Tag Archives: folk music

The Flash Girls’ Play Each Morning Wild Queen

They talk about the Islands and they have been called Wild Queens. I wonder if they are not really Anne Bonney and Mary Read, those piratical dames, those buccaneer broads, those sword-and-knife wielding beauties of the Bounding Main. After all, … Continue reading

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Tom Lewis’s 360 Degrees: All Points of the Compass

Tom Lewis is a former sailor, a submariner, who came ashore to play his own brand of folk music a few years ago. As he sings in “Port of Call,” “No sixty year old sailor is wanted on the sea … Continue reading

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José Medeles’s Railroad Cadences & Melancholic Anthems

It’s great to know that there’s still so much great music coming out of Portland, Oregon. This one is as eclectic and as Portland as they come, matching up three excellent and quite different Portland guitarists with a Portland drummer … Continue reading

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Bruce Springsteen’s We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions

“In 1997 I recorded ‘We Shall Overcome’ for Where Have All the Flowers Gone: The Songs of Pete Seeger. Growing up a rock’n’roll kid I didn’t know a lot about Pete’s music or the depth of his influence. So I … Continue reading

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Almalé’s Hixa Mía

Pilar Almalé is a multi-faceted artist from Spain whose main focus is on early music, for which she plays the Renaissance instrument viola da gamba, a cello-sized instrument that has more strings and is played between the knees. But she … Continue reading

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Allison de Groot & Tatiana Hargreaves’ Hurricane Clarice

The coronavirus pandemic of the early ’20s has played a huge role in all kinds of arts and entertainment, which I’m sure scholars will be studying for decades to come. One thing I’ve noticed is that every musician or musical … Continue reading

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Shane Parish’s Liverpool

What do you think of when you hear the term “sea shanties?” A bunch of guys singing rhythmic songs unaccompanied or with one concertina or fiddle? Or maybe even Rogue’s Gallery, the late great Hal Willner’s superb four disc collection … Continue reading

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An omnibus review of music guides, Rough and otherwise, to folk, world, and opera

Neal Walters and Brian Mansfield’s musicHound Folk Adam McGovern, editor’s musicHound World Simon Broughton’s The Rough Guide to World Music, Volume One Simon Broughton’s The Rough Guide to World Music, Volume Two John Guinn and Les Stone’s The St. James … Continue reading

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Jimmy Hutchinson’s Corachree and Gary Greene’s The Grand Imagineer

At one of my local folk clubs the other week, the compere said if he were asked to epitomise ‘traditional folk music’ he would have to choose one of the many singers like Jimmy Hutchinson. I think maybe he was … Continue reading

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Garth Cartwright’s Princes Amongst Men

Gypsies and music go together. Not just in popular imagination, but in fact. From the Gypsy jazz of Django Reinhardt to the wailing trumpets of the brass orkestar, from Andalusia’s Flamenco guitarists to the profound and joyful singing of Esma … Continue reading

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