Kayhan Kalhor - WOMEX 19 Artist Award

First published in the WOMEX – World Music Expo 2019 delegate guide.



For Kayhan Kalhor, the kamancheh is his voice. When he plays, he creates whole languages in which to communicate with people from all over the world, from centuries past and far into the future.

Born in Tehran to Kurdish parents, it was quickly clear that Kalhor had a special talent for music. Although he started by playing the violin, it didn’t take long for him to become entranced by the kamancheh, switching his studies to the ancient Persian spike-fiddle by the time he was 10. Just three years later he was working with the National Orchestra of Radio and Television of Iran, and his career as a professional musician took flight.

Since his prodigious childhood, Kalhor has rightly been regarded as a true master of Persian classical music, but that mastery doesn’t come only from his immersion in the tradition. Without innovation, the tradition cannot exist, and Kalhor has been at the forefront of innovation in his field for decades. For him, there was no other option. “This happens in every generation and in my generation, I’m one of the people who tried to do that,” he says. “It comes very naturally. You don’t decide to do it, it just happens because you don’t want to sound like your teacher. At some point you have to translate your tradition to how it’s supposed to sound in your own generation’s voice.” The way he develops the tradition and makes it his own comes in part from the wide range of styles he exposes it to. Throughout his career, he has worked with the best musicians from across Iran and studied the folk musics of Kurdistan and Khorasan, allowing all of these voices to permeate his own sound; eventually, it all grew together into playing techniques and methods of improvisation that were entirely unique to himself.

This spirit of innovation extends far beyond the borders of his own culture. A globally-focussed way of working took seed when he studied Western classical music in Italy and Canada. There he gained useful knowledge of different ways of approaching music, while taking pains not to corrupt his own style. “I was so careful not to learn anything that damages the traditional way of thinking or playing. I was so conscious of that during those years, just to get good things that I need and not absorb things that might change my direction.” This way of picking only those elements that would enrich his style and identifying those that would weaken it became an important method when performing with other, distinct cultures.

On the international scene, Kalhor is most well-known for his world-spanning collaborations. From Shujaat Khan, Yo-Yo Ma, Erdal Erzincan and Toumani Diabaté to the Kronos Quartet, Brooklyn Rider and the Rembrandt Frerichs Trio, Kalhor’s musical partnerships are many and varied, and the results are invariably world-class. When he plays with these musicians, he stays true to the sanctity of his musical culture but deconstructs it in a way that creates new, entirely sympathetic fusions with those of his collaborators. Together they create an intense, improvisatory music that is not from one culture or the other – it is always both and always neither. “I can say it’s a new language, and I want to get deeper in that language, to create a vocabulary. It’s give and take…I’m after creating a language where you can know this is old music, but at the same time, there are new words that are comprehendible, not so new that they are beyond recognition. One foot in the old traditions and one foot in the future.” His collaborations are so successful because they are more than just an album or a concert, they are full, holistic relationships where music is just one part: “I stayed with these musicians for years and years. I’m living with these people. I’ve been with Shajaad Khan for 24 years, Yo-Yo Ma for 21 years, Erdal Erzancan for 13 years. I look at these collaborations as a process, something that breathes and lives. That is why I was so meticulous in choosing musicians, someone I could live with, someone I could understand, be a friend of their family, have a non-musical trip with. These were all factors, and that’s why I had to choose someone who was exactly like me, in their own country, musically and non-musically.”

With so much thought, philosophy and concentrated effort that goes into preparing his work – whether solo or in collaboration – when Kalhor plays, the music flows as easily and gracefully as a swooping bird, a completely natural phenomenon. For him, all the work simply allows the music to manifest itself. “It’s difficult to explain it,” he ponders. “I think we’re all devices of goodness and beauty in this world. The beauty comes through us and we’re responsible to project it, that’s all. The beauty comes from another world. We have to work, we have to rehearse, we were given the talent and the gift, but that doesn’t mean we are the creator of it.”

With his music possessing a power unto itself, Kalhor has neither the intention nor the choice to stop that ethereal flow. “[I’ll] keep on playing, until I die! Because I cannot leave music and music cannot leave me. When I’m not able to be active as a concert musician as I am now, I’ll teach more and I’ll write. There’s a young generation here that needs attention and direction, and I’m doing a lot of that whenever I can, and I will do more. But I’m staying with music. I cannot leave music, music is for life.” Together, he and his music will ensure that the renaissance of Persian classical music will not slow down any time soon.

It is for his mastery and virtuosity of the kamancheh, for his ceaseless innovation and collaboration to create exciting new musical languages, and for bringing the Persian classical music tradition to the ears of people all over the world, that we are delighted to award the WOMEX 19 Artist Award to Kayhan Kalhor.


Photo: Kayhan Kalhor (left) performs at the WOMEX 19 Awards alongside Erdal Erzincan, by Eric van Nieuwland.

Julie's Bicycle - WOMEX 19 Professional Excellence Award

First published in the WOMEX – World Music Expo 2019 delegate guide.



The world is burning, the ice is melting and the oceans are choking, and it’s our fault. Those that argue otherwise are not only working against humanity but against the world at large.

But all is not yet lost. We still have the opportunity to kick back against these changes to our world, and our efforts work best when we move as one community. Julie’s Bicycle is an organisation that are rallying the creative and arts sectors in shouting with one powerful voice against the environmental crises we currently face. Like most good ideas, Julie’s Bicycle came about through a meeting with friends. A beautiful utopian vision was dreamed up, ‘where festivals were powered by solar, venues were off-grid and covered in flowers, museums were community energy providers, artists were united as beacons for change.’ That was in 2006. Since then, Julie’s Bicycle (named after the location of that first meeting) have worked tirelessly towards that vision, in London (where they’re based), in the UK, and in the world. Venues may not be covered in flowers just yet, but under their diligent watch and intense work, the arts world is slowly becoming more and more sustainable.

From their very first project – a calculator for arts professionals to work out and understand their carbon impact, which has since become a go-to tool in the creative arts industry – Julie’s Bicycle have approached their task in three main ways: working with businesses individually to improve their environmental impact management; researching and developing resources for the use of all; and introducing, promoting and performing outreach for new ideas and sustainable business models. The holistic nature is not only important to making a real impact, but is one of the strongest ways that people and businesses can make a difference, says Julie’s Bicycle CEO and founder, Alison Tickell: “One thing I’ve learnt is that there isn’t a single way of doing it. We actually need to work on many dimensions all the time. But if we simplify it down, the first thing is to recognise that we can act, and then work out what we can do personally and professionally. They can be small things or big things, but they can accumulate to be quite a powerful collection of actions that are about real change. It leads to a different understanding of agency in this space. It’s this wonderful experience of giving yourself an opportunity to act, and it becomes a really exciting, deepening endeavour.”

To move and work within the music industry is often to feel disempowered when it comes to the concerns of higher powers of national governments. There is usually a disconnect between the creative community on one side and policy-makers on the other – we often speak very different languages. Julie’s Bicycle is a translator. Not only do they act to bring together many facets of the industry with one voice, they also help those in power to understand our wants, needs and demands in ways that may not be otherwise understood, or taken seriously.

The great thing is that Julie’s Bicycle aren’t just working alone. Their message has been spreading and their successes have been building and gaining influence across many fields. “Over the last six months it’s been fantastic feeling that things are changing, and I think we have been a bit of that change,” Tickell says. “We were very lucky to pick up on this one quite early on. The way we work is so collaborative, we work with everyone. We’ve been lucky that we’ve been able to gather this community.” They have played an enormous part in turning small ripples into tides of change, and this was made starkly evident in July of this year, when they, together with Extinction Rebellion and Culture Declares Emergency, launched Music Declares Emergency. This declaration reached every facet of the music industry – artists, labels, publishers, venues, festivals promoters, managers and agents – with more than 1500 signatories calling on international governments to ‘act now to reverse biodiversity loss and reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by no later than 2030,’ as well as pledging to support, share and work towards a sustainable music industry. The work of Julie’s Bicycle is key to this goal.

For Julie’s Bicycle, outcomes are more subtle than large-scale ‘achievements.’ Instead, they are slowly, surely (and with an increasing pace) changing the way that the music industry thinks, feels and acts in regards to ecological emergency. There’s a lot there to be proud of, and it’s clear that their legacy is only just beginning. “What I am pleased about is that people are much more ready than they would have been because we have been developing the ‘how’ for such a long time,” says Tickell. “The amount of people and organisations who are ready for this moment of change and want to do more has been really gratifying. We’ve been inundated with ideas and interest, requests for help. The fact that we have been working on this for some time has given people the confidence to step into this space much more easily, and that’s been terrific.”

The work that we have at hand is to literally save the world. But we can do it. There is a lot to do, and we all have our own roles to play – especially in our own position as music professionals – and Julie’s Bicycle are here to help us. They have plenty of room to expand, too. As we all look ahead to what we can do now, and what solutions may be coming, we need to future-proof our business model as well as the world, and Julie’s Bicycle will be there with us, doing whatever it takes, at all times, to help us succeed, together.

For their forward-thinking strategies to speed up the attainment of environmental sustainability in every facet of our industry and professional lives, for their rallying of artists and arts professionals from all over the world to speak and act in one powerful group, and for their status as a figurehead in the global arts movement in the face of climate change and ecological disasters, we are delighted to present Julie’s Bicycle as the WOMEX Professional Award recipient for 2019.


Photo: Chiara Baliali of Julie's Bicycle (left) receives the WOMEX 19 Professional Excellence Award presented by Sam Lee, by Yannis Psathas.

My Instrument: Stella Chiweshe and her Mbira Dzavadzimu

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 152, November 2019.



Stella Chiweshe is widely known as the first woman to gain recognition as a master of the most important instrument of Zimbabwe’s Shona people, the mbira dzavadzimu. It is a lamellophone – also called a thumb piano – in which steel keys made from beaten-flat bicycle spokes are mounted to a wooden board and plucked with both thumbs and a forefinger. This technique creates an interlocking pattern through which circular melodies begin to shine through.

The mbira dzavadzimu is, literally, ‘the voice of the ancestors,’ the instrument that works as a go-between for many past generations to speak to the living. It was through this contact that led Chiweshe to the instrument when she was 16 years old. “One day in a ceremony, my mother’s fifth-great-grandfather said through her that four of his greatest grandchildren would play the mbira. I am one of those four,” she told me. “But when he said that, nobody believed we could play. Exactly two years after that ceremony, I started to hear the mbira that was played that day afresh in my head. All the other music that I liked was locked out. I was locked into mbira for two years. I could only hear mbira in my head as if somebody was really playing.” When she first began to learn the ways of the mbira, there were challenges from all sides: the instrument was illegal in then-Rhodesia and her status as a female player was unacceptable in Shona tradition, but when she learnt to play, it became obvious that destiny was being fulfilled.

I met Chiweshe in London after an entrancing concert at the Jazz Cafe. The instrument she’d used on stage didn’t look like I expected. Traditionally, mbira dzavadzimu are housed in a large half-calabash for amplification, and covered in cowry shells (or, more recently, bottle caps) that rattle and add a different dimension, making it sound like the gentle lapping of waves on a shore. But this mbira was different. While it plays in the traditional way – it has 32 keys, tuned in the standard way – its body is much smaller, without any shells to buzz and, crucially, it can be plugged into an amplifier. In other words, it’s perfect to perform abroad. Although the instrument isn’t right for all occasions (“I wouldn’t play this for my elders because they would say it’s naked!”), its spiritual nature is not compromised, according to Chiweshe: “I think every mbira is sacred because their purpose, even if it has three or five or 15 keys, the purpose is still the same.”

This deeper meaning of the mbira dzavadzimu is impossible to weaken for Chiweshe, because it’s part of nature: “Mbira gets in touch with everything, even the birds. Sometimes I go to the forest to play for the trees, sometimes I go to play for the water. Water likes mbira, the birds like mbira, the trees like mbira.” When it’s human ears that she’s reaching, she teaches her audience how to listen correctly. By singling out the sound of one particular key, and listening for that one resonance in the rolling, circular patterns, you allow your mind to receive the meaning of mbira. “If you listen to all notes at the same time, you will get lost. But if you let your ear choose a note that is being played continuously, then everything will fall into place. It puts you in a meditative state. When we are meditating, we are trying to clear all thoughts that are scattered and focus on one thing. Mbira gives the direction by itself.”

The mbira dzavadzimu will always be the instrument of the Shona ancestors, no matter where it’s played or what shape or size it happens to be. In the hands of Stella Chiweshe, its spiritual and meditative powers will continue to reach the ears and souls of listeners across the world.


Photo: Stella Chiweshe and her mbira dzavadzimu, by Ilka Schlockermann.

Spotlight: WOMEX

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 152, November 2019.



Maybe you’ve never heard of WOMEX. Or maybe you’ve seen it referenced opaquely in the pages of Songlines and elsewhere but always wondered what it was. Whatever the case, your listening habits, the artists you see live and even the music you get to hear about have almost certainly been affected by WOMEX’s existence. So… what is it?

WOMEX stands for the World Music Expo. It’s a meeting of delegates from the every corner of the world music sphere (and from all over the world), who get together to discuss the state of the industry, create and develop new concepts and ideas for the future and map out the next steps to be taken to ensure the continuation of this healthy and exciting musical scene – and to listen to music, of course. It’s held in a different European city every year, and this October, for their 25th anniversary, WOMEX is heading to Tampere in Finland.

The WOMEX programme is made up of many components, from conferences, mentor sessions, film screenings, network meetings, an awards ceremony and a huge trade fair. But the most visible aspect of the event comes in the evenings, when dozens of up-and-coming artists of every region and style perform at the showcase festival. Playing a showcase at WOMEX can be a career-maker: when your audience consists of hundreds of the world’s most important festival organisers, concert promoters, record labels and international media, a stand-out performance can lead to big things indeed. In recent years, WOMEX showcases have kickstarted the international careers of Jambinai, San Salvador, Blick Bassy and Maarja Nuut among many others. But a WOMEX showcase isn’t like any other show.

“The strangest things happen in showcases, one being that professionals get up and leave halfway through, or they come in for ten minutes and then walk out again. Artists are quite ruffled by that,” says WOMEX founding director Ben Mandelson. “At a regular concert, people come in and stay, so the set is built in a way to reach a climax at the end. Showcases are not like that. If somebody walks out, it doesn’t mean you’re bad; the fact that they stayed for ten minutes means that they made the effort to see you and they’ve seen what they need. You have to share them with everyone else. It’s hard for artists. But it’s much more than a gig.”

With so many potential careers at stake, the WOMEX programme is not curated like a normal festival. Instead, the performances are chosen by the ‘Seven Samurai,’ an ever-changing independent jury of WOMEX delegates who craft the line-up from the hundreds of artist proposals received every year. This process allows for a balanced approach that creates a line-up best suited for revealing new stars. It also means that the programme, by design, moves with the times. “We try and make sure that different styles and regions of the world are given access. For every club banger, we would be very interested in having intimate, small, deeply traditional performances. And everything is negotiable within that. I think it succeeds because every delegate has a different concept of what the right balance is. I would be horrified if everyone had the same idea of what the programme should be. What changes is not the balance itself, but the things on offer for which you have to make the balance.”

For an event with a tiny attendance compared to even the smallest of festivals, WOMEX and its showcase festival create ripples that are felt through the world music scene and beyond for years to come – we’re still talking about artists who appeared at the inaugural event back in 1994 (Baaba Maal and Cesaria Evora, anyone?). The world music scene will be very different in another 25 years’ time – maybe we’ll even get rid of that pesky label by then – but there is no doubt that what happens at WOMEX in the past, present and future will have a huge impact on the shape of things to come.


Photo: Santrofi live at WOMEX 19, by Eric van Nieuwland.

Boomtown 2019 - Matterley Estate, nr Winchester

A shorter version of this review was first published in Songlines Magazine issue 152, November 2019.



Boomtown
Matterley Estate, near Winchester
7th-11th August 2019

Boomtown is madness and mania. It’s unlike any other festival I’ve ever been to.

While Boomtown is smaller than Glastonbury in terms of attendance and footprint, the sheer range of delights for the ears and eyes gives Pilton’s finest a close run. With 14 separate ‘districts,’ each with at least one main stage and many smaller and hidden stages totalling more than 100 venues overall, you’re never likely to end up with a gap in your schedule.

The bulk of the musical programming revolves around drum’n’bass, EDM, techno and other electronic music, but there’s plenty of other sounds for those that want it: on my wanderings I came across top-level death metal, grime, punk, hip-hop, soul and jazz of all colours, as well as the largest reggae stage in Europe, set within a huge, naturally-occurring amphitheatre provided by the picturesque South Downs. And of course, there’s more than enough to set a Songlines reader up for the weekend too.

Much like the rest of the line-up, Boomtown’s world music offerings were many and varied, from the mosh-fest of premier Gypsy punks Gogol Bordello who provided an electrifying retrospective headliner set, to San Salvador, the voice, drums and nothing else Occitan sextet who came fresh from two storming sets at WOMAD to a just-as-impressive show at Boomtown. Scottish folk was particularly well-represented all throughout the festival this year, and Talisk and Elephant Sessions gave a wonderful double-bill in a flame-heated medieval town square with back-to-back sets of pumping, clubland-inflected instrumental folk that got the crowd rowdier than any of the electronic stages.

On the Sunday afternoon, it was Grace Petrie’s turn to blow the crowd away. With her mix of English folk and singer-songwriter roots with a punk attitude, her ultra-political songs in defence of butch lesbians, transfolk, the welfare state and the young and angry (and against the Tories and all their works) gave visions of a millennial’s Billy Bragg. With a stand-up’s wit and defiant but cautiously optimistic lyrics, her set prompted tears, fury and joy from this reviewer. Other highlight sets included Asian overground pioneers Asian Dub Foundation, dub-soaked jazzwoman Nubya Garcia and Soweto’s hottest BCUC – I also spent a particularly glorious 3am submerged in the festival’s psytrance forest curated by Bristol’s Tribe of Frog.

You can have an amazing five days of festival entirely absorbed in the brilliant and varied musical line-up that Boomtown has to offer. But if you do, you’ll barely be experiencing half of it. Because Boomtown isn’t just a festival, it’s an entire immersive universe.

The Boomtown storyline has been developing for 11 ‘chapters’ (years) now, with an evolving plot of political wrangling, internal tensions and, this year, the presence of an unsettlingly benevolent AI overlord. This story is not just a vague, hinted-at theme though, but a full-blown, interactive theatre piece spanning every district and the whole weekend.

Every district is fully built-up from amazingly detailed sets – there’s a Wild West town, a medieval/pirate area, an opulent rich-kids’ playground, a huge and gritty downtown with all manner of dystopian inner-city architectures and more. They’re not just soulless façades either; they’re packed with interesting nooks and crannies and intriguingly unmarked doors that can lead you to a raucous Irish pub, or maybe a sophisticated burlesque show or an extremely loud techno club made from an old caravan with a shoulder-to-shoulder capacity of ten. The whole thing is a masterclass of maze-making. Each area is populated by scores of actors acting out in-depth plots relevant to their district – I was particularly engrossed in the saga of the American Old West-style Copper County, which saw town drunk Willie elected by festival-goers to the rank of mayor, only to go mad with power and set up roving vigilante gangs to rough up his political opponents and former allies.

There are so many layers to it. Not only are there the surface stories happening around you, but if you talk to the right characters and ask the right questions, you will get directions and codewords and other interesting folks to meet, uncovering a vast, under-the-surface conspiracy that brings together every aspect of the festival’s lore in one. It’s dizzying in its scale. Just as you can spend the entire festival without touching the more fanciful elements at all, you could easily leave having seen no music but still had an intensely profound five-day experience.

I’ve been to many festivals in my life and seen so much amazing music at them, but my first visit to Boomtown this year will stay with me for a long time. The music was brilliant, undoubtedly, but when it’s experienced in conjunction with an entire reality-bending story, it becomes much more than a music festival, but a wonderful, self-contained world. It’s madness, but I can’t wait to go back.


Photo: Boomtown's epic reggae stage, The Lions Den, by Scott Salt.

The UK – “Open to Musicians from Everywhere”

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 152, November 2019.



Making Tracks was one of the most exciting purveyors of international music in the UK in recent years. Founded in 2010 by Katarina Pavlakis, the organisation arranged 30 UK tours with established and respected artists from 29 countries, who also gave workshops, lectures and outreach sessions, providing valuable context to the music performed in concert. It was a real shame when, due to funding cuts, Making Tracks announced that their 2018 season would be their last.

But luckily, flashing forward a year, Making Tracks is now reborn and ready to continue its impact – albeit in a slightly different shape. In its new form, the organisation put a focus on new talent, encouraging cross-cultural exchange among young and emerging artists from around the world. For this first year of its new model, Making Tracks invites eight inaugural ‘fellows’ – representing a wide range of traditions and styles from across the UK, Kenya, Armenia, Estonia, France, Spain, the Czech Republic and Turkey – to take part in a ten-day residency in Snowdonia before setting off on a two-week UK tour. The programme will culminate in a performance at Kings Place as part of the London Jazz Festival on November 17.

The collaborations aren’t just musical. When artistic director Merlyn Driver talks about Making Tracks, it is within an all-encompassing, holistic worldview. “What I love most about music,” he explains, “is the way it can be a window to society, nature, politics, history – pretty much anything. The music industry is a lot more fun when you find ways to connect music to all the things it arises from.” In this spirit, the residency will be a musical meeting, but also a place for the fellows to discuss and develop ways in which music can impact society and the environment for the better. “Encounters between the ‘strange’ and the ‘familiar’ have the power to foster greater empathy, tolerance and understanding across social, cultural and geographical divides,” says Driver. “Given the current political climate, it’s vital to have a UK-based project that’s open to musicians from everywhere. We also want to address the void within music-making with regards to environmental engagement. As young people mobilise and climate discourse becomes increasingly mainstream, music has an important role to play.”

For the musicians, the opportunity to work with cultures – and audiences – that may previously have been out-of-reach goes hand-in-hand with the broader considerations. Luna Silva, French-Spanish ukulele player, singer and Making Tracks fellow, says, “I'm really excited about meeting other musicians from completely different backgrounds and sharing our common experiences. My role as a musician is often on my mind, our role in society and how environmentally conscious we can be. Music is an incredible driving force for that. There is something universal about sound and emotion which is really exciting to play with.”

By focusing on the next generation of musicians moving and playing within the international scene, the new-look Making Tracks is promoting the sustainability of world music in the UK – musically, socially and environmentally. The music these fellows make will hopefully echo for a long time to come.

Dying, Laughing, Playing: Belinda Sykes

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 152, November 2019.



When Belinda Sykes was diagnosed with terminal cancer, there was no question what was going to happen next: she started booking dates for her next tour.

Sykes is the director, singer and double-reeds player for the band Joglaresa. The band formed in 1992 and quickly became the UK’s premier early music ensemble for their open-minded interpretations of the genre: instead of sticking to the medieval sounds of Western Europe, Joglaresa expanded horizons by exploring the musical viewpoints of Sephardi and Ladino Jews of Iberia and the Maghreb and the early Muslims of the Levant, the Ottoman Empire and North Africa. Sykes herself is also an ethnomusicologist, and has conducted fieldwork in Morocco, Bulgaria, Spain, Jordan, Israel, Syria and India.

After a series of misdiagnoses that led to operations preventing her from performing during the summer of 2018, Sykes was eventually diagnosed with a rare form of sarcoma and embraced palliative care to enable her to play again. She plans to spend her remaining time performing as much as possible with Joglaresa, with dates confirmed in the UK from November until April. From this point forward, 100% of sales from Joglaresa’s back catalogue will be donated directly to the charity Sarcoma UK – as well as raising money for a very important cause, Sykes doesn’t want to leave her family with thousands of spare CDs!

Sykes’ cheerful and humorous outlook on life has not been stifled by her circumstances – her JustGiving page is dedicated in memory of ‘Belinda (not dead yet!!!!) Sykes’ – and the music into which she has suffused her passion and joy has created a living legacy that will help people in similar situations for a long time to come.


Photo: Joglaresa with Belinda Sykes (centre), by Graham Wood.