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Catrin Finch & Seckou Keita
CATRIN FINCH & SECKOU KEITA Clychau Dibon Astar Mwlden AARCDA 025
ELLIKA SOLO RAFAEL Now Country & Eastern CE26
She was a highly respected Welsh harpist, he was a Not- tingham-based mas- ter of the West
African kora… together they made beautiful music! No, not the tagline for the unlikeliest rom-com ever made, but rather a description of Clychau Dibon, a meeting of musical minds that works like a treat. You can read the cover story of fRoots 361 to find out the tale behind the album, but you really don’t need to know the details in order to appreciate the simple pleasures on offer here. Finch and Keita play with and around each other as if Wales and Mali were natural musical bed - fellows. At times it’s hard to work out who’s playing what, as the strings ripple and shim- mer for all they’re worth. There are many wonderful contemplative moments here, but surprising improvisatory edges and flourishes too, with both players pushing just enough to move things away from the pleasant and twee. Some people spend a lot of money on illegal substances in order to attain the kind of mood this music evokes.
www.astarmusic.co.uk The template for
such Euro-West African acoustic shenanigans was set, in part at least, by Tretakt Takissaba, a 2003 collaboration between Swedish violinist Ellika Frisell and Senegalese kora-man Solo Cissokho, which deservedly bagged a BBC Award for World Music back then. A decade later and they’ve joined up with percussionist Rafael Sida Huizar (originally from Mexico, now based in Sweden) for a three-way cultural conversa- tion that somehow sounds like they’re all
The Young Tradition
speaking the same language. It’s less impres- sionistic and more song-based than Tretakt Takissaba with Cissokho taking the vocal lead in typically gruff griot style. But it’s instru- mentally that the trio really shine. Where the Finch & Keita album sounds all of a piece, Now is full of unexpected twists and turns. The kora can suddenly sound like a Mexican harp, the percussion West African and Frisell’s fiddle and viola dance round it all. Very well worth seeking out.
www.countryandeastern.se Jamie Renton
THE YOUNG TRADITION Oberlin 1968 Fledg’ling FLED3094
THE YOUNG TRADITION
The Young Tradition/So Cheerfully Round/Galleries/Chicken On A Raft BGO CD1103
Forty five years on but even now – or maybe especially now – Young Tradition blow your head off. Built around Peter Bellamy’s famously idiosyncratic phrasing and eccentric stylisation, they sound like they’ve just land- ed from another planet with a brief to turn traditional folk song on its head. This they achieved in spectacular fashion and few groups of the modern era (or indeed any era since they abandoned ship at the fag end of the 1960s) have replicated their extraordinary passion, power and sense of identity. More’s the pity. When Young Tradition sang a song, they sang it to within an inch of its life and it was hard to imagine anyone else doing it afterwards… even when it was drawn direct- ly from the tradition’s primary sources like Harry Cox and the Copper Family.
The recently dis- covered live recording from Oberlin College in Ohio in 1968 is especially fascinating,
capturing them in something approximating their prime and duly restored to a pretty
decent sound quality. All the distinctive YT facets are there – Bellamy on soaring, whoop- ing overload while Heather Wood’s voice dances elegantly on top of it with Royston Wood’s bass vocals giving the whole thing a coherent root. Completely unaccompanied, it includes many of their old favourites, includ- ing Banks Of Claudy, Banks Of The Nile, The Foxhunt and The Two Magicians; each mem- ber of the group takes a solo with Heather Wood getting the best audience reaction with her deft My Husband’s Got No Courage In Him. But inevitably Bellamy’s is the voice that keeps you gripped, wondering where it will dip and dive next. Shanties were their speciality and, never mind folk groups, any rock band of the time would have struggled to match the intensity with which they erupt into Haul On The Bowline. And those who consider Little Sally Racket one of Bellow- head’s most extreme tracks might be interest- ed in the ferocity with which YT attacked it in 1968 under the title Haul ‘Em Away.
www.thebeesknees.com
The BGO double CD collection basically puts the entire YT studio sessions – including the 1968 Chicken On A Raft EP – under one roof in digitally remastered form. It’s thus a valuable resource for anyone wishing to understand why they made such a sensation- al contribution to the folk revival – and why wouldn’t they? The chronological course, though, suggests they were running out of ideas by the end and their tentative and ill- advised move into early music territory on Galleries probably doesn’t rank beyond curiosity value despite the contributions of Dave Swarbrick, Dolly Collins and the Early Music Consort.
There are some surprises in their earlier
material. While Byker Hill from their power- house 1965 debut is classic explosive YT, they follow it with a movingly tender lead vocal from Bellamy on The Bold Fisherman, and Royston Wood – sometimes dismissively consid- ered merely the bass voice tempering Bellamy’s vocal gymnastics – turns in a glorious unaccom- panied solo delivery of Dives & Lazarus. There’s some strong material on So Cheerfully Round
Photo: Brian Shuel
Photo: Judith Burrows
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