Made in England by Seth Lakeman
Entirely satisfactory clash-of-cultures music doc from Devon folkie Seth Lakeman and Brummie hip-hop crew Moorish Delta 7 (MD7). Creativity and curiosity on both sides make for a thoroughly convincing ‘mash-up’ (I think that’s what the young people call this sort of thing). Heartwarming.
(Sorry, only two days to go on this one. Thought it was worth [...]
Humphrey Lyttelton, 1921—2008
Humphrey Lyttelton, who died earlier this evening, loved Buddy Bolden, a troubled, almost mythical jazz trumpeter from turn-of-the-century New Orleans. In his later life, Humph attempted a kind of reconstruction of Bolden’s music, which can’t have been easy because it was never recorded in his lifetime. I’d like to have featured one of Humph’s Bolden [...]
Carrie and David’s Popshop
I like this a lot. I think Carrie and David are telling us they take kids’ media seriously. They’ve made the scary transition from primetime to daytime to playtime and the result is clever and life-enhancing: a show encouraging little kids to sing and dance and make music. Of course, I could be wrong. The [...]
Sacred Music
Palestrina sounds like planets. To me anyway. When I think of moving in space it’s never to 2001-type Strauss or Ligeti. Nor to the sucking, clanging sound effects of most scientifically illiterate movies. The grace, the slowness of space sounds, to me, like Palestrina. (It’s probably to do with some BBC2 astronomy programme from the [...]
White Gospel
Beautiful, moving Southern voices, two-hundred year-old harmonies, fire-and-brimstone (including a sixteen-foot wooden Satan), racial harmony (and disharmony)… and Elvis. Absolutely lovely middle-of-the-night music doc from BBC4.
Legends: Jacques Brel
My Dad used to play Jacques Brel LPs when I was a kid. No one in the house spoke French but you could tell that there was something going on there, something dark and clever. He was skinny and intense and unafraid. We learn from this edition of Legends, which is animated by a lot [...]
