This month’s issue
Here's what's in the current double issue of fRoots, No. 307/308, January/February 2009
- fROOTS 32
- Your latest exclusively compiled free CD - 15 tracks of listening pleasure from some of our favourite recent and forthcoming releases.
- THE EDITOR’S BOX
- Ian Anderson’s comment column. Read it here
- fROOTS PLAYLIST
- Recent stuff we like.
- CHARTS & LISTS
- Specialist and general roots music album sales and airplay charts. Sample them here
- REVIEWS
- Our key section reviewing all the latest CDs and more - loads bite the dust. No punches pulled! We’ve got some here for you to read now
- ROOTING ABOUT
- What’s happening: packed pages of festivals, gigs, tours, radio, CDs and all kinds of roots-related stuff. The most you’ll find anywhere…
- COMPETITION
- Win our 100 Playlist CDs of 2008!
- ROOT SALAD
- A cross-section of featurettes: Niger's Malam Mamane Barka, Sami singer Ulla Pirttijärvi; Norwegian iceman Terje Isungset; Quebec's Genticorum, folkcore headbangers GloryStrokes, and Hungarian cimbalom virtuoso Kálmán Balogh in our Rocket Launcher questionnaire.
- ALBUMS OF 2008
- The 22nd Annual fRoots Critics Poll is the definitive look at the best albums of the year in world folk & roots musics.
- AMERICAN ROOTS
- In Bush’s USA, just like in Thatcher’s UK, roots music began a renaissance in spite of the regime. While the world waits for Obama’s inauguration, Ian Anderson introduces our ten reasons to celebrate American roots music, with artist profiles by Elizabeth Kinder.
- FOLK AWARDS 2008
- Our annual round-up of the nominees in BBC Radio 2’s prestigious gongfest. Colin Irwin surveys the field.
- PASSING GOLD
- In the last of our series marking the 50th anniversary of Guinea’s independence, Katharina Lobeck Kane met some of the veterans of the golden era of Guinean music – Keletigui Traoré, who sadly passed away recently, and Balla Onivogui.
- GABI GABI HEY!
- Inspired by the Sounds From A Bygone Age series of CD reissues, Garth Cartwright heads to Bucharest in search of legendary lautari singer Gabi Lunca, now 70.
- FOR IT IS SHEE
- A girl band, but not a girly band, they say. Chumbawamba may claim that the boy bands have won, but the Shee are living proof that they just might be wrong. Emily Portman meets them in Gateshead – where else?
- LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT
- They give prestigious awards to people for a fraction of what Reg Hall has done. Vic Smith profiles a man without whom the course of traditional music in England would be very different.
- O2 BE IN NEW ORLEANS
- Some of the very cream of Louisiana music came to London recently for a two day free event at the O2 dome that packed audiences in. Dave Peabody took his camera and notepad.
- BIFF!
- Our exclusive cartoon celebrates a new dawn in the USA.
- CELEBRITY CORNER
- Victor Meldrew reviews Honest Jon's Sprigs Of Time compilation, as told to Gordon Neill. Maybe.
Plus dozens of pages of essential adverts.