WORLD BEAT
A trip home brings back memories of Dizzy Gillespie and first encounters with world music
JOHN CLEWLEY
Sheffield's finest, the Arctic Monkeys. From left Jamie Cook (guitar), Alex Turner (vocals/guitar), Matt Helders (drums) and Andy Nicholson (bass). |
Bangkok's 3rd "Rhythm of the Earth World Festival: World Musiq & World Bar-B-Q" will be in full swing this evening and through the weekend, at its new venue at CentralWorld. Todd Tongdee and his friends are organising the festival again, having moved from the previous site under Rama IX bridge.
At a press conference on April 28, Todd explained that the festival is part of a series of festivals, each with a different theme, to be held across the country: May 17-19 Klong Prao beach, Koh Chang; May 21-25 Rayong City Hall, Rayong; May 30-31 and June 1 at the River Kwai bridge, Kanchanburi; and June 6-8 at Tesco Lotus (Rangsit), Pathumthani province.
As with the previous festival, the twin highlights are listening to music from different parts of the world, while munching on food, again from different parts of the world. Perfect activities for a Bangkok weekend.
The line-up of overseas musicians includes Andean music from Inka Marka of Bolivia, Kofi Ministral of West Africa, Kenya's Yunasi, new wave klezmer music from the Oy Division (pun intended, I hope), bluegrass from USA's Cabinet and Cuba's Habana Revolution. Local stars like ranad maestro Khun-Inn Tosanga (who has just released a new album, Off Beat Siam), the North's Lanna Commins, Pod Moderndog, Supalert, Bangkok Xylophone and Deep Khmer.
More information from 02-733-2709. See you there!
On my recent trip to the UK, I spent some time rooting around for music and books, and can report that not all small independent book and record stores have given up under the relentless charge of book chains and hypermarkets.
A visit to my parents in North Wales nearly always ends up with a trip to Porthmadog, a neat little town with a picturesque harbour and the famous small-gauge steam railway (from the days when slate was quarried in the hills). But my reason to go there is to check out the music racks at Cob Records (http://www.cobrecords.com), which is one of the UK's most well-known mail order suppliers of second-hand vinyl and CDs.
Still going strong since the early Seventies, Cob never disappoints. On this trip, I found a CD compilation of Sam Cooke's early gospel work, mainly with the Soul Stirrers, an unmissable Greatest Hits from Al Green and compilation of hits from the legendary "punk poet", John Cooper Clarke (more on him in later columns). My father, two days from his eightieth birthday, decided to treat himself to a CD compilation of Louis Armstrong's work with his Hot Five and Hot Seven bands in the late Twenties.
After a stay in Wales, we travelled up North to Sheffield, my hometown. For a city with a reputation as a "grim" industrial city, it is surprisingly green and, these days, full of interesting music (the Arctic Monkeys are the latest hot band).
It was a bookshop in Sheffield which fuelled my teenage interest in books and music. Most days after I'd finished school I would take the bus downtown to meet my mother who ran a small boutique near the city fire station. I would get an hour or two to wander around and I discovered, around 1969, that a new second-hand book shop had opened, just behind my mother's shop, Rare and Racy (http://www.rareandracy.co.uk).
I discovered the Beat Generation and the Merseybeat poets in this bookshop, heard Charlie Parker's A Night in Tunisia for the first time, along with Sonny Rollins and Dizzy Gillespie. And thus began a lifelong urge to rummage through piles of musty books and bins of ageing vinyl records.
Not having been in the shop for a decade, I was apprehensive as I walked up Division Street on my way to the shop; the old fire station is now a bar and restaurant, the land in front of the shop is now a skateboard park. But, I'm glad to report that the book shop is still going strong; the same owners and staff still cheerfully find you what you need or suggest an interesting alternative. I found some excellent second-hand Rough Guide music compilations - Indonesia, Okinawa and Louisiana - and some novels I'd been after for a while.
After restoring my faith that at least one cultural landmark of my youth had survived, I took my son to Graves Art Gallery and the City Library, which is where I would take out LPs from exotic places from the music section (now a children's library) and look at the art. The area was a hive of activity as it was the day before the World Snooker Championships began at the Crucible Theatre, which is next to the library.
Since there was no music in the library any more, we warmed ourselves in the new palm house across the street before braving those cold, grim streets again in search of the elusive Arctic Monkeys. I hope they are made of brass.
This column can be contacted at: jclewley@loxinfo.co.th
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