping ethno-rockers Nordman unplugged, Norrlåtar’s Hasse Alatalo, Swedish / Greek vocal quartet Tetra, Sámi joiker Simon Marainen, storyteller / fiddler Thomas Andersson, and Baghdad-born Aida Nadeem providing the music for a dramati- cally-lit pair of dress-swirling dancers. The all- together finale exemplified the relaxed com- munication between musicians and their dif- ferent traditions, a sense of one varied, colourful scene.
Normally at festival time Umeå is deep in
snow, but this year there was remarkably little in the town, with the temperature hovering around zero. The festival itself took place large- ly in Folkets Hus (the town’s multi-purpose culture centre, not, as it may sound in English, a folk centre, though that’s what it becomes for the festival). Not just concerts by largely Swedish-based performers, and dancing, but a whole lot of workshops and discussions in the 30 or so rooms, and informal sessioning in the hallways.
Much of it went on simultaneously, necessitating constant programme-check- ing, room-finding and dipping in and out, but notable events among those I managed to catch were an extraordinary steampunk drumming automaton descending from the ceiling of the biggest hall to settle among massed hundreds of young musicians and play along with them, and the un-trumpet- ed but rather special life-story-telling gath- ering in a hard-to-find lecture room of four international nyckelharpa virtuosi with dif- fering approaches to the instrument, all of them makers of excellent albums: Sweden’s Emilia Amper, Belgian Didier François, Ital- ian Marco Ambrosini and Spaniard Ana Alcaide. It was good, too, to meet, and see the workshop by Krister Stoor, Umeå-based Sámi joik expert and maker of To Joik Is To Live, the CD that, though now hard to get unless he gets it re-pressed, probably best explains the nature of joik.
www.folkgalan.se www.umefolk.umeafolkmusik.se
Andrew Cronshaw Shirley Collins (centre) with Lisa Knapp, Alasdair Roberts, Olivia Chaney and Sam Lee
Photo: Dawid Laskowski
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