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EDWARD II AND THE RED HOT POLKAS


The Early Recordings 1985-1986 Musical Traditions MTCD405


In the mid 1970s the music played for social folk danc- ing in England underwent a radical change with bands like Old Swan in the south and New Victory in the north leading a change towards playing in a way that gave much more thought to tradi-


tional style learned from older musicians and to tunes learned from manuscript sources.


Ten years later some of the musicians from those bands led another movement that looked to synthesise English dance music with the emerging and more accessible threads of world music. Roger Watson from the NVB played in various fascinating combinations with musicians of African, Indian and South American heritage. Rod and Danny Stradling from the OSB were also looking at a broader base for the style with Tiger Moth and look- ing towards Africa as well as Jamaica in Edward II. The latter band’s mind-blowing albums Let’s Polka Steady! and Two Step To Heaven working with British dub producer Mad Professor are what they are best remem- bered for, but that is not the whole story which this album sets out to remind us.


These earlier tracks were taken from three tapes that were circulated to get work for the band and were mastered for this CD from those cassettes to give the album a lo-fi sound that is somehow appropriate.


The opening tracks show a part of the development with the dominant sounds being Dion Cochrane’s in-yer-face strummed banjo and Rod’s immediately recognisable melodeon albeit with the pace a good bit faster that we were then used to from the Swan band. Then on Cliffe Hornpipe, the sec- ond track, the electric guitar is set up the way it was with some reggae bands at the time to provide a percussive attack, and with the melodeon taking a much more improvised line, occasionally referring to the tune while Jon Moore’s reverb-set guitar provides a dif- ferent line above. On various tracks there are occasional notes that clash between Jon and Rod but this does not detract from the raw excitement of the overall sound. Throughout this is eminently danceable music.


www.mtrecords.co.uk Vic Smith Edward II & The Red Hot Polkas, 1987


SIMO LAGNAWI The Gnawa Caravan: SaltWaulk WAULK10


The third solo album from UK based Moroccan gnawa musician Lagnawi is his most assured and wide-ranging yet. Based as it is on trance-inducing repetition, straight- up gnawa can cast a spell when performed live but struggle to hold the attention over an album (when you don’t get to see the clothes and the dances, or feel the strange, intoxicating atmosphere the live experience induces). Lagnawi’s response to this conun- drum has been to remain deep in the tradi- tion, but at the same time open to the myriad influences he’s been exposed to in his adopt- ed London home, carving out his own distinc- tive sound both in his solo work and as the linchpin member of ‘gnawa meets hard elec- tro beats’ project Electric Jalaba.


The Gnawa Caravan: Salt finds him exploring the connection between North and West Africa with a mixture of traditional songs from Morocco, Niger and Mali, along- side Lagnawi’s own compositions. Producer Griselda Sanderson adds piano, violin and riti and there are also notable contributions from kora player Mosi Condi, guitarists Louis Bing- ham and Hassan Naimia and clarinettist Keith Ellis. Taking centre stage is the warm voice and rhythmic guembri playing of Lagnawi, sliding effortlessly through the changes on a set which embraces desert blues, other Saha- ran folkloric sounds and the odd nod to jazzi- ness, alongside the gnawa rhythms. Intoxicat- ing roots music with a sense of openness and daring. www.simolagnawi.co.uk/


Jamie Renton FAITH I BRANKO


Gypsy Lover Riverboat Records/World Music Network TUGCD1092


Within this set of lively yet also sublimely inti- mate love songs, there’s a grippingly gauche and quirky honesty, with crafted flavours of manouche, hints of thrilling campfire inspira- tion, and a sense of Europe folding together through unearthing violin.


Faith is a songwriter and accordeon play- er from a Cotswolds village. She once joined a circus, where she added dramatic Balkan songwriting to their tour and her repertoire, before taking her inspiration and fascinations further afield, in an educational and experien- tial journey to rural Serbia, to the Roma and to their musical traditions. And to Branko, a shy young musician of exuberant and extro-


vert gifts. “Branko and Serbia have stolen my heart,” she says. When the couple first met, they could only speak through music. They played through and with all their communica- tion problems and cultural differences, in an extensive commute between East and West, somehow composing the first stirrings of this record in a -30° Central European winter.


As a child, Branko exchanged his first violin for a pair of shoes. He later regretted this, realising that it was the violin itself that was his ticket out of poverty. One deal later, he was playing day-long wedding gigs and slipping into exhausted obscurity, illness, and solitary prayers in local woods. Faith rescued him, and they emerged from those sessions and winters in complete musical engage- ment. And romantic engagement. Bumbar is a full realisation of all their learning – in lav- ish, wild and wholly angry and dangerous violin. There are multiple shifts of tone and texture and tempo, and even vantage points, as the track gradually coalesces into an ethe- real Balkans of the mind, albeit one that both viciously and lovingly plays any sentimentali- ty away. The trad title track, sung in Romanes, is a proper exhortation to good fortune, a thrilling and intense understand- ing of the music of where they met.


Branko fell into hospital on the very morning of their wedding. Too cold and poor and ill in Serbia and beset with visa problems the couple finally made it through and cur- rently live in Oxford. But this is an album of Guca and the Cotswolds and birdsong and piano-led nostalgic lament and astute pop sensibilities, leavened with plenty of danger and mischief. A Europe in union, making no cultural concession upon its romantic and vir- tuosic way.


faithibranko.com John Pheby JARLATH HENDERSON


Hearts Broken, Heads Turned Bellows Records BEL001CD


Nobody present is likely to forget the impact Jarlath Henderson (then a chunky teenager) had when his explosive uilleann piping blew everyone else out of the water to win the BBC Young Folk Award in 2003. The judges never had an easier decision to make.


Much has happened since. He’s slimmed down for one thing. He’s also qualified as a doctor, limiting an irresistibly enterprising tal- ent that that threatened to clean up in part- nership with Ross Ainslie when they released the brilliant Partners In Crime album in 2008.


There have been frustratingly sporadic sightings since, both with Ainslie and in an expanded line-up of the duo; but Hender- son’s powerful reputation has hitherto large- ly been built on his exciting instrumental work, so a debut solo album marking his emergence as such an accomplished singer offering an invigoratingly fresh take on the folk tradition is something of a revelation.


At times he sounds uncannily like his fel- low Northern Irelander Paul Brady, his voice rich and creamy, his style confident, expressive and controlled. You might imagine, too, that he’d easily stumble opting for a repertoire of well-known, well-worn traditional songs that have already enjoyed semi-definitive record- ings from some of the scene’s greats. But – like another of his compatriots, Damien O’Kane last year – he looks forward not back and raises the stakes with bold, original arrangements.


Henderson’s pipes do play a role, of course, but they are peripheral in a broader canvas where Henderson also plays guitar and cittern while production values (credit to co- producers Duncan Lyall and Andrea Gobbi) and subtle effects are used to good effect to


Photo: Ian Anderson


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