historypoliticsmusic

A Brief History of a Song

2012-07-18T13:09:00.000+01:00

Jive Talkin’ by The Bee Gees

You know that people really don’t want to play your records when you have to deliver them anonymously in a plain white cover and with a plain white label in the middle. Jive Talkin’ was released as a single in just that format to radio stations in May 1975, and part of the dramatic impact of this tune is understood if you know why that had to be the case.

In 1971 the Bee Gees had written the classic ballad How Can You Mend a Broken Heart, it had reached number one in the US, and was later covered by, among others, the fabulous Reverend Al Green. It would be a long time before they achieved similar success. Between 1971 and 1975 they had issued two albums that had done nothing; Life in a Tin Can (1973) dived into oblivion, and Mr. Natural (1974), only reached No. 194 on the Billboard 200. And between these two the album A Kick in the Head is worth Eight in the Pants was considered to be so poor that Robert Stigwood, the head of the record label RSO, refused to release it. The early seventies were a period in which the career of the Bee Gees seemed to be coming to an inconspicuous end.

But Mr. Natural had taken them in a new direction. This was due primarily to its producer, Arif Mardin, who was a close associate of the legendary co-founder of Atlantic Records, Ahmet Ertegun. Mardin was, alongside Jerry Wexler and Tom Dowd, one of the creators of the ‘Atlantic Sound’, and Robert Stigwood, the Bee Gees manager, clearly wanted his expertise applied to their sickly career. Mardin heard the trademark Bee Gees falsetto in the backing vocals of one of the tracks on Mr. Natural, and in talking to them he realised that they shared his love of rhythm and blues music. So when it came to recording the next album Mardin wanted to combine this mutual love of what was considered by most to be exclusively ‘black’ music, and the unique sound that these three white boys from Manchester could produce, to attempt to become a part of the rapidly growing dance craze called Disco. But the Bee Gees had been nowhere for the last four years, and this music was radically different from what they had done before. Their regular fans – of which they no longer had that many – wouldn’t like this drastic change and Disco fans might reject a bunch of white boys playing black music as not authentic and perhaps even exploitative. Hence the plain packaging with which the record was delivered.

Jive Talkin’ was the first track to be recorded for a proposed new album. The song was recorded at Criterion Studies in Miami, Florida in early February 1975. In anticipation of the new album, and to test the waters to see how the market would react, Jive Talkin’ was released as a single at the end of May 1975. It reached No.1 in the US and Canada, and No.5 in the UK, introducing the Bee Gees to a massive and vibrant new audience and placing them at the forefront of the ever-growing Disco movement. But, as the tracks for the new album accumulated, Robert Stigwood again refused to release the album. However this time it was because he wanted to use them in a multi-million dollar movie instead. Although Jive Talkin’ doesn’t actually feature in the movie ‘Saturday Night Fever’ (the scene it was used in was dropped) it was included on the movie soundtrack album, and has become one of the iconic tunes of the seventies and of disco.

Barry Gibb plays the scratchy guitar intro, while a rhythmic, more melodic guitar played by Alan Kendall joins with it and flows through the tune. Maurice Gibb plays the funky bass line, which provides dancers with a fluid rhythmical groove to move to. The main voice is Barry Gibb, it is subtle, smooth and he seems to under-sing the words, in a very breathy vocal that is remarkably cool and restrained. The chorus harmonies by Maurice and Robin Gibb are everything you need from the Bee Gees, and they illustrate perfectly why so many great vocal groups come from the same family, as the combination of these different voices is organically linked, a real, and naturally harmonious, sound. The organ fills by Blue Weaver, are clearly influenced by songs like Higher Ground and Superstition from Stevie Wonder’s Innervisions album; the lesson being of course that if you are going to borrow from anywhere, then borrow from the best. The drums, played by Dennis Bryon, shuffle brilliantly at the beginning, and with simple and effective high hat, and little breaks that build momentum the rhythm section combines beautifully with Maurice on bass guitar.

Interesting Note – Blue (real name Derek) Weaver and Dennis Byron are both Cardiff boys, they were founder members of Amen Corner and played with a variety of bands before becoming part of the massively successful ‘disco’ version of the Bee Gees, playing on all of the great Saturday Night Fever tracks.

In terms of the lyrics, to say someone is ‘jive talking’ is to say that they are bullshitting or deceiving, it is a phrase probably derived from black street slang, and is not something that the Gibbs would have known or used, and they seem to have hit upon it by accident. Here, again, the influence of Arif Mardin can be seen, he knew what ‘jive talking’ was, having worked with and for black musicians throughout his career and he knew it was a perfect lyrical reference point for the song, placing it squarely in the primarily black culture dominating the American dance scene. The Bee Gees, being English, did not have the self-imposed cultural barriers that many white American artists may have faced. Hence, they did not see black rhythm and blues dance music – which is effectively what disco is - as a ‘no go area’, much as in the past British bands like the Rolling Stones and the Yardbirds had felt no restraints on their desire to play the blues.

So when that white label single started to be played and everyone began to realise that this was the Bee Gees – it was a huge shock and made a great impact. Some argued that its success was a sign that disco had gone mainstream, others that this incarnation of the Bee Gees was Robert Stigwood’s attempt to exploit black American music, to make it accessible to a broad national and international audience. However, the fact that Jive Talkin’ competed on an equal footing for playlist inclusion with other disco tunes by being presented in an anonymous fashion, indicates that it was accepted as authentic and ‘real’ disco by radio disc jockeys before they knew who it was by. While the fact that Robert Stigwood was seriously considering dropping the ‘failing’ Bee Gees before Jive Talkin’ was released, is an indication that it was not the product of some marketing masterplan, but of the love, dedication and talent of the people who made it.

They were yet another four lads from Lancashire (Alan the guitarist was from the Red Rose County too), a couple of fellas from Cardiff and a producer from Istanbul, via Brooklyn, who didn’t see boundaries and no-go areas, only music. Jive Talkin’ is one of the great dance tunes of the age, its influence is timeless, it has the same enthralling effect now as it always did and the pleasure it gives just will not stop. It is definitely in my top-ten of Disco tunes and one of my favourite dance tunes of all time.

TT - Truth Terrorist v. Odd Couple - The Bridge

2012-05-12T12:15:00.001+01:00

I love The Bridge, the newest TV show in the 'Scandinavian noir' genre. It stars Sofia Helin and Kim Bodnia who play Swedish and Danish detectives, Saga Noren and Martin Rohde, respectively. They are drawn to work together by the discovery of a body placed on the bridge linking Malmo and Copenhagen. The body lies exactly on the border between the two countries, but they soon discover that it is actually two bodies, the top half of one, a Swedish politician, the bottom half of the other, a Danish prostitute.
The first episode was enigmatic in the extreme; no-one had a clue what was going on, especially not the participants. They were going about their business unaware that the world was changing and that a killer had been planning his 'Truth Terrorism' campaign for years. So initially characters popped up, did or said something and then disappeared as if they were of no importance whatsoever, only to reappear as crucial pieces in the jigsaw in a later episode.
The two lead characters work so well together, not necessarily as colleagues initially, but certainly in terms of providing an entertaining interaction.
Saga Noren is superficially a little like Lizbeth Salander in character, in that she is Swedish, 'difficult' and oddly beautiful, but that is a first impression and says nothing about the depth of this woman who, unlike Salander, is older, has a regular job and appears to have no social life whatsoever. Noren is contradictory, she seems emotionally removed from the rest of the world but plays a really important and effective role in it; her colleagues find her hard to get along with, but they clearly treasure her abilities. She seems focused entirely on work, wanting to find solutions and to react to events as quickly as possible whatever the time of day, but she is also very aware of her own physical needs. Working alongside her is Martin Rohde, who is seemingly very different, he has a complex family life, he shows his emotions easily, he laughs freely, he gets angry and frustrated, and he understands other people. This is not meant to be some kind of comment on the national traits of Sweden and Denmark, rather it is a clever counterpoint of characters; so different but seeking the same result; employing their own particular methods to get to the same goal.
The contrast between the two of them is amazing, and she is an especially fascinating character; so serious, so clever and so unintuitive. Whereas he is a seemingly simple character, but with a real sensitivity to the feelings of others. The American series 'Bones' features a similar pair of characters created by Kathy Reich - Temperance Brennan, the highly intelligent and serious pathologist unfazed by the horrors laid out before her, and her partner, the funky sock wearing FBI agent Sealey Booth. But, being a popular US TV series, it fails to commit to the character entirely and softens her too often and too much.
I think the appeal of characters like Saga Noren is found in their honesty, lack of tact and guile, and the humour that comes from their inability to understand other people. A lack that is highlighted by the emotional and intuitive reactions of Martin in which he so easily reads the feelings of others. Far from being entirely dark and serious The Bridge has moments that are funny and sweet; for example, the man Saga had that night picked up in a bar, wakes from his post-coital slumbers to find her examining images of mutilated bodies on her laptop, it is a classic "I'll get my coat and go" moment that reveals the extreme nature of her work and her possessive dedication to doing it, set against the bland simplicity of most peoples lives. It is also very funny.
The imagery is beautifully done, with odd angles and uncomfortable close-ups, while the two cities, Malmo and Copenhagen, look strange and interesting, especially in the wonderfully created night shots. The gradual reveal of the identity of the killer is clever and intriguing. Clues are dropped one by one, signs are placed in the ground, sometimes they point in the right direction, sometimes they point completely the wrong way. The plot is wonderfully complex and involving, and at this point, having watched six episodes, I think I have a clue who the killer might be.
I agree with Saga it could be a police officer. But which one? And is she right? Martin suspects the Social Worker, Stefan, we have already seen him in violent action, and he is creepy with that whole seventies look he has got going on. But, and here is the beauty of it which one of the odd couple is right, the analytical, by the book, Saga, or the intuitive, gut-feeling, Martin? I am so looking forward to discovering who the Truth Terrorist is, and how Saga and Martin catch the killer.

An Inconvenient Truth About the First Crusade

2012-04-21T13:34:00.001+01:00

Peter Frankopan, The First Crusade: the Call from the East (Bodley Head, London, 2012).

According to this superb new book an ‘inconvenient truth’ was ignored by an influential body of Twelfth-Century authors writing the history of the First Crusade in both Western Europe and in the newly-Latinized East. Those in the West shaped and controlled the narrative in order to make the words and influence of Pope Urban II appear to be the central motivating force that powered the expedition. While those writing in the East sought to explain how Jerusalem, Edessa, Tripoli and Antioch had come to be ruled by Western knights, and to justify that outcome in terms of the moral right and military strength of Christian knighthood, supported by the hand of God.

The inconvenient truth is that the expedition to Jerusalem, during which around 100,000 Western Christians came thousands of miles east to help their Eastern Christian brethren, was the result of a direct appeal for that help from the emperor of Constantinople, Alexios I Komnenos. The eloquence of Urban was one of the ways in which that appeal was mediated in the west in the mid-1090’s, but was in effect merely the culmination of a long campaign of communication and diplomacy by Alexios that had been going on for at least ten years. While the personal bravery of those who went on the First Crusade is almost never questioned, the material aid, strategic advice and diplomatic assistance given to the expedition by the Byzantines is almost always disregarded. Instead the Byzantine emperor is depicted as being very much against the crusade, plotting to do down the crusaders and take credit for the work they do.

In this book Peter Frankopan does not just redress this unbalanced reporting, he places the Byzantine emperor at the centre of a diplomatic and political project designed to bring westerners eastwards in large numbers, to provide for them on their arrival and to use them as a means of protecting the Byzantine empire from enemies who threatened it from every side. Using Greek, Armenian, Syriac, Hebrew and Arabic primary sources that have been ignored or misinterpreted in modern historiography, he reveals much that is new about the pre-history of the First Crusade and the role of the Emperor. He also uses western sources in new and subtle ways to prove his thesis.

The speech by Urban II at Clermont for example is almost always perceived as ‘zero hour’ for the First Crusade, it is ‘the starting gun’ or ‘the launch pad’, and Urban is ‘the man who unleashed the First Crusade’. But the speech begins with an acknowledgement that events in the East were already widely known, the version by Baldric of Bourgueil states:

We have heard, most beloved brethren, and you have heard what we cannot recount without deep sorrow – how, with great hurt and dire sufferings our Christian brothers, the limbs of Christ are scourged, oppressed, and injured in Jerusalem, in Antioch, and the other cities of the East.

The use of the past tense is a clear indicator that the story of what was happening in the East was already known in the West; Urban was simply be recounting what everyone already knew. One of Frankopan’s brilliant questions is – How did they already know?

He argues convincingly that the Emperor Alexios was the source of these stories, that he sent letters, and envoys west to tell of the devastation caused by the Turks and the atrocities they committed against the Byzantines. A letter sent by Alexios to Robert Count of Flanders around 1091 is a telling piece of evidence for the dissemination of this information by Alexios. The letter outlines the desecration of the holy places, as well as accounts of the ferocity of Turkish attacks on Eastern Christians. It has been dismissed as a forgery in the past, designed to rally support against Byzantium in the early twelfth-century. But Frankopan, by outlining the situation of the Byzantine empire at the time that the letter was written makes it very clear that it tallies both with historical reality in the east in the early 1090’s described in Eastern sources and tellingly with the descriptions given of that situation in the west by men such as Pope Urban II. Furthermore, he points out that it would make perfect sense for the Emperor to appeal to the Count of Flanders, because he already had a relationship with Robert, who had sent 500 knights east to aid Alexios shortly before the letter was written.

A final argument against the letter’s authenticity, is the ‘western’ style in which it is written. For Frankopan this does not undermine its legitimacy, instead it strengthens it. Given the sophistication of the Byzantine court and the many westerners living in Constantinople it would be unreasonable for the Emperor not to address his western ally in Latin, and to use language, including diplomatic and political phrasing, that would be clearly understood in a western context. Alexios was asking for help, and would understand the need to speak in a language that would be clearly understood by the recipients of his appeal.

In this book Peter Frankopan outlines the difficulties facing Alexios, bringing a clarity and understanding to the complexity of events, and the timing of his appeals that is informative and admirable. Alexios was a soldier and a negotiator, he fought battles, but he also did deals. He made arrangements with Muslim leaders like Sulayman, to rule eastern cities on his behalf, and he negotiated peace treaties with powerful men like the Seljuk Sultan Malik-Shah. By these means the emperor stabilised situations and maintained the empire in the first ten years of his reign. He faced internal threats, firstly from the senior families of the empire who united to rebel against him, and then from within his own imperial family. He faced external threats from both aggressive nomads attacking in the Balkans, and uncontrolled Seljuk Turks in Asia Minor. But he balanced things brilliantly, stitching together a network of deals and arrangements. But the deaths of both Sulayman in 1085 and Malik-shah in 1092, and the advent of an ‘anti-Byzantine’ ruler in Baghdad, the sultan Barkyaruk, led to an unravelling. Probably reaching a nadir in early 1095 when Kilij-Arslan, a son of Sulayman, arrived at Nicaea, the city his family had held on behalf of the emperor for many years, a city close to the imperial capital and hugely significant in the history of the Christian church, and declared that he now held it on behalf of the sultan of Baghdad.

In response to this ongoing spiral of disintegration Alexios sent more letters and more envoys west. This is acknowledged in western sources such as Ekkehard of Aura who recorded that in the 1090’s embassies and letters, ‘seen by ourselves’ were sent out by Alexios; while the chronicler Gilbert of Mons reports that ‘he (Alexios) sent envoys to France with letters to stir up the princes so that they would come to the aid of imperrilled Greece.’ So, when Pope Urban II stood up to give his sermon at Clermont he barely needed to introduce the subject, for the field had already been prepared and the crop sown for him through the labours of Alexios and his envoys. Far from being the ‘starting pistol’ the speech at Clermont simply confirmed what informed people across Western Europe already knew, and confirmed it in language and phrases that they had already heard.

I have tried in this review to convey some of the more significant and substantial arguments put forward by Peter Frankopan. This means that I have had to leave out so much that is great scholarly work, that is innovative and profound, that is subtle and intelligent. I think this book will change the way the history of the First Crusade is taught, and that it deserves to be on the reading list of anyone who is serious about understanding the origins and outcomes of the most miraculous and original event of the middle ages.
© Steven Biddlecombe

The Knights Templar - Not a Good Choice of Role Model for Anders Breivik?

2012-04-21T01:27:00.000+01:00

Anders Breivik is a mass murderer, and as such his state of mind is alien to almost all of us. But it has worked to develop an explanation for his actions, based on his hatred for racially or religiously defined groups of his fellow citizens and those who associate with them.

He believes that he shares this hatred, and the ability to turn it into terrorist action against innocent people, with a secretive group of similarly motivated, similarly dedicated and delusional racists across Europe. He calls this, probably imagined, group The Knights Templar and links it directly to the men who made up a military order that began in Jerusalem around 1120 and took a religious oath to defend both the newly conquered Holy Land and the Christian pilgrims who came to the sacred sites there. Breivik clearly believes that in the Templars he has found his own inspirational example of white, European, Christian soldiers standing against non-white, non-Christian middle-eastern infidels. He envisages the Templars as a group who used their martial skills and their pious bravery and laid down their lives to defend their community, their people, their religion and their race from Muslim attack.

There is an element of truth in this, the Crusader states were ruled by Christians and surrounded by Muslim-ruled states, so any attack on them is likely to come from a Muslim source. Pilgrims were often prey to bandits and thieves, who, given that most of the population of the region were Muslim, we're also likely to be Muslim. So in fulfilling their oaths the Templars would usually be fighting against Muslims. Also, in the years following the capture of Jerusalem by the expedition that became known as the First Crusade, and the establishment of what are known as the Crusader States around Aleppo, Antioch, Tripoli and Jerusalem, young Christian men were recruited by the Templars in Europe and travelled to the Holy Land eager for the blood of the pagan infidel. With the anti-Muslim, and often anti-Jewish and anti-Greek, preaching of western crusade sermonizers still ringing in their ears they were ready to kill for their faith.

But the reality these new arrivals found was that the survival of the Crusader States largely relied on trade with Muslims, they relied on good relations with their neighbours and through alliances and mutual agreements with them they had by the middle of the twelfth-century established a degree of peace in the region. Christian rulers had Muslim servants and the equivalent of civil servants running their administrations. There were many among the Franks (Christians) of the Holy Land who wanted to settle peaceably with their Muslim neighbours, and even the Templars developed a respect for Muslims and Muslim traditions.

This is illustrated by the observations of a chronicler called Usamah ibn Munqidh who reports that when he visited Jerusalem around 1140, he went to stay in what had been the al-Aqsa mosque. The Muslims had ruled Jerusalem for almost 500 years and during that time what had been the site of The Temple of Solomon had become a Muslim holy site. But Usamah, although he was clearly aware of the religious significance of the mosque/temple, says that the actual reason he went to the Temple was because it was where his 'Templar friends' were staying. He goes on to say that these Knights Templar friends arranged for him to stay with them in what they called the Temple, and what Usamah called the mosque. They found a small oratory and set it aside so that he could go there and say his daily prayers.

One day Usamah went to pray in the mosque, going to his small oratory and laying down his prayer mat, he knelt and faced Mecca, which from Jerusalem is south-east, and he began to pray. But no sooner had he started than was forced to stop when he was grabbed by a newly arrived Templar who forced him to turn to the East, saying ‘Thus do we pray’. Hearing the noise the other Templars came running and took the man away, apologizing to Usamah saying: ‘He is a foreigner. He has just arrived from the land of the Franks and he has never seen anyone pray without turning to face east.’

Usamah explains why this happened, saying: ‘Among the Franks we find some people who have come to settle among us and who have cultivated the society of the Muslims. They are far superior to those who have freshly joined them in the territories they now occupy.’

Several things arise from this story that seem to contradict Anders Breivik's conception of the Knights Templar. Firstly, the fact that a Muslim writing in the middle of the Twelfth-century can call the Templars ‘my friends’, seems to turn the world on its head. The Templars are supposed to be the (literally) sworn enemies of the Muslims and yet the way Usamah ibn Munqidh remembers it is that they welcomed him into their community, made a place for him to pray to his 'infidel' God and defended him from attack from an ignorant newcomer. Secondly, the fact that the Templars can refer to one of their own as ‘a foreigner’ is also amazing – these are members of the same military order, they have taken the same vows, share the same clothing and are from the same religious and racial background, they are ‘brothers’ yet they consider the new arrival ‘a foreigner’ and the Muslim ‘a friend’.

This report suggests that at this point a particular group of Knight Templar had made a concerted effort to build good relations with at least one of their Muslim neighbours. This attempt to heal the wounds caused by the massacre of Muslim populations and the ravaging of Muslim lands during the First Crusade if applied more generally might have meant that the crusader states could have developed alliances, become an accepted and respected part of the political landscape and enjoyed peaceful and profitable relations with their neighbours. But the baggage of fervent religious hatred of Muslims, Saracens and 'infidels', not to mention Greeks and Jews, brought by these constantly arriving ‘foreigners’, meant that any progress made towards reconciliation would often be destroyed by the actions of new arrivals.

The story of his trip to the Temple and his friends the Templars, told by Usama bin Munqidh, makes Breivik's chosen role models, the Knights Templar appear to be exactly the sort of decent and tolerant people that he hates so much. Multi-cultural twelfth-century Jerusalem with its mix of European, North African, Greek, Arabic and Jewish cultures was where the Templars did their work, and fulfilled their promise to defend pilgrims. They seem to have adapted to and engaged with multi-culturalism and if Usamah's story is representative of Templar behaviour generally in the Latin East then on a personal level at least many would have made friends with Muslims, respected their faith and tried to behave in a civilised manner towards them.

I am not saying that the Templars where models of religious and cultural tolerance, far from it and their reported actions often reflect the vicious cut and thrust of the holy war/jihad being waged between Christian and Muslim in the time of the crusades. But Usamah's story shows us a different side of the Templars, away from the politics and the battlefields, away from the pulpits and the anti-Muslim sermons. It shows us a hint of day to day reality and the relationships that could be built between people of different ethnic and religious backgrounds. Relationships that men like Brevik and the newly-arrived foreigner, would want to tear apart and destroy. Those Knights Templar who befriended Usamah, showed him respect and made a place for him to worship his god would be disgusted by Breivik, they would see him as a barbaric and ignorant outsider with no sense of how to behave in a civilised society and they would be right.

Hieronymous Bosch and George Grosz - Kindred Spirits?

2012-02-10T15:13:00.002+00:00

The Prado houses about 8,000 paintings, of which just under 2,000 are on display at any time. I spent four hours walking around the Prado looking at work by Valasquez, Goya, El Greco, Rubens, Titian, Tintoretto, Bruegel, and Raphael among many others. Most of the paintings were wonderful…

BUT.

The absolute show stealer, the single painting that stopped me in my tracks and had me on the verge of tears of joy, was Hieronymus Bosch's 'The Garden of Earthly Delight'. Just the most outrageous and involving picture I have ever seen, joyous detail, and everywhere you look a surprising image.

View it at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_Garden_of_Earthly_Delights_by_Bosch_High_Resolution.jpg

The allegorical complexity would take several years and a couple of PhD’s to decipher and several hundred pages to explain.

What was particularly striking about it was how modern the picture looked. The shapes, the glass tubes and balls, the bending of reality, the buildings that appear to be made from pastel coloured plastic, all seemed more suited to the middle of the C20th than 400 years earlier.

I was standing next to a couple of people who clearly liked it, but just thought it was "mad", "random", the product of a crazed imagination - an amazing imagination - but one that they thought was on mushrooms, acid or some medieval equivalent.

But the message of this triptych is actually a very simple one - we started in paradise (the left side) we are living in a mess inspired and created by own own failings (the stunning and outrageous middle section) and we are all going to end up in hell, pictured in scary detail on the right-hand side, making it very clear that hell is not going to be fun.

Remember this is a medieval painting produced around 1500. And it was loved at the time by those who patronised art and artists. It was displayed by Henry III of Nassau (Brussels), until it was stolen (pretty much) by the Spanish Duke of Alba. In 1593 it came into the possession of King Phillip II of Spain who put it on display in his palace El Escorial.

So this was no weird little, unknown man doodling away in his crazy painting shed, producing obscure mad images that no-one wanted to see. Because, this painting was at the centre of elite European culture from the moment of the last brush stroke.

It captured the theological confusion, moral danger and spiritual despair of it's age, it was confirmation of the chaos and sin in which the Catholic hierarchy believed everyone but themselves was living. It is, therefore, one of the ultimate 'us and them' moments. The production, ownership and display of the picture makes it clear that the aristocrats, churchmen and intellectuals who formed the ruling class, knew what was civilized, moral and righteous. This knowledge raised them above and set them apart from everyone else who remained, and always would remain, mired in their own filth and destined for hell. And this was confirmed by Hieronymous Bosch’s image of the barbaric, irreligious mass of ‘others’, out there behaving with no moral or spiritual restraint.

One thing that not many people notice about this triptych is what happens when you fold the two outer wings in to 'close' the picture. You can see this by bending over the rope to look at the back of the two side panels. The image of the closed triptych is of a dark blue night-time world enclosed within a twinkling glass ball. Just imagine the effect of coming into a room and seeing that dark, magically foreboding scene, and then opening up the picture to reveal the stunning multi-coloured mess of civilisation falling apart, presented inside it.

Now that's a 'Ta-Da' moment right there.

No wonder the Duke of Alba nicked it.

Compare it then to a painting I saw the next day at Thyssen-Bornemisa Museum, Metropolis by George Grosz, painted in 1917.

View it at:

http://www.abcgallery.com/G/grosz/grosz2.html

Again extremely detailed, very busy. The American flag in the top left seems to indicate it is an American city scape; but it could be any city where the people blur into one another as they hurry to get where they so very urgently have to be. It is wildly colourful and vibrant, with so much red, so much fast action, it is like a blood-soaked rush-hour nightmare reproduced with unerring accuracy on waking.

But as with ‘The Garden of Earthly Delights’ the message and the method is simple. The message is that the world is full of sin, and here are several examples of the sins which I the disillusioned artist would present as evidence. For Grosz these are the deadly sins as defined by a Marxist - the greedy striving for material success at the expense of others, the blurring anonymity and unconnected nature of relationships between people and the brassy exploitation of earthly desires and needs by those in control of the means of production. In 1917 Germany the suffering of war casualties and the deprivations being endured by most of the people of Germany were in sharp contrast to the bright lights of clubs and restaurants where the rich could stuff their faces and be ‘entertained’ by whatever and whoever took their fancy. Grosz would not need to go far to find evidence to confirm his disillusionment.

Two separate faiths, one Christian and one Marxist, inspire two separate paintings.

Time, just over 400 years appears to divide them further, yet both present pretty much the same narrative.

Do we need another George Grosz, or better still (in my opinion) a Hieronymous Bosch for the C21st?

Is there someone already out there?

If so, names please.

Nidi D’Arac – Taranta Container

2012-01-19T13:22:00.001+00:00

Alessandro Coppola and Elena Floris Womad 2011 Charlton Park (photo by Dr Biddlecombe)

Album released 2011 – 10 Songs, 40 mins.

The name of this band, Nidi D'Arac, means 'nest of spiders' and they come from Salento, the peninsular that forms the 'heel' of Italy. There is a story about the tarantula spiders in their province. If you were bitten by one, your death was almost certain. Your only chance to live, would be to dance for hours on end and expunge the poison. In the cities, towns and villages of Salento they dance the pizzica. It is elegant, energetic and as with all dancing, life-affirming, if not necessarily life-saving.

The bands that create the music for the pizzica are composed of singers, backed by guitars, violins, accordions and hand-held drums. Nidi D’Arac come from this musical tradition, and they stay pretty true to it. All the elements of the traditional Salentine folk band are intact, but they approach the music like true modernists adding guitars, synths, bass and drums. In doing so they have kept the beautiful and unique qualities of the pizzica, and added the power and excitement of a modern rock band.

Songs such as 'Gocce' begin traditionally with acoustic guitar, and the striking and edgy voice of the band's leader Alessandro Coppola and almost immediately the experimentation begins; electronic pulses, echoing voices and soaring choruses make this one of the most interesting and dynamic songs on the album. This creativity and originality is expressed even more clearly in songs like 'Ipocharia' and 'Cerchio si apre cerchio si stringe'. Even the songs that appear to be in a more traditional folk style, such as 'Ahi tamburieddhu!' and 'Tarantulae', reflect the desire to do something new, to find a different way to play and to take their music to the world.

Often experimentation can result in musicians creating work that is disengaged and alienating to its intended audience. But not Nidi D'Arac, who grow their outstanding and exciting music in the fertile soil of their own land, not in some alien environment, and thereby retain its unique flavour and integrity. The addition of synthesised sounds, echoing voices, even a rap style of delivery of the vocals on songs such as 'Ronde noe' never hide the fact these are songs firmly rooted in the home land and culture of their creators.

A song such as 'Sta Musica' perfectly reflects this wonderful combination, the vocals are earthy, stark and beautiful, the violin is emotive and exciting, and the acoustic guitar is used in the traditional rhythmical role. These alone make a perfectly wonderful sound, but the addition of synthesised rhythms, echoing background voices and an instrumental break involving drum, bass and accordion that sounds a little like Massive Attack create something really interesting and exciting.

Bands such as Nidi D'Arac, and Speed Caravan, Bellowhead, La Brass Banda and Tinariwen to name but a few, are taking the forms and styles, the traditional instrumentation and the cultural ethos of their own music and doing something exciting and new with it. Whether that musical culture is Algerian oud playing, English folk, Bavarian oompah or Southern Italian pizzica, the transformation of these traditional forms into something that can have a worldwide appeal while retaining the quality, beauty and intensity of the local folk music is a wonderful thing to witness.

Having seen this band at Womad Charlton Park 2011 and in a little village festival in Spain I can affirm that their live performances fulfil the promise of this thrilling album.

Lykke Li - Wounded Rhymes

2012-01-12T00:11:00.004+00:00

2011 – 10 Songs, 40 mins

This is Swedish singer Lykke Li’s second album, produced by Björn Yttling and recorded in Sweden, although written in Los Angeles. On it she creates highly original percussive and electronic tones for each track and blends that inventiveness with an obviously heart-felt love of sixties American pop, especially the great teen operas created by Phil Spector and Jack Nitzsche. A love that can also be found in her previous covers of songs like 'Unchained Melody’ and ‘Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow’. But Lykke Li is a very original artist and although she borrows from the past, as all artists do, she creates an environment of sound that is new, somewhat scary and deeply personal.

On this album her voice, although very different from either The Ronette’s Ronnie Bennett or The Crystal’s Darlene Love, expresses the same deep yearning and heartfelt passion. While the classic pop essence is distilled into an echoing organ, a stark big beat and the shimmering shake of a tambourine. Her distinctive voice expresses love, loss and pain; dreams, despair and desire in equal measure. The voice fitting perfectly with lyrical themes of depths and heights, of fires burning and rivers running deep and wild, of places we can be together, and times when we are torn apart.

The ten songs on the album are:
Youth Knows No Pain – one of the best songs on the album, slightly reminiscent of The Doors, and Ray Manzarek would have been proud of the swirly organ sounds. It has a tribal chanting feel to it and a really great chorus. It’s a powerful and involving tune, intriguing and appealing.

I'll Follow Rivers – The use of African percussive instruments gives this track an interesting dynamic and sets it slightly apart from the rest of the album. She has a lovely tone to her voice on it and appears to be channelling the lyricists of Sixties American teen pop, with rivers running deep and running wild, down which she follows her baby - ‘the rebel’ - into the depths of love.

Love Out of Lust - a little Spector haunts this track also. But in this case the wall of sound is on stage in a rundown half-empty night club. The big drums, bells, handclaps and lovely repeated harmonies all eerily echo the golden era of pop hinting at the Ronettes, the Crystals and the Shirelles. But this is not sparkling sequinned pastels, and high-heeled glamour, it is more intimate and gritty, more personal and complex, and more in tune with modern life and relationships.

Unrequited Love - a slightly more country feel to this song with a twangy guitar sound and plaintiff vocals, reminiscent of the Fleet Foxes in some of the harmonies, a tone perfectly suited to the theme of the denial of love. Although the ‘shoo-wop, shoo-wah’ refrain seems to take us back once more to Saturday night in the diner.

Get Some - a more rocky song, the big drum sound and the slight shuffle reminds me of the Bangles. This is a swaggering song about sex from a twenty-first century woman’s perspective.

Rich Kids Blues – My first impression was of a sophisticated pop song, superbly constructed, very engaging with interesting lyrics and a dynamic energy that makes you want to hear it again immediately. Second listen indicates that it is not one of the best songs on the album, it doesn’t really go anywhere. But second impressions are often wrong.

Sadness is a Blessing - this is a song directly inspired by Spector's Ronettes, it is almost a tribute song, in less careful and caring hands it could slip into kitsch parody. Here Lykke Li's voice retains the pleading, heart-aching seriousness of those original girl groups, carrying torches for wild and crazy boys who treat them bad and leave them sad. The use of slightly odd percussion makes it sound as though it is an old 45rpm single with a big scratch across it, which strangely enough works really well. The lyrics are brilliant; poignant, possibly cheesy, yet at the same time defiant and gutsy. I think this is my favourite song on the album.

I Know Places - this is a little bit nondescript, gentle, with a simple repetitive theme and some nice vocal experimentation. About two-thirds in, it goes off into a somewhat pointless instrumental section that would function nicely as the background music to an early evening drive around Ystad in the Swedish province of Skåne, where Lykke Li was born, and where Henning Mankel set the Wallander stories.

Jerome - the 'big beat' is back again in another tribute song. Pick a boys name, with two syllables and plenty of things it can rhyme with, and write a song about how much you love him and how you will always be together - oh oh Je-rome! But this is a slightly twisted version, the handclaps and beats are a little haunted. It seems like the fascination with this boy may have led Lykke to keep him chained up in her basement, that way he can never leave and she will never lose him.

Silent my Song - a sort of industrial big beat underlies this somewhat disconcerting song -
"You seek pain like it is pleasure", and lots of talk of needles cutting through veins, fists and murder, is a little worrying. The vocal harmonies recall Fleet Foxes again, but the big dramatic harmonic sweeps at the start of each chorus definitely channel the

This album featured in most of the lists of best albums of 2011, deservedly so, and for what it is worth I would definitely recommend it.

The Value of History to Employers.

2011-10-22T10:56:00.001+01:00

History is collective memory.
If an individual suffers memory loss for whatever reason, the effects can be devastating on their lives. They forget what they like and dislike, they forget what they value about their lives and they lose any sense of who they are. But an individual would have the opportunity to reconstruct their history by talking to the people who know them.
If an individual has lost all knowledge of their history it is tragic for them, the effects of Alzheimers or traumatic brain injury can reduce a person to what appears to be an empty shell.
But what if a nation loses its collective memory, because its history is no longer taught, is taught badly or with such prejudice to a certain perspective as to be worthless?
What will be the effect of the loss or deterioration in the quality of our collective memory?
What if our understanding of our history is lost?
What if we forget how we used to live, the mistakes and the injustices that used to be in place?
Will we return to repeating mistakes, will we reinstate prior injustices and return to prejudices that used to be prevalent in our society?
By understanding our history, we understand the direction in which we as a community, large or small, are going, we can see the changes that are happening to our society and we will have examples and precedents before us that can guide us and provide us with ways of coping with new situations as they arise. Without understanding our history everything is new, everything is a challenge, we have to learn everything afresh. By understanding the changes and events that have happened in our past, we are much more able to cope with new changes and new events that happen in our present, and much better equipped to appreciate how our world will change in the future.
A loss of collective memory would mean that we as a community lose our identity, we lose our shared values, and we forget all the progress that was achieved through the struggles of our ancestors. Without a shared sense of our own history we, as a community of people, would be an empty shell, a blank piece of paper, a cipher, powerless to define ourselves and reliant on others to do it for us.

Knowledge is power, and historical knowledge is the sharpest, most effective tool we have in understanding what is happening in the world now, and what will happen in the future. It must be retained, investigated, and passed on to those who don't yet know it, to give them the tools they will need to deal with the future. Any employer who does not understand the value of the skills of a historian or have a historical perspective, is one who, when faced with a crisis or a new situation, will find it difficult to cope, hard to understand and impossible to see a way beyond.

Plaza Bibarrambla, Granada

2011-09-12T10:05:00.001+01:00

On our recent holiday in Nerja on the Andalusian coast we took a day trip to Granada. By far the most famous monument in the city is the Alhambra palace; it is a fabulous place, a little empty but occasionally breath-taking. Historically it is of great interest, but I believe that the most evocative place in the city, the one in which the history of Granada, indeed the history of Spain, can be followed most closely and more intimately is the Plaza Bibarrambla.

The Plaza Bibarrambla in Granada is a square in the centre of a vibrant and exciting Spanish city. It is oblong in shape surrounded by attractive 3 and 4 storey buildings, above which the truncated single tower of the cathedral of Granada can be seen. Flower stalls provide a colourful and fragrant buffer between the smart restaurants and tourist shops and the centre of the plaza in which a sweet fountain made up of large and small bowls topped by Neptune all held aloft by rather ugly giants sits within a low fence. The place is relatively peaceful and calm, cool and fairly sophisticated, in other words it is modern Spain.

Although Granada has an ancient history, Celtic, Roman, and Vizigothic, its establishment as a city of major importance began with the creation of Moorish Al-Andalus following the occupation of the Iberian peninsula by the Umayyads in 711. In the almost 800 years that Muslim caliphs, emirs and princes lived in and ruled over the city it developed a culture that was sophisticated , exploratory, welcoming to those from other cultural and religious traditions. Plaza Bibarrambla was an open space at the time of the Moors, it stood on a sandy bank of the now enclosed River Darro, hence the name which comes from Arabic and means ‘beach gate’, and it provided space for trading (the Arab bazarre or Alcaiceria is right next to the Plaza) as well as festivals and displays of all kinds, including jousting.

In 1492, despite having good relations with the Catholic Spanish kings and queens of Castille, despite becoming a tributary state of Christian Spain and providing a lucrative and mutually beneficial direct link to the Muslim world, the Emir of Granada was forced into signing a treaty in which he gave control of the city to the Catholic monarchs. The treaty stated clearly that Muslims and Jews would be able to continue in their faith unmolested and that their customs would not be interfered with. This was based on a long established tenet of the Catholic Church that an enforced conversion is invalid in the eyes of God. The Catholic Bishops tried to convert the Muslims by preaching and persuasion, but progress was slow and after only seven years the treaty was forgotten. The rights of Muslims to follow their faith were ignored and the autos de fé – or trials of faith – were held in the Bibarrambla.

These trials would examine those who were Muslim or Jewish, usually intimidate them into conversion and provide a kind of quasi-legal framework by which their goods, businesses and property could be confiscated. As an off-shoot of the Inquisition it also examined those Christians who were accused of heresy. The trials were public affairs and followed a set ritual in which two processions would converge in the Bibarramblas: one bringing the accused from wherever they were being held prisoner, and the other bringing the judges (bishops, archbishops and abbots usually) from a nearby church. It was a long affair, going on from dawn to dusk, and stopping for lunch - a huge banquet for the judges - watched by those standing trial. Sentences would then announced in the afternoon, and those who refused to either abandon their faith and convert, or recant their ‘heretical’ views and rejoin the ‘true’ faith, would be taken away to be burnt or burnt in Bibarrambla itself, while those who converted or recanted would be pardoned. It is estimated that up to 70,000 Muslims were forced into conversion, with 3,000 being baptised on one day in 1499.

At the same time as the Catholic Church forced conversion on Muslims and Jews and burnt those who refused, they were burning something else as well. The sophisticated and well-educated culture of the Spanish Moors meant that Granada was an important centre of learning and book production. They now boast a fine University established in the Sixteenth Century, but they had many Muslim and Jewish centres of learning long before that. Indeed close to Plaza Bibarrambla the University’s Faculty of Arts and the Royal Academy of Fine Arts are housed in what was the home of a Muslim madrasah or mosque school. One Muslim scholar who attended this school was the historian and poet Ibn-al-Khatib whose poems can be found decorating the walls of the Alhambra. In 1499 Cardinal Ximenes de Cisnero ordered searches of the homes of Jews and Muslims, as well as suspect Christians, declaring that all books in Arabic or Hebrew found should be brought from all parts of Granada to the Bibarrambla. There they were burnt. It is thought that around 1 million books were destroyed in this way in Granada.

Mosques were destroyed or converted into churches, the Jewish quarter was demolished and those who had not converted were forced out of the city, those Muslims who could afford to make the journey left for North Africa. Those who remained converted and became Moriscos Catholics of Moorish descent or Marranos Catholics of Jewish descent. Spanish traditions and customs replaced the Muslim festivals and competitions in the Bibarrambla. It became the place in which bullfights were held. In August 1609, 20 bulls were killed, but not before they had killed 36 and injured around 60 people, nice one bulls. And today the river is enclosed, the Arab bazzare provides a great opportunity for tourists and it is a pleasant, peaceful square of restaurants and florists, popular with tourists and locals alike.

Instinctively I would prefer Moorish Spain over Catholic Spain any time, and will be writing a further blog on my trip to Cordoba making this preference even clearer very soon. But highlighting differences between different cultures and different times is something that historians do at their peril; it is for example something that Enlightenment historians did with a judgemental relish that still echoes today. By unleashing your own modern values to judge different cultures, you always end up supporting the premise that one is good and one is evil, one civilized and one barbarian, usually that yours is good and the other evil. But great care should be taken when making historical comparisons, even in what appears to be a clear cut case such as the comparison between Muslim and Catholic Spain. It is worth noting for example that in 1066 over 4,000 Jews were killed and their leader crucified by a Muslim mob in the city of Granada, so the enlightened and civilized Muslim Granada could also succumb to religious hatred and turn to violence as its expression.

The Enlightenment or ‘The Age of Reason’ began in the Seventeenth Century and has become a fine example of how history, economics, culture and political philosophy can be used to make unfair and judgemental statements about different cultures and different times. They argued that by applying reason and scientific analysis to all things, the world could be understood, knowledge could be advanced and the ills of society could be cured. Philosophers, mathematicians, economists and authors, such as Adam Smith, Baruch Spinoza, John Locke, Isaac Newton and Voltaire, believed they could explain things, that they could understand things, that they could predict things, that they could provide certainties based on truths derived from scientific analysis and the application of reason. They were deluded by the notion that facts exist, that science always leads to progress and that human behaviour and motivations can be understood through glib and superficial generalizations.

The Enlightenment looked back on the Middle Ages as a period of barbarism, religious superstition and division, disorganization and rule by military might. They looked beyond the middle ages to the ancient Roman and Greek worlds and perceived a ‘Golden Age’ of democracy, science and reason. This approach to history provides the origin of the gross generalization that is the phrase ‘the dark ages’ among many other historical mistakes. The Catholic conquest of Moorish Spain and the subsequent mistreatment of those who had lived, created and thrived in that region for many hundreds of years is one of those historical moments when it is very difficult not to be judgemental. You just have to stand in the Plaza Bibarrambla, smell the flowers and hear the water flowing in the fountain and think; ‘Well all those people are dead now, all those things happened a long time ago and no-one here was responsible. My job as a historian is to make sure that we do not forget that they happened, my duty as an individual is to try and make sure they never happen again.’

WOMAD 2011 – Four of the Best, One of the Worst.

2011-08-11T00:40:00.001+01:00

Bellowhead at Womad 2011 - Photo - Dr. Biddlecombe

Bellowhead – probably the best English folk band around. When you read the words ‘English Folk Band’ you do tend to think of chain-knit pullover wearing beardies who look like they should be presenting a Physics programme on the Open University, and sound exactly like Old Bert Hardy used to sound. This is a very unfair generalization and certainly untrue in this case, Bellowhead are sharp and funny, some might even say sexy, they are raucous and loud, and they rock out on the banjo.

Musically they are very adventurous, and yet they sing sea shanties, Cumbrian folk songs from the nineteenth-century, not to mention songs that are intended to accompany Morris Dancing. They wear their Englishness on their sleeves, not in a nasty, idiotic nationalist way, but in a charming, enthusiastic and slightly odd way, tons of personality and wit, a hearty openness about their music that, despite its complexity and depth, makes it welcoming and warm. If anyone ever asked me to play them some quintessentially English music I would be happy to play them Bellowhead, not The Kinks, Blur or The Jam.

Afrocubism – A world music supergroup made up of Cuban and Malian superstars; Bassekou Kouyate and Toumani Diabate representing Mali and Elias Ochoa leading the Cuban contingent. Some musical collaborations are like PhD topics, occasionally interesting, usually very worthy, but very rarely exciting. Afrocubism is a collaboration between artists from two cultures that have blended different musical styles to create something wonderful. Mali and Cuba seem to share the same attitude to live music performance. In both cultures virtuosity is celebrated, the more skill the better, the more difficult the piece the greater the achievement in completing it. Both musical cultures require a solid and exciting rhythm section, that can provide the heart of the sound, but which can also break out into virtuosity on a par with that of the lead performers. Both cultures also rely on great melodies that flow, fly and dance into the ear, that lift the heart on high and send the mind on sweet winding pathways.

The musicians look very happy together, the songs they play owe much to both sides of the collaboration, and the sense of equal contribution and mutual respect results in a celebratory mood at the heart of the performance. This is how you do musical collaborations, with joy, celebration and bags of respect for each other.

Mahala Rai Banda – I have been looking forward to seeing this band live since getting their album ‘Ghetto blaster’ last year. I was expecting them to be on the main stage, headlining, but instead they are in the Arboretum on the BBC Radio 3 stage, and late too. Mind you the lights, the trees swaying, sipping cool cider all creates a bit of a magical space. And then on stage came this bunch of Romanian gypsies and an ex-Moldovan army oompah band. The combination of brass, violin, accordion, thumping rhythms and great singing add to the magical space to create one of the best sets of the weekend at Womad, and hardly anyone saw or heard it. The wonderfully rich sound of the brass and woodwind and the high melodic tunefulness of the violin, united with exuberant singing and a very joyful, dancing crowd lead me to believe that this is the best Gypsy Wedding/Birthday/Funeral Dance Band in the world.

Bomba Estereo – I tend to avoid the Big Red Tent at Womad, it tends to have stuff that is too clubby and too loud. They have DJ sets which usually result in lines of stoned thirty-year olds sat in deckchairs outside the tent nodding their heads like a row of dogs on the back shelf of a 1974 Austin Princess. I thought this was a music festival, not an excuse for some blokes to play some records. Anyway, rant over and bias against Big Red overcome we went to see Bomba Estereo, who are Colombian, they are clever, they mix up what they do brilliantly and they have a charismatic lead singer with s stunningly fast vocal style. Spanish is definitely a language that lends itself to rap and hip hop – witness Cuban band Orishas – and the mix of their native Cumbia – a fairly ancient folk music style – with electronic and psychedelic sounds is exciting and occasionally unique.

One of the great things about Womad is hearing things you have never heard before. Sometimes those new things are obvious – the band Ayarkhaan are from the far end of Siberia, they use a variant of the Jews Harps and their own voices to present the sounds of their homeland. Sometimes it sound a little bit like Ross in Friends playing one of his ‘sound poems’ on the keyboard, but more often it is fascinating, eerie, and very original. Bomba Estereo are more subtly original the newness creeps up on you and you realize that this sound is distinctive and new.

Dub Colossus - one of those collaborations that feels really uncomfortable. Occasionally it is interesting, and clearly it is a good project, but it appears that the relationship between the white, European musicians led by Nick Page and the black, Ethiopian stars is somewhat dysfunctional. Sometimes the music works so well that you can ignore it, their version of Satta Massagana is great for example. But, when Teremage Woretaw, a traditional Ethiopian folk singer, an azmari, and exponent of the one-stringed messenqo violin comes out to sing a song that has been sung in Ethiopia for nearly two thousand years, it is announced in a desultory fashion with a seeming complaint about how long he takes to tune the violin. As he sings the song the other musicians stand around at the back having a laugh, sharing a joke, swigging a beer and generally ignoring what is going on. When it is finished the singer walks off with not a word said by the band. I was pretty disgusted by that, it felt disrespectful, exploitative and wrong. I took against Dub Colossus and all they stand for, maybe it was just me and i had taken one too many ciders by that time of night but they are not for me, twits.

Feel bad i have not reviewed Asa who was very entertaining, Hassan Errajin and his Morroccan Rollers who was lovely and created a gentle melodic sound, or the Eurocool dudes known as Nidi D'Arac who were aces. Maybe next time.

Police and Thieves on the Street.

2011-08-09T16:30:00.001+01:00

The riots across London and other parts of England came as a real shock to many. Places like Ealing, Enfield, Clapham and Croydon don’t do riots, and so to see them burning, shops being ransacked and violent gangs running unopposed through terrified communities was a shock to the system.

In 1976 the Jamaican singer Junior Murvin wrote ‘Police and Thieves’ about how armed and violent gangs were terrorizing his neighbourhood and his country and how the police, despite their own use of guns and brutality, could do little to stop them. Thirty-five years later we still see ‘The crowds coming in day by day, with no-one to stop them in any way. All the peacemakers turned to war-officers.’ It seems the last three days we have had crowds coming into London communities, and no-one being able to stop them doing whatever they want. We now have calls for the army to be deployed on the streets, for the police to be allowed to use rubber bullets and water cannon and for the rule of law regarding arrests to be suspended in order to allow for a faster arrest process. Hopefully the peacemakers will not be turned into war officers.

Some people have tried to argue that the ‘riots’ are a reaction to social and political issues, to the failure of the police to ‘respect’ young people. But we did not see political protest on the streets of London, we did not see disaffected youth finding their voice and standing up for themselves, we did not even see ‘riots’ in which the authorities in the form of the police are being attacked. What we saw were thieves, arsonists and vandals, people who revel in destruction and others who enjoy watching and running alongside mayhem being given the opportunity to do exactly what they wanted. They drew in other, mostly young, people from their communities, who would normally be law-abiding. These innocents became accomplices to the actions of a very small criminal minority, providing a mob that would give a degree of anonymity to those wishing to steal and destroy. We can only hope that the guilt they feel the morning after is something that will make them stronger and more determined to be a force for good and for construction and cooperation, rather than for evil and destruction and selfishness. The rioters copied what had happened in Tottenham over the weekend, taking part in looting, vandalism and rioting for their own profit and pleasure, believing that 'if they can get away with it in Tottenham, then we can get away with it here'. The disregard they showed for the safety of others, their homes and livelihoods, their local neighbourhoods and communities was heartless and cold.

Unsurprisingly many people are very, very angry with the rioters, in part because we know that the criminals have got away with it, they have had their fun, they have stolen what they wanted and their will be no justice for the innocent people who have lost the homes they live in and the cars they rely on; for businesses that provided jobs, and services, paid tax and business rates and those who have been terrorized by the wanton destruction of their communities. Others are also angry with the police who appeared to leave the hearts of their communities unprotected, giving the mob a free hand to steal, destroy and terrify. Tonight (Tuesday) there will apparently be 16,000 police officers on the streets of London, ready to respond to rioting. I doubt very much whether there will be any rioting tonight, they have had their fun, got a new pair of trainers, settled some old scores with people they don’t like, and made the police look ham-fisted.

Anyone out on the street tonight intending to try and do the same thing would have to be seriously stupid, risking the no doubt very strong response of the police. But then again these people smashed up the shops, and burned down the businesses that provide services, jobs and much of the prosperity in their community and they presented a face of their community to the world that may now look elsewhere for a place to site their factory or open their business. The talent, verve and style that made these places great to live in, may in fact desert them and they will be left to live in dull, lifeless and drab communities with nothing going for them. They were too stupid to realise the consequences of their actions, maybe they will be too stupid to realise that the police will be ready for them this afternoon. The response to a personal attack usually is a desire for vengeance against the perpetrator, a desire to punish the person who inflicted the attack; tonight many millions of people in Britain will be watching their televisions hoping to see retribution being meted out by the police in London.

It is not a very uplifting thought but the sight of rubber bullets and truncheons being used on men in hoods would be very gratifying at this time. But will truncheon blows lead to more rioters on the streets, will the use of rubber bullets by the police lead to the use of lead bullets by armed gangs? Will the death of a rioter lead to the death of a policeman? The desire for revenge and gratifying punishment must always be balanced against the impact and the outcome of those actions. The police in London and other parts of the country clearly have some very difficult decisions to make, and sometimes very little time to weigh up the effect and the consequences of those decisions. I hope they make the right decisions most of the time and I trust they make those decisions for the right reasons all the time; in the service and for the protection of the communities in which they work.

In the Mosh Pit with Gogol Bordello

2011-08-04T12:54:00.001+01:00

Eugene Hutz of Gogol Bordello - Photo by Ella Biddlecombe

On Sunday night at Womad with baited breath we, my twelve-year old daughter, my wife and myself, awaited the arrival of Gogol Bordello on stage. Arriving a good hour before they were due on, we had thereby secured a spot right at the very front, in the middle. All seemed well, until a thirtyish looking man with dreadlocks came over and started talking about how rough it can get at a Gogol Bordello gig and how a mosh pit develops and how he didn’t want any Daily Telegraph readers to get hurt. Although unnerved by his talk of gigs in Brighton that just went completely mad, we felt happy to stay where we were. Anyway, why should anyone listen to a middle-class white boy with dreadlocks who has just insulted everyone around him by referring to them as ‘Daily Telegraph readers’, twit.

It is getting closer to the start of the set, and the area around us is filling up; dreadlock boy has abandoned his efforts to scare people into giving up their place at the front, and the tension is starting to increase as the press photographers are allowed into the small gap between stage and audience. They come out with most of them wearing false moustaches in honour of Eugene Hutz, leader of the Gogol Bordello madness.

The band hit the stage, Eugene is wearing a T-shirt that says ‘No Human is “Illegal”’ and tartan trousers rolled up to his knees, and they launch into a set of great dynamic tunes, ranging from the sweetest melodies played on violin and accordion that could gently rock you to sleep, to heart-thumping, full-speed-ahead punk rock tunes that engage your whole being in motion. It is rough, with lots of pushing and shoving, and I am thankful for the moments of peace and relative tranquillity, like the beginning of ‘Start Wearing Purple’, it allowed some breathing space before the madness begins again.

All is going fairly well until Eugene decides to bring himself, his bottle of red wine and his microphone into the audience, right in front of us. This is an interesting development as suddenly all the people who were previously happy to dance and sing along, now want to reach out and touch Eugene, perhaps share some of his wine, but generally be a lot nearer to him. The crush that develops means that I am forced away from the barrier and back a couple of places into the crowd. This means I no longer have a secure barrier to hang onto and as the waves of people are carried back and forth, so, to some extent, am I. Eugene goes back up on stage and the pushing and shoving subsides. But then they play ‘Immigraniada’ and the pit reaches a crescendo of craziness. Some guy wants out, and instead of trying to push his way through the crowd asks to be lifted up so he can crowd surf to the front, only a few feet away, and be taken away from the action by security, lazy sod.

At Womad they run a very tight ship, each stage has a clock visible to the performers, and everyone has to start on time, because they will be finishing on time. This means that I can see the minutes ticking away, and although I was having an absolutely fantastic time there came a point when I just wanted the physicality, the struggle to stay on your feet, and the effort required not losing your shoes, to end. After one encore it did.

It felt like I had survived a battle, and shared a happiness and exhilaration with all the other survivors around me. We were amazed at the energy and wonder that had been created on stage and in the audience. The singing, the head-banging, the pushing back and forth, the elbows, the straining forward to get nearer to the star, the getting splattered with red wine and the tension and danger all combined to make it a really intense and exciting experience.

But please don’t ask me to do it again, I will be fifty years old in three weeks time and I think dying trampled underfoot in a mosh pit might not be the best way to go. Although of course it depends whose playing, if it’s Gogol Bordello then perhaps it might be a fitting end for an old punk.

Norwegian Murderer

2011-07-25T13:48:00.000+01:00

Where do you start with such a horrible weekend? Seventy-six people murdered in Norway by a man who, it seems, had rationalized what he was going to do over a number of years, and planned his actions in detail to be as devastating as possible.

It is very difficult to understand how someone could do what he did. It goes so far against human nature to deliberately kill another person that we cannot comprehend how a murderer can detach themselves to such an extent, become so alienated, that they can look a person in the eyes and then shoot them. Most murders are crimes of passion, they are committed in anger and rage, when a person has lost control. We can almost understand that a person can react violently and cause death and injury that they did not with malice aforethought intend. But this man gathered children around him - they were drawn by the fact that, dressed as a policeman - he behaved as though he had their welfare at heart and wanted to help, but in fact he simply wanted to kill the largest number of them as he could.

Is this the equivalent of a suicide bomber who finds the most crowded part of the market in in which to blow himself up?

Or is it more like the killers in Mumbai, India who methodically searched two hotels floor by floor looking for people to kill? They eventually killed 166 and injured more than 300.

The shared patriotic, religious and anti-government sentiments expressed by Breivik suggest a similarity with Timothy McVeigh, who, in bombing a US Government building in Oklahoma City in 1995, killed 168 and injured nearly 700.

We think we understand those attacks, we can grasp at a notion thay they were motivated by religious and political extremism mixed with ignorance, cowardliness and desperation. This may be because in cultural, geographic and historical terms, we have sufficient distance between us and them, between here and there and between then and now to allow a degree of supposed understanding derived from rational thought.

But in Western Europe we are faced with the horror of an educated, seemingly intelligent man living in a mature democracy who can rationalise the mass murder of children in order to further his racist and nationalist aims. We have no distance in time, space or culture in which to process our feelings about what has happened, we are suffering a collective shock.

All we can do today is to feel the sadness and despair of survivors, express the sympathy and support we want to send to those who have lost loved ones and hope that at some point in the future we can learn something good from such a horrible episode.

Rational thought is of little use on days like these.

What is History?

2011-07-23T14:22:00.000+01:00

History is the set of stories we tell about ourselves. The stories can be vast; from the dawn of creation to the last second of time; they can spread across continents even planets or be played out in a tiny attic room; they can survey the lives of millions over thousands of years or focus on 30 seconds in one life. They can be told by the most distinguished, ancient professor writing in a plush study surrounded by the finest set of history books ever collected in one place or they can be told by a ragged old drunk sat on a step shouting them out to no-one in particular.
History is not the record of what actually happened, 'facts' do not exist, and the 'truth' is constructed by the teller of the story.
We can be sure that something has probably happened, we can be fairly certain of when it happened, but as to how it really played out and why those events actually happened - that we cannot possibly know. All we can know, indeed all that we have to go on, is how that event is remembered. In the case of Medieval History we have chronicles, charters, and whole books that claim to be the true history of events, these are called 'primary sources' and they come to us in manuscripts, slips of parchment and rolled up records. They are written in the language of the time and place, in Western Europe, for example, they are usually in Latin, although large numbers of vernacular records also exist.
They form the best record we have of events, in part because they are closest in time and place to those events, but mostly because they are all we have. This means that nothing is certain, we have a primary source written down by someone who remembers those events in a particular way, who has contructed 'the truth' from what he or she remembers - or chooses to remember. But is that not the case in all things?
Reality is constructed by the individual as a way of making sense of the world, as a means of surviving its horrifying, stupid, beautiful and inspiring wonder. Once you embrace the fact that you create the reality of the world every day in your own head then you can start to shape the parts you have some control over to make it the way you want it to be.
The purpose of history is to provide you with the building blocks that enable you to construct that reality. The things you as an individual remember, the things we as a community of individuals remember, enable us to construct the house, the street, the town, the country, the continent and the world we live in every day when we wake up.
Without history we are without collective memory, without collective memory we cannot attempt to understand the world we live in, without trying to understanding the world we live in we are no better than a rock rolling through empty space.
Long Live History!!

Welcome to this Blog

2011-07-23T12:05:00.000+01:00

Who knows how long this blog will last? Who knows how famous it will become? Will these be the first words in a long stream of well-informed, interesting and entertaining communications? Or will it be a brief and incoherent spluttering, rarely updated and potentially sleep-inducing? All i can say is that i will try.
But what will i try to do?
The title of the blog 'historymusicpolitics' embraces my three main interests. I am a historian, the 'Dr.' comes from a PhD in Medieval History from the University of Bristol. I have always loved music, one of my earliest memories as a child was seeing 'A Hard Days Night' in the Classic Cinema in Birkenhead on Merseyside. The moment when the four boys decide to escape the stifling confines of the theatre they are going to perform in and somehow find themselves at the top of a fire escape, free, young, energetic, happy and fun-loving they run out into a field to 'Can't Buy Me Love' - hooked on music from the age of 5. I am interested in politics and participate by supporting my local Labour Party - handing out leaflets, canvassing, writing letters and generally arguing the case for breaking down national barriers between people, encouraging a society in which hard working and talented people, from what ever background, are given all the help they need to succeed, and where the vulnerable and helpless are protected and supported.
I will be writing blogs drawing on these three themes - hoping they will be interesting, trying to make them so and awaiting responses from readers.