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fRoots 60 : your free album


Our pick of the very best new stuff. Load it onto your iPod or computer or burn it to CD. Go get it!


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ere’s the latest in our long series of carefully crafted and sought-after compilations that are designed to let you hear the best music – mostly


on small independent labels – that our writ- ers get enthusiastic about in the pages of fRoots. Listen, then buy the original CDs!


That well-battered folk standard Poor


Old Horse probably deserved to be put out to grass after so many years and versions, but who reckoned on Cornwall’s splendid Julian Gaskell & His Ragged Trousered Philanthropists giving it a further raucous canter? Possibly best version ever.


In a singer/songwriterland populated by interchangeable voices, predictable lyrics and basic strumalong guitar playing, Ruth Theodore stands head and shoulders above in all those skill departments. Team her with Anaïs Mitchell producer Todd Sickafoose and her forthcoming album’s a killer.


You can read the story of Ladino singer


Mor Karbasi’s Moroccan, Moorish and Per- sian roots and how this music spread out from 15th Century Spain elsewhere this issue. All this plus her amazing voice shines through on her fourth album Ojos De Novia (Eyes Of The Bride).


It’s a bit of a cliché that Welsh Essex girl


Julie Murphy more than deserves to be included in any shortlist of great British female folk voices – your Tabor, Denny, Briggs, Carthy, Chaney and so on – but inex- plicably rarely is. Just listen to this version of Willie Taylor and join the bewildered


Our review of Mikey Kenney’s album concluded that he sings in a style located


somewhere between Josephine Foster and Tymon Dogg, in a voice that flutters, soars and swoops like Devendra Banhart, and concocts melodies worthy of fellow Scouser Paul McCartney. He’s something of a find.


They play old English folk dance tunes


but Gadarene are anything but a standard ceilidh band. As Lord Buckley might have said, when Matt Norman, Laurel Swift, Nick Whyke, Jon Dyer and Si Paull lay down a groove, wham, it lays there. Recorded live, their natural arena.


Inspired by the streets of cities around the Mediterranean, and often sung in Sabir, the lingua franca of Mediterranean seafar- ers, the music of Italy’s Stefano Saletti & Banda Ikona is a rich 21st Century mixture of ancient, intermingled cosmopolitan roots and traditions.


Also from Italy, Roberto Tombesi is a veteran melodeon player, singer, ethno - musicologist and co-founder of the cele- brated and influential band Calicanto, spe- cialising in Venetian and Northern Adriatic traditional music. This particular track is a set of tunes from the Alps.


Manchester’s inimitable Harp And A


Monkey are one of the great, original, not- quite-famous-yet bands of the current English folk scene. Their latest CD explores the stories of “the forgotten men” of the First World War, expertly crafted and force- fully but tenderly delivered.


Robb Johnson wrote his brilliant song


England’s Power And Glory some 35 years ago, gave it to the English Country Blues Band on a demo and never recorded it for release himself until now, exclusively for


fRoots. One wonders why when hearing this great version with Saskia Tomkins on violin.


Rural, accordeon-based funana is billed as “the forbidden music of Cape Verde”, banned by the Portuguese colonial rulers until independence in 1975. Led by squeeze- boxer Victor Tavares, aka Bitori, and singer Chando Graciosa, the band Bitori made the all-time great album of the genre.


Travelling singer, storytelling songwrit- er and energetic performer Rory McLeod now has a band called The Familiar Strangers mixing his guitar, harmonica and tapping feet with Bob Morgan’s clarinet/ saxophone, Diego La Verde Rojas’ Peruvian harp and Richard Sadler’s double bass.


Up and coming Scottish Highland


singer Kaela Rowan has a voice of raw beauty, and Shooglenifty’s James Mackin- tosh and Ewan MacPherson have assembled a mighty all-star cast of Scotland’s (and Rajasthan’s) finest to support her on her sec- ond album The Fruited Thorn.


Take a Turkish/Iranian/Canadian ensemble inspired by the East/West cultural blend of the city they’re named after, and add a Senegalese griot singer and kora play- er already experienced in crossover projects. And Constantinople & Ablaye Cissoko sound even better on record than on paper!


Limerick’s five-piece Goitse (pro- nounced Gwi-cha – an informal Gaelic greeting meaning ‘come here’) are flag- bearers for younger Irish bands, having been endorsed by Donal Lunny, crowned Live Ireland’s ‘Trad Group of the Year’ and containing several All-Ireland Champion musicians.


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