Tag: George Jackson

The back roads to Canberra and musical reunions

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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.

A few words about Christchurch and global grief

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Christchurch and global grief – artwork by Isaac Westerlund

Last Friday’s massacre in Christchurch by a lone gunman was, as numerous people opined on Twitter, the per capita equivalent of New Zealand’s 9/11. The 50 people killed represent 3,000 fatalities in a similar attack in the US. That does give perspective to the overwhelming feelings of sorrow and confusion many of us felt last Friday and the global grief we have felt every day since.

New Zealand rarely makes international headlines, unless it’s an earthquake, a volcanic eruption or the Wallabies beating the All Blacks. We mourn the irrevocable loss of innocence.

Like Ten’s social commentator Waleed Aly, I did not really want to talk about this today, but as he and others have said, I feel as if I need to say something. I grew up in a sleepy little town in the North Island, a place where nobody locked up and people left their keys in the ignition while they went across the road to the dairy for a bottle of milk.

I remember the shock that was shared around the country in 1963 (I was 15), when President John F Kennedy was assassinated. Things like that didn’t happen in New Zealand so we were shocked, dismayed and very sad. Then as with Christchurch, we shared in a global grief experience.

Songwriter Kath Tait, an expat Kiwi living in London, found out about the massacre at two Christchurch mosques when she got up on Saturday morning (Friday night over here).

She wrote on Facebook: “I’m totally gutted; it’s a big shock for us NZers because we still cling to the notion that NZ is a safe peaceful place and not really a part of the wider world out there. I guess we’re wrong about that.”

George Jackson, a fiddle player now based in Nashville but raised in NZ, encapsulated his feelings by re-learning a plaintive waltz written by his great-great grandfather George Dickson.

Song of the Tui

I spent the weekend at the Blue Mountains Music Festival where more than a few festival guests had something to say about the atrocity in Christchurch, which had only just happened. As we all now know, 50 people died of gunshot wounds inflicted by a lone attacker and many more suffered serious injuries. A male person has since been arrested, by two brave rural coppers in Christchurch for, of all things, an armed offenders’ training course.

He has been charged with one count of murder and remanded in custody until April 5. Like New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, I refuse to speak his name. And, despite a plethora of online and offline speculation about the alleged perpetrator’s background and likely motives, it remains for a court to decide upon his fate.

Irish songwriter Luka Bloom started his set at the festival in Katoomba saying that people who perpetrate such atrocities “Do not speak for me – “they never have and they never will.”

“They have no idea about the amount of love there is in this world,” he said.

And as Laurel Wilson recounts: “When New Zealand comedy duo, The Topp Twins, who hail from Christchurch, first heard about the atrocity that had occurred in their city, they asked each other, “How can we go on stage and be funny after that?”

“The Topp twins are two openly lesbian, feminist, politically active sisters who are also very, very entertaining – loved by a great diversity of fans in their native New Zealand but also in Australia and elsewhere. They have, no doubt, known prejudice themselves, but have not let it define or limit them. I believe this is the message that they wished to convey when they decided to go ahead with their show at the Blue Mountains Music Festival. And they lifted everyone’s spirits when they finished the show with an audience participation version of ‘Da Doo Ron Ron’, complete with choreography”.

Stephen Taberner, musical director of the Spooky Men’s Chorale, is also from Christchurch. He refrained from commentary about the events of that day, instead recalling an incident he once witnessed where a mother was remonstrating with one of her kids. The mother said to one of the other kids: “Don’t stir the pot”, which Taberner said meant, “Don’t make things worse.”

The Spooky Men then closed out the festival with a stirring rendition of Joni’s Mitchell’s The Fiddle and the Drum.

Taberner’s wisdom in choosing to bypass commentary or bare his feelings was the right choice, given the amount of pot-stirring that’s been going on over the past seven days on social media and in the conventional press.

The Urban Dictionary’s broader definition of ‘stir the pot’ might give us pause for thought about which media outlet we trust:

Pot-stirrer: Someone who loves to proliferate the tension and drama between two or more feuding people/groups in public…in hopes of starting a shitstorm of drama and uncomfortable conflict…”

The above could also aptly describe our accidental Senator, who has been in the public eye, grabbing headlines for all the wrong reasons. Boycott his press conferences, I say. He will still be free to say what he wants to say, just not on the front page.

New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern put the lid firmly back on the pot with an apolitical, compassionate approach that above all took the feelings and beliefs of the Muslim victims of the massacre into account. Within days, she and Muslim leaders were collaborating with police to fast-track the release of the victims’ bodies to their families. The Islamic faith requires that burial rituals happen as soon as possible. The fact the NZ PM understood this and promised that the country would also pay for the burials, built a few bridges at a time when all connection could have been lost.

Defining the nation’s role in this global grief, she wrote in a commemoration book: “On behalf of all New Zealanders we grieve, together we are one, they are us.”

These words have taken on a life of their own, as a hashtag on social media. In just three words she defined New Zealand’s inclusive attitude towards refugees and immigrants in general. Ms Ardern’s approach every day since has been consistent, compassionate and yet firm, as shown with the swift introduction of stricter gun laws.

The chief pot-stirrers, unfortunately, are the loosely-regulated chat sites and bulletin boards where people can post anonymously. Telcos including Telstra, Optus and Vodaphone are temporarily blocking websites which continue to broadcast the live GoPro video filmed by the assailant as he went about his bloody business. None of the Telcos will say which websites they are actively blocking, although they say the bans will be lifted once the video is removed.

Apart from George’s fiddle tune, the most moving thing I have seen about the Christchurch massacre is a black and white ink drawing by Isaac Westerlund of a Maori woman and a Muslim woman exchanging the Hongi. This is a traditional Maori greeting where two people briefly touch noses and foreheads, exchanging a symbolic breath of life.

Thanks to open-hearted people like Isaac Westerlund and George Jackson, the healing power of music and art help us overcome emotions we don’t quite understand and to make sense of the senseless.

#theyareus

*A Tui is a native bird with a distinctive tuft of white feathers at the throat and a beautiful call.