CARRY ON STREAMIN from EDINBURGH FOLK CLUB Probably the best folk club in the world! Dateline: Wednesday 5 August 2020 Volume 1.05 CARRY ON STREAMIN You may recognise in our banner a ‘reworking’ of the of the Carrying Stream festival which EFC’s late chair, Paddy Bort, created shortly after the death of Hamish Henderson. After Paddy died in February 2017, EFC created the Paddy Bort Fund (PBF) to give financial assistance to folk performers who, through no fault of their own, fall on hard times. No-one contemplated anything like the coronavirus. Now we need to replenish PBF and have set a target of (at least) £10 000. Lankum at The Traverse Bar, Edinburgh There are two strands to Carry On EDINBURGH VENUES! So where are we now? Streamin - this publication and our YouTube channel where you will find, Douglas Robertson writes ... Many venues around the country have closed permanently, swathes of good staff have been every fortnight, videos donated by IT WOULD be a mistake to look back with laid off , countless well-established festivals some of the best folk acts around. nostalgia to the old days before Covid 19 as have been cancelled, and an army of musicians, Please donate to PBF as best you can, some kind of gig heaven in Edinburgh. agents, sound engineers and others are using the PayPal links we provide. A lethal mix - of a city council only too eager struggling to survive. to grant planning permission to every new The immediate future continues to look grim hotel, every proposed ‘student flat’ with social distancing determining that venues development, or ‘soon-to-be-AirBnB’ housing would be operating on a 25%-to-33% capacity, scheme combined with a university devouring in no way viable to cover costs and remunerate every available plot - ensured that scruff y professional artists. venues were often easy prey for those with profit rather than culture as their motivation. Our main venue (other than the now fated house concerts where 75 people would Even on those rare occasions where the regularly cram into our living room to hear planners would try to put the brakes on the Lau, Michael Marra, or Martin Simpson) was profiteers, the council’s development arm The Traverse Theatre Bar. Like so many other would appeal to the Scottish Government’s basement venues, it provides particular reporter for their decision to be overturned and challenges in terms of air circulation. The hey presto, another hotel, more student flats. management are currently trying to resolve this Rather than commitment from the city fathers issue but full capacity is not on the agenda. we instead saw tokenism in the setting up of (continued over … ) various talking shops - Live Music Matters, Desire Lines etc - where endless discussions Click here PayPal to donate took place and participants patted themselves on the back for doing such a fine job whilst to the Paddy Bort Fund. venues continued to close. And click here to go to This was the backdrop to the arrival of the current pandemic, one that could hardly have EFC’s YouTube channel. been designed better to kill the music industry Featured performers on this whilst lining the pockets of the super-rich and edition of the COS video are in the accelerating the growth of Netflix. panel to the right. http://efc1973.com/home :: https://www.facebook.com/Edinburgh-Folk-Club-155304611154742/ :: @edfolkclub Please note that Edinburgh Folk Club cannot accept responsibility for the content of third party websites displayed in this newsletter and offers all content in good faith. CARRY ON STREAMIN from EDINBURGH FOLK CLUB Probably the best folk club in the world! Dateline: Wednesday 5 August 2020 Volume 1.05 (… continued from front page) levels, we might see an easing of the pressure on the property market. It is also quite AFRICAN FOLK We hope to work with them soon devising conceivable that a number of buildings will PAM KING writes … ways of filming concerts and other events with become available due to businesses closing high quality lighting and sound. Ideally there THE BAME population of Scotland has down. will be enough people present - technicians, its complement of Africans straight from camera operators etc - that we will be able to Could it be that Soundhouse might now be able the sub-Saharan lands. It is of course avoid the deafening silence that has so often to find that space where we can create the best impossible to take on the whole of the followed live music of late. Applause is an venue in the country if not the world? African continent in terms of the integral part of any gig. Edinburgh deserves it and we’re well placed to traditional music that these settlers might provide it. Perhaps some years down the line have brought. Those better informed than I We believe that the audience is still out there we’ll see that alongside the terrible tragedies of have written at length about the African and that while musicians may be starving, this crisis, Covid 19 brought an end to the roots of all “popular” musical culture from many punters have been watching their bank selling of our city and festival to commercial blues, to soul, to jazz and many other accounts fill up with wages and pensions interests and restored our perspective and traditions. So I don’t know what the during a period where closed bars, cinemas, values. weather will be doing where and when restaurants and venues have made it diffi cult to you may read this, and the author’s spend money. Surely these people will want to It might just be the time to seize our city back. knowledge may be thin, but do listen to ensure that there’s still a live music industry (Ed: Douglas - and partner Jane-Ann - have the links in what follows and let in a little present when this pandemic is finally defeated? run Soundhouse, the very successful sunshine! Longer term, we hope that, with tourism and independent Edinburgh promoter, for most of (continued over … ) student numbers unlikely to return to pre-Covid the decade) http://efc1973.com/home :: https://www.facebook.com/Edinburgh-Folk-Club-155304611154742/ :: @edfolkclub Please note that Edinburgh Folk Club cannot accept responsibility for the content of third party websites displayed in this newsletter and offers all content in good faith. CARRY ON STREAMIN from EDINBURGH FOLK CLUB Probably the best folk club in the world! Dateline: Wednesday 5 August 2020 Volume 1.05 (… continued from previous page) drumming and dance are inseparable, so too is story-telling with another traditional It is West African drumming, which seems instrument, the kora. The kora is the to have taken Scotland by storm. The stringed instrument associated with the percussive tradition is rich, complicated, Griot, the traditional story-teller who, like and is inseparable from dance. No the Icelandic “skald”, or Anglo Saxon surprises about it’s popularity, as “scop”, the Gaelic “seanchai” or the bardic drumming is uplifting to listen to and very tradition anywhere, kept and retold the therapeutic to perform. In Edinburgh, the history of the people, their origins, myths, University Student Association has had a and legends. The Griot tradition is very thriving regular workshop on West African much alive and mesmerising to listen to drumming and dance, and in Glasgow the even if you cannot understand the story group Ayawara has been established for being told: over fifteen years. The kora is not just used for solo Griot “Ayawara” is a blend of languages from performance, however, but appears in Mali and Ghana, “aya” being a fern, a bands. Now listen to the exquisite player, defiant plant that grows anywhere, and Sona Jobarteh from the Gambia playing “wara” a wild beast. The group lives up to here. I defy you not to smile! the first element of its name by involving not only Scots and West Africans, but West African folk music seems to have people from all over Europe east and west lent itself more than most to adaptation who are enthusiasts for this rhythmic and fusion, so the final link I include here Jackie Crookston sculpture by David culture. All the instruments are percussive, is from a band called, appropriately, Annand. Pic by Eileen Penman. with the traditional djembe and dundun Albagriot. The band is based in Mali but result they were met with protests from tours worldwide, and two of the musicians local residents. are Scots. Distinct echoes of Incredible String Band about this, spiced with When the army rode into Tranent on 28 African rhythms. August 1797 to pick up the conscriptees, they found the roads lined with women and children. One woman is said to have LOCAL HISTORY approached the entourage and said, "John, Edinburgh FC member Eileen Penman beware of your head!". This was taken to published this picture of the statue be a direct threat and to indicate there may commemorating Jackie Crookston along be trouble in Tranent. with a brief comment about it on her Facebook page. We thought it deserved a Once in the village itself, the brigade tried special mention in COS so looked in to proceed to the assigned meeting point, Wikipedia and Google and here you are. but there was a crowd gathering with sticks and a drum. Crookston is recorded The Scottish Militia Act of 1797 to have approached the leader and advised conscripted able bodied Scottish men them to leave. Another source gives between the ages of 19 and 23 years into Crookston a larger role in the events, Sona Jobarteh: kora player and singer military service.