Music from beyond the viral circle


Tomorrow the annual festival celebrating trance music and the role of women in the Sufi hadra tradition opens in Essaouira, Morocco. My recent photo essay explored how the workshops linked to this festival are banging the drum for oppressed women musicians. Much needed progress has been made towards giving women their rightful place in art music's celebrity culture. So it would be good if more attention was now paid to those women who make music in very difficult circumstances far beyond the reach of charmed viral circles.

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David Munrow - more than early music

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'David Munrow and the Early Music Consort of London transformed our view of medieval music. The impact of their performances far surparssed any that had gone before: by demonstrating how medieval music could sound normal, they created a niche for it in the concert hall and on record that it has never lost' ~ From Daniel Leech-Wilkinson's notes for Music of the Gothic era May 15 2007 is the thirty-first anniversary of the death of David Munrow. His contribution to the acceptance, understanding and performance of early music almost defies summary. He was born in 1942, and learnt the bassoon and recorder as a child. Between school and university he travelled and taught in South America , and started the collection of ethnic instruments that were to give him, and the world, a new perspective on early music making. He read English at Pembroke College , Cambridge, and was encouraged by Thurston Dart to take an active role in the music-making of that most musical of cities. ...
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She was not just a woman

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My passion  for the music of Alice Coltrane  is shared by  a number of prominent musicians .  This passion was reawakened recently by listening to albums such as Journey in Satchidananda , Illuminations and above all  World Galaxy when travelling in Kerala down in the south of India. That header photo shows  Swamini Turiyasangitananda  - aka Alice Coltrane - at the Sai Anantam Ashram which she founded in 1983 in the Santa Monica Mountains, California. In 2018 the Ashram, which had been closed for a year, was  destroyed in the Woolsey wildfire ; a demise which neatly symbolises society's progression from the the metaphysical to the material.  Alice Coltrane is one of those great women musicians who are still overlooked because they do not fit into the rigid pigeonholes defined by today's virtue signalling culture . (Another great but totally overlooked woman musician has sold millions of albums and influenced, among others, Bob Dylan and Ro...
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Classical music must be doing something wrong

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Classical music's website of choice Slipped Disc  today runs a story on the latest RAJAR UK radio listening figures . This story states that a "...record number of individual hours was spent listening to [BBC Radio 3]. They must be doing something right". Which is good news; but only for those who believe that facts should never stand in the way of a good story. Because simple arithmetic shows that BBC Radio 3 is not doing very much right, while UK classical radio in its entirety is doing something wrong.   In the quarter ended September 2024, BBC Radio 3 and Classic FM audiences were 2.039m and 4.416m respectively. Which gives a total audience for the two classical stations of 6.455m. For the same quarter in September 2023 the audiences were 2.002m and 4.467m, giving a total classical radio audience 12 months previously of 6.469m.  So BBC Radio 3's "something right" turns out to be a fractional increase in its audience year on year, and a contribution ...
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Soundtrack for a porn movie

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"No, you have not landed on Slipped Disc by mistake. Respected electronic music pioneer Klaus Schulze tells the story himself.  The origins of " Body Love " are quite funny. I received a call from a movie producer named Manfred Menz and I wound up becoming his principal composer for a period of time. Amongst others, I composed the "Barracuda" soundtrack for him [1978, previously unreleased on album]. This led to a friendship which lasts till today. Menz now lives in Malibu, California where I visited him a couple of years ago. Anyway, this guy calls me and asks if I would compose the score to a porn movie. I said: "Porn? Nah, I don't do that kind of thing".  As it turned out, the director of the movie, Lasse Braun, had already shot it and had used my albums " Timewind " [1975] and " Moondawn " [1976] as a kind of "working soundtrack". This was obvious because the couples in the film were moving in time to my gro...
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Late night thoughts after listening to BBC Radio 3

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My thoughts about Radio 3 today are summarised very well in this saying attributed to the sixteenth century  Hindu mystic poet Meerabi . I have felt the swaying of the elephant's shoulders, and now you want me to climb on a jackass?   Try to be serious.  More than a thousand sacred songs - bhajans - and Hindi poems are said to have been composed by Meerabi. Header image is cover artwork from the album Ineffable Mysteries from Shpongleland by the Goan trance duo Shpongle .
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All aboard the Martinu bandwagon

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Nothing but malice, unchecked egoism, rawness...

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German violinist Christian Tetzlaff has explained his decision to cancel his American concerts saying "I feel utter anger. I cannot go on with this feeling inside. I cannot just go and play a tour of beautiful concerts". Tezlaff then goes on to express a sentiment that many of us share: "There seems to be a quietness or denial about what’s going on". This prompted a post by the ever-wise Alex Ross headlined The Spirit of Casals . Which in turn prompted me to reread articles I wrote many years ago after visiting Casals' beloved Catalonia . These reminded me that Casals' wisdom is still as painfully relevant today as it was when he was railing against Franco's authoritarian regime. Here is one example  of that wisdom: Music must serve a purpose; it must be a part of something larger than itself, a part of humanity; and that, indeed, is at the core of my argument with music today - its lack of humanity. A musician is also a man, and more important than his...
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The Berlin Philharmonic's darkest hour

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Echoes of ECM

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Is this the greatest-ever woman musician?

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Recent celebrations of women musicians as part of International Women's day started me musing on the question of who was the greatest-ever woman musician? There are many great contenders for the title, from Hildegard of Bingen to Maria Callas and Edith Piaf to Janis Joplin. It can be argued convincingly of course that debating greatest-ever rankings is meaningless as any such judgement is subjective and highly personal. But stay with me, as my nominated contender is particularly noteworthy because she is not the stereotypical white Judeo-Christian celebrity woman musician. Despite her ethnicity Om Kalthoum has a very strong claim on the title of greatest-ever woman musician. When she died in 1975 four million Egyptians attended her funeral, and the diva's recordings continue to sell around a million copies a year. Moreover, her claim to the greatest-ever title is not just based on popularity: among those who have acknowledged her influence are not only Maria Callas, but also B...
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