A Lark Ascending

Things like this between 1970-75: led me to things like this in 1975-6:

Excellent German film about the way that the Stasi took lives apart in East Germany.

Whereas I'd say listen to what is around now and if it really catches fire for you, then start digging back. Enjoying jazz should not be about study. Though later on you might find that worth doing.

One of the most frequent excuses...sorry arguments...for the excessive imbalance towards opera is that if it was not supported it would collapse; this would be a disaster as no civilised country can hold its head high without an opera house of international repute.

Doesn't cut much ice in 2010! I suspect it's the cover story for the vast amount poured into Covent Garden, even today.

The Reithians would have argued that it was democratic to give classical music a dominant slice of the cake as the aim was to cultivate the public towards finer tastes!!!

Here are a couple of excellent contemporary UK records that will also get you curious about where this music all came from: Freeish in places but essentially structured and often quite lyrical. They draw their inspiration from Eric Dolphy, a reed player who had a short but intense career in the late 50s/early 60s. If it takes your fancy you've got a route into some very interesting early 60s jazz - Dolphy, Ornette Coleman, Andrew Hill. One of the best albums of the last ten years, to my mind. Very good compositions balancing energy with lyricism. It has a rocky edge but never gets arthritic (like rock-based jazz can do!). Both those bands tour widely and should be easy to see in London. I think Partisans and their various members are virtually residents at the Vortex! ************ Worth keeping an eye on the 'What are you listening to?' thread here: Especially valuable when people comment on what they particularly like about a record. I'm forever being sent off exploring by people's enthusiasm there.

Yes, I know what you mean. I was showing a clip from Andrew Marr's series about the Blitz on Liverpool to a class last week. Couldn't help but express my irritation that the Stuka dive bombers shown would have run out of fuel on such a mission and that the footage probably came from Holland or Poland. In another age we'd be writing cranky letters to the Radio Times complaining that the steam engine shown on Miss Marple could not possibly have been running in 1936 because....

Outside of the UK, I'd be surprised if many people care (except perhaps businessmen who'd like to get their hands on it and use the airtime for more 'profitable' use!) British musicians care very much (we have a regular poster here whose music is getting exposure in those limited time slots). Look at the point in the Guardian piece about UK jazz musicians being below the minimum wage. More jazz on UK radio, more stable careers for musicians, a more vibrant jazz scene for we Brits. Not of consequence to most people outside of the UK (apart from those who do recognise the marvellous jazz musicians operating here); but of great importance here.

Many thanks for those recs, MG, which I am following up. The Ancient Strings one doesn't seem to be available for download even though most of the Buda catalogue is on e-music. I've ordered a hard copy plus that cheap download of the Diabate on Amazon. 3 and 4 are currently being sucked off e-music. I actually have the fifth on LP, though with a different cover. It's a 1986 pressing on Oval - I seem to recall it was really lionised in Folk Roots at the time. Might even have won an award. At the time I played it a few times but didn't get it. Will transfer to CD-R later today. Enjoyed this last night: And am now on: Good to have been reminded of this corner of my collection.

I recall the Jazz Services report from ten years back which covered much the same ground - the statistic that stuck in my head was that jazz and opera had a similar audience size yet radio time and Arts Council funding favoured the latter many times over. Let's hope this push has some results. There is a relatively easy solution which would not just leave classical coverage on Radio 3 untouched but might even increase it!. Put one of the digital stations over to non-pop, non-classical music. Jazz could share it with blues, world music etc. There would still be room for more radio jazz than most of us have time to listen to. Of course, the problem would be diverting some of the funding currently lavished on classical music. I suspect that is the real reason the Beeb is unwilling to move in that direction.

The great thing about threads like this - and can I say how nice it has been to exchange differing viewpoints in such a mutually respectful manner - is it gets you listening out of your current zone of habit. I've had the 2nd volume of the Rail Band retrospective on this evening and its been wonderful. Not directly related to kora playing, but you can see where I'm coming from. There's a lot in your initial post, MG. If you were narrowing it down to 5 easily available recordings that give you most pleasure (I'm more interested in music as pleasure) what would you go for?

Big fish in small ponds syndrome in both cases, Seeline!

There are literally hundreds of currently active UK musicians playing in a wide range of styles. Groups like Polar Bear, Acoustic Ladyland, Led Bib, Outhouse play in styles that overlap into indie-rock or grunge/punk-like areas. As Shrdlu says, there's so much you won't take it all in at once (or ever). Best to use the radio or Spotify (as you mention) and see what suits you. See if your local library carries jazz CDs (that's where I did my early exploring). There's a UK jazz magazine - Jazzwise - that has a current/European focus but still celebrates the history and tracks US developments. Worth a read. http://www.jazzwisemagazine.com/

You mean, like jazz (OK, 100 years) or classical music! I'm interested in this because I saw the whole 'World Music' thing (as a European marketing strategy) emerge from the late 70s, via the pages of 'Folk Roots' magazine (now 'FRoots'). It started as a UK folk-centred local rag in the South East. Its long time editor, Ian Anderson (who I recall seeing playing blues in the mid 70s!), developed a real interest in African and other musics and started to steer it in a more international direction, creating an outcry amongst the hardline UK folkies that still has not stopped. He was there at the centre of the marketing decisions that kick-started the wider interest in this country (I know there were plenty of people with specialised interests prior). I've been fascinated by the twists and turns he's taken (he can be cantankerous and waspish). At one stage he decided that indigenous musics were at risk from globalised, Americanised mass-culture and actually launched an attempted boycott of American music amongst his readers. I think he eventually saw how foolish this was and over the last ten years has used the phrase 'rooted in a tradition' as his measure for the validity of a music. I've always found it a bit of a shaky concept. His latest re-write of history is that American music has come out of its commercialised dark ages and that there are now really interesting American groups, rooted in traditions he approves of. Oh, and that the 'World Music' area is going through a bit of an arid patch whereas music rooted in the English folk tradition is enjoying a resurgence. I admire the bloke for all he's done to open people's ears; but he suffers the arrogance of so many critics in presenting his preferences and notions as some sort of objective reality. (Hope this is not drifting too far from the intention of your thread.)

Indeed! 'You'd be so nice to come home to' - Dudley Moore.

But what if the people don't want it anymore (or want it like that); but some people from elsewhere do want it or want to turn it into something else? Does that invalidate it. Or does it become something else with the potential to have its own validity. If you insist the measure is the original usage (or the approval of the original community) then there is no validity. But if you allow for mutation well beyond the original (say Sophocles to Becket) then it can have validity. Many who argue for the centrality of tradition imply that there is an imperative to make the original usage the measure. Your second generation kora players are probably (at least in part) adapting what they do to a community outside of the one that gave the music birth. I'm not sure that necessarily makes it weaker - unless you have decided that one essential criteria for validity is that the music retains its roots close to the source community. Which seems to be what Marsalis is doing (or saying).

Indeed! Though not exactly modest! I really like his more recent big band recordings - some beautifully sonorous brass writing in almost eleagic settings. That 'Celebration Jig' that was played is a wonderfully agile, life-enhancing piece off a great record.

I'm listening to a documentary about him on iPlayer right now! (BBC Radio4) I'll definitely take a listen to the artists you gave me after the documentary I wouldn't envy me, I've only liked jazz for about a day now! It's funny because as well as Jazz I love trip-pop, dumbstep, prog rock, pretty much everything! I notice you are in London, Daxwax. Tune into 'Jazz Record Requests' on Radio 3 every Saturday - an hour of completely varied jazz from across the spectrum every week. Also on the iPlayer for a week. Just before it is an hour programme called Jazz Library that explores a different musician each week. And if you want to hear what's happening now try Jazz on 3 late on Monday night (or on the iPlayer). You'll get different advice on this; but I got my taste for jazz in the mid-70s from listening to the UK/European jazz happening then and then worked outwards and backwards. There's some marvellous jazz being made in the UK at the present (most of it based in London [i've never been myself...too far away...but The Vortex in Stoke Newington seems to have some of the most interesting if you are able to get out to the occasional concert]). Listening to jazz doesn't have to be about archaeology. You'll find things of interest in the present too; and, hopefully, in the future.

Me too! He always looks so unwell - on stage and in photos. Yet his mind and speaking voice seem to be of a man 50 years younger.

I'm always a bit wary about the term 'the people'. An awful lot has been justified in their name - Lenin and his middle class accomplices invoked a dictatorship in the name of 'the people'; Hitler justified his dictatorship and rode roughshod over the law on the grounds that he was acting for the German people; our own politicians constantly claim that when the follow their own self-interest they are acting for the people. To say 'the tradition is owned by the people' is to imply that there is a single, defined tradition. I'd argue that the tradition is owned by the person/persons who define the tradition as such...it's a retrospective construction, a particular arrangement of selected pieces of the jig-saw puzzle that fits the perpective or interests or prejudices or special interests of the constructor. Which is why I'm always suspicious of those who claim to have a particular insight into what the tradition is. *************** The appeal of the supposedly 'authentic' forms of West African (and other) music is interesting but not surprising. I suspect it is part of a continuity that goes back at least to the industrial revolution. As we become more urbanised and entangled in technology there is this appeal of the supposedly natural (which is often far from that, the English countryside being a classic example). It happens in so many forms from longing for authentic music from the past or in the spirit of the past through to the desire to believe in some eternal truth that lies outside the modern world, possibly locked in the secrets of the ancients (Dan Brown clearly took that one to the bank!). The present and the future are uncertain; we can't be sure that what we value today will be considered to be valuable tomorrow. Much easier to arrange the past in a reassuring way and convince ourselves that real, eternal values lie there. I suspect the music that is being freshly minted in West Africa for a domestic audience at present doesn't quite provide those reassurances for a (mainly middle to upper-class) wester audience. Whereas the Toumani Diabate's and Dembo Konte's can be filed alongside Beethoven Quartets or boxed sets of the genius of Lester Young.

Starts this Friday: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00qbzxs

I hope you're not going to start posting in cod-Texan! You can take neo-traditionalism too far!

Don't know nearly enough about this music to comment in depth - I'm very much an occasional 'cultural tourist' where it is concerned, having only listened through what you term the 'neo-colonialist' packaging of the music. I think you are absolutely right that a distorted and romanticised view of this music (and World Music in general) has been presented for Western consumption. The term 'neo-colonialist' seems a bit loaded. These are just record companies doing what record companies do anywhere in the world - find a form of music that can find a market and then select from it what might sell. In some cases pure greed is at work; but I'd imagine there are lots of people involved who just like the music, can see others would like the music but have to be a bit cautious in selecting in case they put out things that don't sell and they go under (were Holst, Bartok, Kodaly, Vaughan Williams, Grainger 'neo-colonialists'?). There is a lot of mythology involved in the marketing - the idea that you are somehow buying into authenticity, heritage etc. But that is equally true of jazz, be it a contemporary musician portrayed as an inheritor of the tradition (and that can be Marsalis or some young Chicago avant-garder) or the endless repackaging of 'the legends', 'the masters'. To my mind too much time is spent in all musics getting obsessed over 'the tradition' and who really owns it or fits with it. I don't know how it works with West African music but I'd imagine there are many streams coming out. Trying to push any of them into the spotlight as the true path (be it a reconstruction of the music as played 50 years or more ago or what is being played in a downtown bar in 2010) strikes me as questionable. I'm very guilty of be drawn to the more acoustic, rural sounding ends of many musics. I don't think it is because I'm seeking some short-cut to authenticity. I just happen to like those sounds over more urban, funky, dance based sounds. Trying to squash it all into a neo-Marxist (couldn't resist that!) analysis strikes me as simplifying something that is likely to be far more complex. Great post MG - I'm not presuming to challenge your knowledge here as it's music I know little about. But some of your conclusions seem to overlap with discussions elsewhere in music.

You might find this record of interpretations of Brubeck interesting, Bruce: Brubeck himself commented ""This CD will be an inspiration and a challenge for me to carry on in the avenues that you have opened. I've never gone so far into the unknown as you three but I have opened the door and peeked in. Your CD is an invitation to enter."Dave Brubeck. http://www.liamnoble.co.uk/brubeck.htm It's a striking record! Available on e-music in the UK; not sure about the States.