Tag: Canberra

The back roads to Canberra and musical reunions

canberra-musical-reunions
The Fagans – a musical reunion (L-R) Bob Fagan, Nancy Kerr, Margaret, Kate and James Fagan

When we planned a 2,500 kms round trip to the National Folk Festival via the back roads to Canberra, it seemed like a monumental expedition. Now that we’re home again (via Dubbo and Goondiwindi), it seems a weak effort compared to the distances travelled by overseas guests including Manran (Scotland), Nancy Kerr and James Fagan (UK), April Verch (US), George Jackson (US) and Vila Navio (Portugal).

For example, George Jackson committed himself to a 35,000 km round-trip, flying with his two other band members direct from Nashville to LA (3,218 kms). From there, they flew to Sydney (12,065 kms) then by road to Canberra (286 kms). After arriving in the late afternoon, there was barely time to eat and rest before the first gig at 11pm on Saturday night. Such is the peripatetic life of a professional bluegrass musician.

While the musicians involved in more than 120 acts were wending their way to Canberra, we chose mostly secondary roads, including an excursion through the verdant Bylong Valley in New South Wales between Denman and Bathurst.

At times I wondered if we would get there. We were towing a caravan, albeit a small one. The winding mountain road on either side of the Bylong Valley was particularly challenging. There were hairpin bends, one way bridges, narrow sections where two cars scarcely had room to pass by. Not to mention frequent signs warning of fallen rocks (and we did see a few on the sides of the road).

My main mission at the five-day National Folk Festival was to catch every concert by the fabled Australian family band, The Fagans, re-uniting for the first time in three years. Bob and Margaret Fagan and their adult children James and Kate are these days joined on stage by James’s partner Nancy Kerr. James and Nancy live in the UK, where Nancy has established a strong solo career. It reached a high point in 2015 when she was judged BBC Folk Singer of the Year.

I caught up with James for a chat and started by commenting that his guitarist Dad (Bob) gets a real charge out of playing opposite his adult son (who plays bouzouki)

“Yes it is quite obvious, isn’t it? He revels in it. I wouldn’t say the music is secondary, but looking across the stage and seeing Margaret and then his two kids singing in harmony, it still visibly moves him and he talks about it openly.

“When we were children we just wanted to be doing a slick and professional show. But as I’ve got older and I’ve got children I completely understand that there are some things more important than being professional. It’s still very valued in the folk world – being yourself and being true to your story.”

That elusive musical quality emerged when the Fagans employed four-part acapella singing. Their stirring version of Alex Glasgow’s Close the Coal House Door and its third verse about the Aberfan colliery disaster raised ‘goosebumps’. The refrain “Close the coal house door, lads, there’s bairns inside” references the 1966 disaster in Aberfan, Wales, when a colliery slag heap collapsed on a school, killing 114 children and adults.

Folk songs often tell real stories and some don’t pull punches, like British leftie songwriter Leon Rosselson’s hard-hitting The World Turned Upside Down. The song tells the story of The Diggers, a ragtag group of latter-day socialists who in 1649, after the execution of Charles I, occupied the land at St George’s Hill in Surrey. They believed that the land could now be used to establish collaborative farming communities. It is supremely ironic that today, St George’s Hill is an enclave of the super-rich; lavish mansions and acreage estates owned by Russian oligarchs, TV personalities, film stars and rock musicians, not to mention the landed gentry.

You might know the song through the 1984 version by Billy Bragg, but my preference is the Fagans singing this socialist anthem in four-part harmony.

James and his sister Kate started performing with their parents in the late 1980s while in their early teens. From performances at Sydney folk clubs, they graduated to the Maleny Folk Festival (before it grew too big and went to Woodford). James had just left high school when the group recorded their first album, ‘Common Treasury’, in 1991.

Some 28 years later, James and Nancy and their two children travelled 10, 662kms from Sheffield in the UK to the Blue Mountains. Not to mention a 600 kms round trip from the Blue Mountains to Canberra.

Yes, the trip was worth it; a family reunion, a musical reunion and time for Bob and Margaret to spend time with their grandsons Harry and Hamish. The latter appear to be following the family tradition, sharing the stage with James and Nancy, to perform ‘Mr Weather’. Nancy said the children deserved to be there because “they totally gave me the idea for this song”.

James and Nancy recently recorded their first duo album in a decade, a live album, ‘An Evening with Nancy Kerr and James Fagan’.

“The time’s not been idly spent,” James said of the past 10 years. “The last (duo) album came out in 2010, a big departure for us, as it was all songs and tunes written by ourselves.

“At the same time that album emerged, so did our first child, Hamish, and that required us to give up the lifestyle of living on a narrow boat and being troubadours and river gypsies.

“It was a big life change. The children came along, we moved into a house, we formed a new band and started diversifying what we did so one of us could be home.”

James reckons he has been to the National Folk Festival at least 20 times and fondly recalls scoring his first professional solo gig there when he was just 18.

This was also the case for bluegrass fiddle player George Jackson, who also enjoyed this year’s festival as a family reunion. His parents made the journey from Alice Springs to attend the festival and spend time with him. Mind you, it’s hard to pin down a dedicated musician at a music festival – they are usually picking up extra gigs. For example, George and two other bluegrass musicians stepped up for a spontaneous gig with songwriter John Flanagan.

It might have seemed like a jam, but when musicians of this calibre get together, magic things happen.

There were other highlights among the 150+ acts at the NFF including Scottish band Manran and their Scottish Gaelic songs, the virtuosity of instrumental band Kittel & Co and their marriage of Celtic music, bluegrass and classical, and the innovation of original Portuguese band Vila Navio.

Rounding out this eclectic festival, I was fortunate to catch one of comedian Martin Pearson’s daily ‘Brunch’ sessions where he trades barbs with guests. Singer and debater John Thompson was the guest that day. They traded Catholic school day experiences at the hands of teachers like Pearson’s “Sister Genghis”.

Amid a hilarious skit “how to wash a cat” they were interrupted by a loud ‘ting’ as one of Canberra’s brand-new shiny red trams arrived nearby.

“It’s not a tram,” said Thompson, crossly. “Trams share the road with other traffic. This has its own dedicated track. Therefore it is not a tram, it is light rail.”

I asked John about this later and he emailed me yesterday.

“There is some disagreement online about this distinction.

All trams are light rail, but only light rail that features “street running” can be called trams.

“The Canberra light rail only has “street running” at a couple of corners – it’s not a tram!”

 

That’s the thing about folkies – they have strong opinions.

What rhymes with rhinitis

Taken with a Nikon D3s and 14-24 lens. 7 shot HDR at f/5.6. www.elviskennedy.com
Photo Elvis Kennedy https://flic.kr/p/a3EtMY www.elviskennedy.com

The proper term for what ails 4.6 million Australians is ‘seasonal allergic rhinitis,’ more commonly known as hay fever. The latter name has stuck, even though scientists have known that grass pollen was the key culprit since the late 1800s.

I surely don’t have to tell you this is one of the worst springs on record for seasonal allergies. But I will.

If you live in Melbourne and suffer from asthma and seasonal allergies, this has been and still may be a life-threatening year.

American and UK media outlets pounced on Melbourne’s “thunderstorm asthma’’ story – six dead and five more on life support, brayed NBC, portraying it as a ‘freak’ event, though Melbourne has previously had four storm-induced asthma outbreaks. The city’s emergency services were swamped, with 8,500 receiving hospital treatment.

NBC (and other media outlets) explained that the storm caused saturated ryegrass pollen grains to ‘explode and disperse’ over the city. About a third of patients reported never having had asthma before. Inter alia, about half of asthmatics have allergic rhinitis or vice versa.

The Telegraph in the UK tracked down the Melbourne scientist who discovered and named the phenomenon in 1992 (when two people died after two consecutive storms). Cenk Suphioglu, from Deakin University, said authorities should be ready to issue public alerts during such events as Melbourne is a well-known allergy hotspot. Previous epidemics occurred in 1987, 1989 and 2010.

So I thought it was (again) time to start taking seasonal hay fever seriously. Like so many of Australia’s rhinitis sufferers, I reach for the antihistamines too late – the pollen has already got to me, hence tissue boxes placed strategically around the house. If we could all be bothered, the early warning systems are in place to take prophylactic action.

Melbourne University botanist Associate Professor Ed Newbigin said in August that hay fever sufferers were set for a worse-than-usual season.  He told ABC Rural a wet winter had contributed to spring growth in grasslands across western Victoria.

These grasslands released “huge amounts of pollen” when flowering and this is then carried to the city by northerly and north-westerly winds.

website, a free service provided by the University of Melbourne and the Asthma Foundation Victoria. This useful website now also includes pollen count forecasts for Brisbane, Canberra and Sydney. Pollen is measured as grains of pollen per cubic metre of air.

Dr Newbigin told FOMM yesterday pollen counts range so widely there’s nothing he can call a ‘norm’. Pollen count ranges are 0-19 (low), 20-49 (moderate), 50+ (high) and 100+ extreme.

A pollen count of 19 to 25 grains can make a sensitive person feel rather unwell. So Melbourne’s extreme count of 154 on Sunday November 6 explains a lot about the pressure on hospital emergency departments.

It starts with itchy eyes and sneezing

Allergic rhinitis symptoms are caused by the body’s immune system mistaking inhaled pollen for a virus, hence chronic inflammation of the eyes and nasal passages.

Symptoms include sneezing, runny, itchy, stuffy nose, itchy, watery and red eyes, itchy ears, throat and palate, headache and a “woolly headed feeling.” Allergic rhinitis predisposes people to sinus infections and poor quality sleep, leading to day-time fatigue.

Writer Suzanne Moore, a new convert to the World of Snot described her world of misery well in The Guardian.

“Wearing my sunglasses indoors, struggling to tear into some new drugs, my daughter looks alarmed.”Mum, what are you doing? You look like a crackhead.”

“I know I look stupid; I feel even more stupid. Hay fever does that.

“Apart from turning your body into a snot factory, you feel perpetually fogged up; not really there at all. It’s a miserable thing.”

So do you find it just a tad worrying that medical science still does not have a cure for seasonal allergic rhinitis? We sufferers form an orderly queue at our local chemist shop, ready to try anything new.

The best known relief remedies are, in no particular order, antihistamines, nasal sprays, steroid sprays, and, for the determined, few, a series of injections designed to desensitise the sufferer.

The newly afflicted Suzanne Moore says 20% of people in the UK are affected by allergic rhinitis. Allergy UK says Brits spend close to a billion pounds on treatments.

The one in five Australians affected spend a total of $120 million a year in over-the-counter remedies, so one could be forgiven for thinking there is no real incentive to find a cure.

The preferred treatment for someone who suffers acute attacks of allergic rhinitis is to start the patient on a preventative (corticosteroid) nasal spray before the onset of the hay fever season (in Australia September-December).

Some will go further to lead a normal life. As a lad, West Tigers prop Tim Grant took on serious treatment. The Sydney Morning Herald revealed that after he was diagnosed as a 12-year-old with a grass allergy, the NRL star endured three years of injections to build up his immunity so he could train and play.

Rhinitis rare in the 19th century

In the 19th century hay fever was regarded as something that afflicted the aristocracy, possibly because the landed gentry could afford to consult the best physicians. Without exception, they prescribed rest and recreation by the seaside or at an alpine lodge in Europe. John Bostock, a British physician, spent most of his life studying an ailment which befell him in June every year from the age of eight. An article in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine says a speech by Bostock in March 1819 about summer catarrh is the first description of hay fever as we know it. The condition was so rare in pre-industrial revolution Britain it took Bostock nine years to find 20 other people to put under the microscope. Bostock experimented on himself with remedies and tonics including bleeding, vomiting, opium, mercury, cold bathing and digitalis, all to no avail.

It may come as no surprise to find that Canberra is the hay fever capital of the country, given the woolly-headed thinking emanating from Parliament House. Scientists attribute this status to the diversity of plants in the Australian Capital Territory which produce allergen-laden pollen.

One in 5 people living in the ACT reported suffering from long-term allergic rhinitis, followed closely by Western Australia, Victoria and South Australia. The lowest rates occur in Queensland and New South Wales (half that of the ACT). Dr Newbigin has previously said that as the planet warms and the population grows, it will be important for allergic rhinitis sufferers, health experts and city landscape planners to be aware of what environmental change may mean for population health in allergy hotspots like Canberra.

A map (below) usefully identifies where in Australia you are more likely to be afflicted. That’s not to suggest you should move to a low-allergy location. Some 95% of sufferers are allergic to grass, so their symptoms are destined to return, wherever they live.

But as John Updike once said, “I moved to New England partly because it has a real literary past. The ghosts of Hawthorne and Melville still sit on those green hills. The worship of Mammon is also somewhat lessened there by the spirit of irony. I don’t get hay fever in New England either.”