 Photo: Judith Burrows |
The Editor's BoxIan Anderson's comment column |
The last twelve months – I write this at the end of January – have been invigorating ones around here. They included the 30th anniversary of founding the beast that became fRoots, and the 40th of the release of my own first album, so there has been quite a bit of enjoyable and fascinating reflection on the past going on. At the same time, things moved ever onwards as we got our first serious Arts Council funding for a project, the Looking For A New England CD, and promoted the biggest live music event that we’ve ever been involved in, our Roots @ The Roundhouse (a.k.a. the fRootsenanny) spectacular.
I’m still recovering from the afterglow of the latter as I type. That was one amazing night, especially considering that by mid-afternoon on the day we were three hours behind with our meticulously scheduled sound checks and I was planning the quickest route to Beachy Head. Thanks to all the brilliant artists and crew who gave their services and pulled it all together in the cause of the good ship fRoots, especially to our sound supremo Jamie Orchard-Lisle, without whom. There’ll be a proper report next issue with lots of photos, and by then I’ll have had a chance to check the raw webcast footage which people reported – from all over the world – looked and sounded great too. The much repeated comment on t’interweb afterwards was that a concert in which every single artist is outstanding is like the proverbial hen’s teeth. Meanwhile, events proved inspirational to some of the artists too – re-unions, new playing formats – who knows what we started?! Inevitably the Roundhouse want us to do another one next year. Maybe…
Meanwhile, what we catalysed with Looking For A New England has upped and run too. Following the distribution of the CD and magazine to all the delegates at 2009’s Womex and AFO, a package of artists featured on it – Jim Moray, Jackie Oates, Olivia Chaney, Gadarene and the Unthanks – have been invited to wing off to the colonies and wave the flag at a New York gig and a special showcase at this year’s South By Southwest in Austin. So at last England gets to experience the way that the Scottish and Irish arts organisations have been promoting their own local music for years. We’re proud to have played a key role in getting this to finally happen.
There’ll be more too. If funding is confirmed, Looking For A New England 2 this autumn will be an overview of the best current things happening in the many other folk traditions thriving in 21st century England: this’ll not be a surprise to people who attended our Expanding The Gene Pool panel at AFO. And after that we hope to be catalysing some natural meetings of minds across those resident traditions. Onwards (in all directions!)
Meanwhile I’ve been back in nostalgia land re-finding all the artists who recorded for the Village Thing label which was my early 1970s diversion. Expect a 40th anniversary celebration of that in September. I am as a bee…