f4
curated and ran five fRoots- branded afternoon concerts at Sidmouth and a banging Sun- day night at Towersey, inject- ing a selection of bands and artists who were mostly new to the festival circuit. Everybody more than delivered and I was immensely pleased to have
W
done that, really proud of all the artists for proving how exhilarating it can be not always to have the same old same old. I really don't want to hear any more festival organisers at AFO saying they “can't afford to take risks”. I don't think the audiences would agree with them!
0 0 0 0
Elsewhere this issue Elizabeth Kinder writes about her trip to Spain to film the Flamenco: Gypsy Soul documentary that went out on BBC4 in August. What she doesn’t tell you – but I’m very pleased to – was that it was up there with the best documentaries on living traditional music, a great example of how to engage, entertain and educate the newcomer viewer with as much astounding singing, playing, dancing, visuals, history, culture and insights as you could cram into the limits of an hour.
It was hard to believe it was EK's first ever TV, but she’s clearly a natural and could obviously become the Bettany Hughes of musical traditions given the chance! Imagine a further series exploring rembetika, pizzica, gnawa, fado… or home grown traditions. We’re very proud of her, as (clutching at straws for some reflected glory!) fRoots is the magazine where she started. I now can’t remember whether it was Charlie Gillett’s idea or mine to find out whether Elizabeth could write – but she immediately proved she could, becoming one of our best. It was possibly her wonderful fRoots piece on our field trip to Puglia last year that helped lead to the TV opportunity.
The same weekend as they broadcast her film, BBC4 probably did us all a favour with their frustratingly pointless A-Z Of World Music, drawing a line under the whole thing and inserting a wooden stake. Completely lacking anything current, everything seemed firmly locked in the past, a retro era like punk or teddy boys in drapes, complete with silly captions like they put on ’70s Top Of The Pops re-runs, and Greece represented by Nana Mouskouri. World Music RIP: it was a great idea of its time, but it’s redundant now there aren’t any record shops left. Elizabeth’s film proved how we can move on, celebrating individual traditions and enjoying the wonders evolving out there now.
At the end of Flamenco, dancer Farruquito said “We want to rember the wild and improvised ways of our ances- tors but with a modern touch because we are young. We have to do flamenco our way because our experience is dif- ferent – but we have to preserve the traditional way too, because someone should.”
Substitute any named local genre for “flamenco”. If
that doesn’t sum up much of the best music we bring to your attention in fRoots, I don’t know what does!
Ian Anderson
e’ve always liked to be catalysts at the grass roots, so this summer I
Photo: Judith Burrows
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84