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JACK RUTTER Hills RUTTCD024


A young Yorkshireman who has made impressive strides as a member of Moore Moss Rutter and the Seth Lakeman band, but now gets the opportunity to demonstrate his solo skills as a guitarist and singer of traditional song. And for once we can


say it is entirely solo. Produced with com- mendable simplicity with no overdubs by Joe Rusby, it’s almost a throwback to the old school – the Nic Joneses and Tony Roses, who found a good song, moulded it to their own style, took it out round the clubs and record- ed albums in about 20 minutes or something.


So, no fancy pants arrangements or pre- tentions of ‘folk noir’ or ‘wyrd folk’ here, just great trad songs with powerful stories to tell from a mostly Yorkshire background, many of them familiar from an earlier era, but largely neglected these days. Songs like Hey John Barleycorn with a chorus once regularly heard raising the roof at folk clubs through- out the land; plus a couple of lesser-known Watersons songs (Morning Trumpet and Stormy Winds) and a lovely version of Dave Burland’s introductory calling card, The Dalesman’s Litany (not that Burland had ever been to the Dales when he recorded it), ener- gised here by a buoyant guitar rhythm.


Rutter’s voice won’t stop the traffic and his unassuming, understated style is some- what unfashionable in these rip-roaring days of modern production techniques but his warm interpretations are lifted by concertina on a couple of tracks and there’s a refreshing integrity about its stripped-down values. Because in all this, what comes to the fore is the durable strength and beauty of the songs and when those songs have the com- pelling narrative of The Banks Of Sweet Dundee, The Deserter and Hatton Woods that is more than sufficient.


www.jackruttermusic.com Colin Irwin


MASSA DEMBELE Mezana Dounia Izniz IZNIZ006 (CD & LP)


There are two very different instruments in West Africa that bear the name n’goni. One is sometimes called the xalam and describing it as an African fretless banjo should help. That is the one played most famously by Bassekou Kouyate.


The one that we’re dealing with here is a gourd harp related to the hunter’s harp and called kamelé n’goni, which translates rather dismissively as ‘Young Man’s harp’. Any sug- gestion that it is inferior to its big brother, the kora, should have been dismissed by the innovative playing of Vieux Kanté on a recent release. On this delightful album, Massa Dembele uses the kamelé n’goni in its tradi- tional role of accompanying singing… which brings us to the crowning glory of this album.


Massa has a voice to die for. Tone quality, expressiveness and emotional variety are the watchwords rather than power. He some- times sings in a light and well-controlled falsetto. His accompaniments of repeated patterns allow a lot of space for the strength of his animated expressiveness. There is something compelling about his singing; it is almost trance-like at times. He has written all eight songs here and they are all firmly of this part of Burkina Faso. The CD provides an internet link to English translations of the lyrics; they are printed in full of the sleeve of


Jack Rutter


the LP version. Their subjects show concerns about a rapidly changing world on a personal and on a societal level.


The balafon playing of Ali Diarra takes a subsidiary role but the interplay between the two melody instruments is always sensitive. Massa has overdubbed some percussion on a range of instruments but mainly using djem- bé and calabash.


www.izniz.com Vic Smith


THE YOUNG ’UNS Strangers Hereteu YNGS17


Some may consider The Young ’Uns a more youthful version of Coope, Boyes & Simpson with Teesside accents. Nowt wrong with that, of course, but if we discount the rampaging humour of their live act – which of course we must do on a studio album – it would be easy to dismiss them merely as decent inheritors of a well-trodden vocal tradition. “Good folk club residents, nothing more” as I’ve heard them demeaningly referred to as in some quarters.


The difference is the material. Specifical- ly the exceptional songwriting of Sean Cooney, and this collection surely marks his arrival as one of the very best of the modern day. Real songs about real people in real situ- ations. The Hartlepool Pedlar details the odyssey of an Eastern European Jewish refugee who fled prejudice and violence to set up Marks & Spencers. These Hands is another true, inspirational story of Sybil Phoenix who overcame tragedy and racism to become the first black woman to be awarded an MBE (which she tried to exchange for something more useful). The uplifting Ghafoor’s Bus celebrates Ghafoor Hussain’s travelling kitchen feeding refugees across Europe. Carriage 12 honours those who resisted a terrorist attack on a train from Amsterdam to Paris.


“A homage to the outsider; a eulogy for the wayfarer; a hymn for the migrant” declares the sub-title and, with joyous har- monies and Cooney’s lyrical detail, each track sounds like an enticing vignette of a block- buster movie. Indeed, Bob Cooney’s Miracle – commemorating a Scotsman’s exploits in the Spanish Civil War – has already laid the foun- dations for a full-length show they are plan- ning next year.


And while, given some of the bizarre choices over the years, it’s impossible to second- guess the panels that choose these best origi- nal song awards, you can’t imagine a list that doesn’t include Be The Man or Dark Water, which was recently featured in the new tour-


ing version of The Transports. On a predomi- nantly unaccompanied set they are accorded bold piano/string arrangements which accen- tuate the epic subject matter, both involving dangerous journeys (Matthew Ogston’s courageously confronting homophobia and Syrian Hesham Modamani’s swim to freedom across the Aegean Sea). Occasionally they waver on the cusp of over-sentimentalising but pull back in the nick of time to be consid- ered instant classics.


The only non-original is the opening track, a cover of Maggie Holland’s still acutely relevant A Place Called England, which serves as an appropriate mood-setter, even if they do whip it along at an uncomfortably brisk pace. At different times poignant, provoca- tive, funny, beautiful and celebratory, this fourth studio album should finally bury the illusion that great live groups can never suc- cessfully transfer their unique strengths from stage to studio.


www.theyounguns.co.uk Colin Irwin MARA ARANDA


Sefarad – En El Corazón De Marruecos Mara Aranda CD001


From former L’Ham de Foc singer Mara Aran- da, ballads and folk songs from the tradition of the part of Spain’s Jewish population that, when all Jews were expelled from Iberia in the 15th Century, moved to Morocco, then following the 19th Century Spanish conquest of Tetuan many of them moved on again, mainly to Argentina, Venezuela and Canada. And again after 1956’s Moroccan indepen- dence their diaspora continued, across Europe including back to Spain.


While the songs have survived through the ages, what hasn’t is any particular tradi- tional way to accompany them. This project has taken an early-music approach, making arranged music more of the classical concert hall than of the home or the street. Aranda’s elegant voice is accompanied by violin, viola da gamba, hurdy-gurdy, various of the lute and guitar family, and assorted hand- percussion, with more Arabic and Mediterranean aspects from qanun, ney, laouto and more, joined for occasional tracks by the voices of the instru- mentalists plus a chamber choir.


There are substantial booklet notes, in Spanish and English, describing the historical background and the songs, with translations of the lyrics.


www.mara-aranda.com Andrew Cronshaw


Photo: Elly Lucas


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