to wash out the taste of that last video:
Music
For Martin…
..who’s having a minor obsession with this artist at the moment, for me who needs some solace, for my son Simon the guitarist, and in memory of my late friend and good socialist Dave, at whose tragically early funeral I first heard this song, here’s Silvio Rodriguez with Mi Unicornio Azul.
Enjoy.
Read more: Music, Cuba, Socialism, Silvio Rodriguez, MP3, YouTube, Video
Cascading Down The Generations
While we’re on the subject of music, Fi Glover at BBC Radio 4 has a nice little feature on called Inheritance Tracks.
The idea is to tell the story of two songs – one which you have inherited from your parents and the other being the one that you would leave to the next generation. Plenty of examples are given from people like novelist Fay Weldon and comic Mark Thomas and includes music from Flanders & Swann, Joyce Grenfell and Dave Brubeck.
Oh, this one is a winner. The music that shaped us and songs for the next generation. What is the song that you think your parents have left to you, and the one that you would leave to the next generation? What do your choices say about you? Makes a change from the same old Friday iPod showoff list.
I’ll set the ball rolling, shall I?
It was difficult to nominate just one song that I’ve inherited. Holst or Sinatra? Queen or Nana Mouskouri? Bernard Cribbins or Art Blakey? All were typical of my parents taste. In the end I just had to choose ‘Firefly’ by Tony Bennett – they always used to sing it together at drunken Irish family parties in the very long ago. Tony Bennett is also a musician whose sheer longevity has made him an integral part of the soundscape of that apparently innocent era after the war and Before The Bushes, when Dacron was cool and we all wore leisure suits, even the babies – you’ve only to hear his voice to be transported to a hipper, smoother, less angsty time.
I was torn over which to bequeath to my kids. My first inclination was of course to nomnate ‘The Internationale’, for obvious reasons. But ‘The Internationale’ has one big drawback, ie you can’t dance to it. And that’s a revolution if we can’t dance? So I nominate Funkadelic and “One Nation Under A Groove” for my kids to inherit, because it embodies my generation’s demented utopian dreams of worldwide love, harmony, understanding and all-round funkiness in one irresistable song.
What are your own two inheritance tracks?
Read more: Music, Radio 4, Inheritance tracks
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Music and Movement
I don’t care if Gnarls Barkley (Danger Mouse & Cee-Lo) are UK pop darlings, I think their album, St Elsewhere, is brilliant; a quintessentially English fusion of hiphop, trippyness, grime, pop and northern soul with irresistable hooks. Unlike the mass of US ‘urban’ music, Gnarls Barkley disdain no influence and recognise few black/white cultural boundaries, either of their own era or of their parents’ , or of their parents. Everything is grist to the mill.
I particularly love the track ‘Smiley Faces’ which has got a real 1979 northern soul all-nighter vibe to it. And is that Garry Christian, the lead singer of The Christians on vocals? Lovely.
Whilst we’re on the subject of English grime/hiphop and parental influences, do try these tracks too. (Full disclosure: number two son DJ’d , mixed and produced number one son’s vocal for a couple of these tracks, and the others are by number two son alone.) The best track is Brothers, IMO though Schiphol is very cool and atmospheric.
Feel free to download.
I may be biased, but I love my sons’ music, it has a sense of place but it’s not insular. It’s about how even the most rural areas of Britain suffer the same ills – racism, poverty, drugs, crime, immigration – as the better known and documented urban areas like Bristol or London. It’s not all cream teas and ooh-arr, where’s my tractor. I’m proud of them both and I guess playing them classic soul and jazz tracks and spouting socialism all those years paid off.
No 2 son is coming to Amsterdam in the autumn, since he graduated from art school this summer. There’s quite a burgeoning hiphop scene here, but Dutch acts lag behind the times musically – even such luminaries as The Party Squad can be massively derivative. But there is a massive market for hiphop, R&B, and drum n’ bass, and UK drum n’ bass DJ’s are highly sought after by the cognoscenti (and hip Amsterdam prides itself on being cognoscentious). There’s money to be made, certainly. It can be a very good living here for artists – but then Amsterdam has historically been an arts-friendly city.
The whole tenor of life and the city government leans towards creatives of whatever stripe. It’s Mayor Cohen’s stated aim to attract the most talented young creatives in the world to Amsterdam – indeed there are 6 film companies right across the street from us, another down the road, and a sound-engineering college right around the corner. Not only that, but MTV has been given the go-ahead to move its European HQ to less than 3/4 mile away from us, in the new cultural quarter at the old Shell Oil site on the Ij. There are certainly opportunities for the young and ambitious.
When I was that age I was married with a small child. Oh, to be young, untramelled, talented, ambitious and with an EU passport, it is indeed a wonderful thing.