Music In Full View

Michael Proudfoot Photo: Ian Anderson

““So I thought that if it was so successful for them, why don’t they do some more? I emailed Kim and mentioned Kate Rusby and Seth Lakeman, said there were lots more around, really interesting young people doing interesting things from different regions, stories everywhere. But she said she didn’t think she could get it off the ground again, not a series. Anyway, I persisted, worked up a proposal for Kate Rusby, but it took a year to get it commissioned. They paid for us to do a development, some research, but then the Arts Council came and said that the Kathryn Tickell programme had pushed all the right buttons. It’s all about young people making music for themselves, at home, recording it themselves, being in charge of their own destiny. And they said they would support Channel 5 if there was a series, so it all came together in the end, though it took a long time.”

“We knew that we were going to have Seth Lakeman and Kate Rusby; who should the other two be? People know a lot about Eliza Carthy already, but her story is so strong she had to be in there. So then we were looking at fRoots to work out who the other one should be, to find a face and music that would complement these other artists, and we found Athena, who we’d not have known about otherwise.”

I asked Michael about the individual directors he employed and how he moulded the theme. “I wrote them a sort of instruction leaflet on what I thought the films were about. One of the things was the landscape, another was the tradition and passing it on. I wanted something about writing songs and music because I think it’s a mysterious process that’s rarely talked about in arts programmes; how you translate ideas, thoughts into something that looks like a song. And the song is a very interesting art form because you can do things that you can’t in any other literary form like poetry. You can put a song together like an abstract impressionist painting but it’ll make more sense.”

“Jeremy Llewellyn-Jones, who directed Athena’s programme, I’ve known for over 30 years. We used to play guitar together in clubs in London, and he went to the Royal College Of Art Film School like me. He made a fantastic Equinox programme called Twang, Bang, Kerrang about the electric guitar. I knew Nicki Stoker [Seth, Kate] from Uden Associates and we’d tried to work up music ideas when we were there. She actually sang and was in a signed band, late ‘80s/early ‘90s. And Eddie Frost [Eliza] is sort of my apprentice, he was with me on the Kathryn shoot. He’s 26, a fiddle player, gets lessons from Pete Cooper… a huge enthusiast for music.”