21 f Ranting & Reeling
campaign: Save fRoots’ Writers From Hav- ing To Eat Out Of Bins. Andrew pledged to have me write about a subject of his choosing, and that subject is his disap- pointment that many UK folk festivals often seem to be closed off to good music from connected genres. His ideal festival, he adds, would be fRoots Live. But that doesn’t exist.
T
I also look at the line-ups for festivals and feel they no longer cater for me. But like a relationship that’s reached the point of living separate lives under the same roof, I have to ask, is it them or me? Per- haps they’re who they’ve always been and it’s me who’s changed and now craves diversity, experimentation and to not have to listen to them clearing their throat in the shower every morning.
What makes us fond of a festival is largely confirmation bias and they only need book four or five of our favourites for us to think it’s an exceptional year. The big rock festivals attempt this tactic, dazzling you with Radiohead or Björk so you don’t notice that further down the
he topic of this column came from regular reader Andrew Car- ruthers who generously donated money to our recent Kickstarter
bill are bands who should’ve broken up years ago but are all they can afford, hav- ing forked out for Radiohead or Björk. Our judgement isn’t to be trusted; it’s too easily entranced by shiny things and repulsed by the ooze at the bottom of a bin. So just because I think a line-up looks awful, doesn’t mean everyone else does. One man’s Best Cambridge Ever is anoth- er woman’s Why The Frig Have They Booked Jake Bugg?
That’s the objectivity out of the way, because actually I agree with Andrew (and not just because he’s effectively paying me to write this). Live entertainment is so financially precarious that for most festival programmers their first concern must be to put bums on grass. To do otherwise is to put the future of the event and its depen- dent livelihoods in jeopardy. That’s meant a noticeable shift towards booking the same guaranteed big hitters year in year out. People (that’s you) like familiar things. If we want large numbers of them to spend a lot of money we have to offer them those familiar things so they don’t get scared and spend it on shoes instead. The skill is to balance those obligatory bookings with additional programming that casts a net wide and weird, which is a
big and unreal- istic ask of most organisers. The best they can do is please most of the people most of the time, and most of the people don’t really want weird.
What’s the answer? Doing
it yourselves is my best suggestion. I start- ed my own tiny, local, booking-only- diverse-musicians-I-think-are-amazing fes- tival last year, and I’m mostly a useless idiot. Yet people asked me to do it again, so it can’t be that hard. In 50 years’ time it might be a week long and have to take place in an abandoned Westfield to fit everyone in. And the artificially intelligent hologram writing this column will be hav- ing a go at me for booking Lankum yet again, even though it’s clearly not the original line-up and three of them aren’t even Irish. Well screw you, future colum- nist. I’ve got bills to pay.
Tim Chipping
behind the till in Boots; not like, “Do you have a Boots card?” for example.
“Yes, I would, Charlene.” Then I notice her name tag. “Your name’s not Charlene! It’s Christiana!”
“I know,” she says.
We were in Boots at Heathrow. I’d popped in along with everyone else who’d just got through security for those cute travel-sized essentials ,though the full- sized versions were in a case rolling on a conveyor belt somewhere nearby. Losing the final shreds of my humanity jostling for space in front of the ‘3 for 2’ offers (everyone has a plane to catch, thank you!) I was contemplating elbowing a family of four aside when the assistant whose name I misheard came over to introduce herself and a product she said I “couldn’t do without.”
“Hi Charlene,” I said, “Thanks, but not this time.” “But this will make you look less wrin-
kled! You will look healthy. It works! I would not lie to you. And I can get you a
The Elusive Ethnomusicologist “S
o you want to hear me sing?” is not a question that in the ordinary scheme of things you expect from the person
discount. It will be fantastic for you. Plus here you don’t pay tax.” (Not) Charlene, I noticed, has a seductive voice.
“You have a lovely speaking voice.”
“Thank you. I sing too. If you buy the big packet you get a bigger discount.” “You’re good at this. Where do you
sing?”
“I lead the choir at my local Baptist church. And sometimes I sing here. Wait,” she said, “I’ll ask for my manager.”
I waited. She came back. “So are you going to buy the big packet?”
“No.” “I can take you straight to the till. You
won’t have to queue. I’ll get all your other things for you too.”
“Great! I’ll buy the big packet.”
The manager stopped by. “If you want to sing, sing.” She turns to me. It makes the customers happy when she sings. Boots was appearing in a new light. This never happens in Chiswick. (Not) Charlene bustled me to the till. The queue got a bit twitchy, but I clearly had official dispensation. The manager opened anoth- er till and nodded to Charlene, who asked her question and whose real name I was about to discover.
“I would
like to hear you sing,” I said.
“I don’t know.” “I have
bought the big packet…” My husband came in looking for me, making a swift exit on seeing me wran- gling at the till.
“I mean I don’t know what to sing.” I cast about for a song she might like.
How about Amazing Grace?
As Christiana’s pure gospel voice rang out and filled the place everyone paused, perhaps recalling how we all might have a plane to catch, thank you, but essentially we’re all on the same flight. When, in his seminal work How Musical Is Man? John Blacking wrote, “Music is essential for the very survival of man's humanity,” he prob- ably didn’t have losing it in Boots the chemist in mind. But here, in an unexpect- ed extraordinary moment, I was beautiful- ly reminded of mine.
Elizabeth Kinder
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