(a nonmusical interlude)

For British persons of a certain age there can be few childhood memories more potent, haunting and downright sinister than those conjured up by the short TV series, “The Singing Ringing Tree.” It was a part of a bigger project collectively known as “Tales from Europe” that featured adaptations of fairy tales filmed by Hungarian, Czech and East German TV companies and broadcast by the BBC during 1964/65.
“The Singing Ringing Tree” was made by the East German TV company DEFA and it was by far the scariest thing I ever saw. More than Davros the Dalek, more than the freakishly silly Tiny Tim singing “Tip-toe Through the Tulips” to the accompaniment of his own ukulele; even more than Robert Helpmann as the kid-catcher in “Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang,” the dwarf in “The Singing Ringing Tree” struck terror into our hearts.
Nightmares, cold shivers in the daytime, tears and tantrums at bedtime, yes it was all that dwarf’s fault, not that the Ma was at all sympathetic. These days perhaps it wouldn’t be allowed at all. The children would have to be provided with counseling, and those of diminished stature would be up in arms, and perhaps rightly so. Then again, maybe they would choose to celebrate the fact that such a forceful and central character was drawn from their number. The fellow was no mere Santa’s helper, that’s for sure. I can’t recall any other production in which the dwarf has such a significant role, malignant or otherwise. However, as I was saying, the dwarf was the personification of everything that was wicked, warped and unpleasant. A thorough-born rotter with magical powers and a spiteful temper. Not the sort of fellow to fall foul of while you’re footloose in Fairyland, and no mistake.
There was also the big fish, the product of some strange, baroque mutation and, though a seemingly well-meaning and innocent creature, it was still an eerie thing to behold, gliding silently across the surface of Lake Fairyland. Its persistent lurking silence was what got to me in the end; when I closed my eyes at night it was there, waiting for me, goggle-eyed, trout-lipped, fins a-flapping seductively. The reindeer - an obvious cart horse with twigs attached to its ears - was a pretty risible counterbalance, but not enough to quell my nocturnal dread one iota.
As for the narrative, it is pretty archetypal fare:
Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, a beautiful and terribly spoiled Princess learns a few hard lessons and eventually becomes a kindly and beneficent queen. As you might expect it’s this period of personal development that the tale is concerned with.
True to type the Princess begins the tale a wicked-step-sisterly sour puss; as mean as they come and twice as nasty. But wasn’t that to be expected? As a five year old with his feet firmly planted in the clouds I was never sure what all the fuss was about in the first place. Even discounting the fixed vinegary expression and the Wagnerian bosoms the princess really didn’t seem like much of a looker to me. She reminded me somehow of Kathy Kirby, except she was even more brassy and probably couldn‘t have sung “Secret Love” for toffee. Nor did her Dad’s castle seem that much to get excited about compared with some real ones I’d seen along the Welsh border. They obviously weren’t in possession of riches beyond a young man’s dream. Why should any self-respecting Prince give the cowbag a moment’s thought?
The story itself began steadily enough however; right on cue a Prince/suitor comes to the castle a-courting-oh and is sent on an errand to prove his worth: “Off you pop, Droopy-Draws, and don‘t come back until you‘ve found the singing ringing tree…” But then, having ventured in to the forest of Fairyland the handsome young clot gets himself turned into a bear by that devil of a dwarf - before your very eyes! From here it all goes rapidly pear-shaped. It was as if overnight Fairyland had become New Fairyland; under the new management things are just the same as they used to be and yet somehow strangely, far, far worse. Dingly dells turned to dust bowls, bosky groves began to smell of stale wee, and all of New Fairyland grew as wintery as dastardly David Blunket's heart.
If only the singing ringing tree - actually nothing more prepossessing than a withered sapling - would sing and ring, dear reader. Then everything would return to normal, for that would signal to the world that the Princess has fallen in love. But she is vain and heartless, and first we must all endure some pretty tough travails lest we fail to take the moral of the story to heart. That’s the harsh reality of New Fairyland for you. Lessons are for learning.
Smugly the dwarf looked on, puffing out his chest with pride and smirking with malignant glee. In time the Princess was sent out to look for the Prince, perhaps because he was the only man oaf enough ever to have sought her hand in marriage. And so it came to pass that she too is captured by the dwarf and is made to work in New Fairyland like she’s never worked before, scivvying on her hands and knees to build a cave to live in, and consorting with the common fauna that she has always so despised, including this peculiar bear fellow who‘s always trying to give her unwanted advice and generally being a bit of a creep. Before she begins to mend her ways she even loses her looks, thanks to a nasty spell cast by a certain short party. Her nose grew long and warty, and her golden locks turn into a green and greasy haystack - a vast improvement on the ridiculous Valkyrian, suicide-blonde do she had been wearing, I‘ve always thought.
When everything has reached rock bottom, and the Princess is at last strangely content with her lot and sufficiently humbled to see the error of her ways, then, and only then, she yields to her true feelings and falls, pell-mell, helter-skelter and lickerty-split head over heels in love with the bear. He meanwhile has remained patient and kind throughout the entire episode, even if he was a bit of a busy-body, for in reality let us not forget that he is a Princely hero and not just some frightful yobo from The Land of Make Believe, or somewhere. This is far more than the bisom of a Princess has deserved you may think, but this is the stuff of Fairy Tale.
From here on we’re in the home straight, so it’s only a matter of time before the Princess plants a kiss on the grizzly snout of the bear, and so the singing ringing tree finally lives up to its name, though I seem to recall that it tinkled only perfunctorily and was actually something of a musical disappointment. The spell that has been cast over Fairyland is broken at last. As you can imagine dear reader, all that was bad suddenly returned to good. The dwarf, for his pains, is cast into a bottomless pit surrounded by flames. And let that be a lesson to you, Tony Blair, person of diminished moral stature.
Perhaps it was the east European aesthetic, which certainly gave the whole “Tales from Europe” series an otherworldly appeal that “Blue Peter” utterly lacked until John Noakes happened along. It also had an altogether darker take on the idea of the Fairy Tale than was the norm in Britain before Angela Carter set about reinventing and reinvigorating the tradition. I wonder now whether for the programme’s makers and their fellow east Germans, did the dwarf in fact symbolise the Stasi, or some other agents of state oppression? Another element that contributed to this foreignness was that the voice of the English narrator was recorded over the only slightly subdued soundtrack of the German speaking actors whose speech could still be clearly heard. It was my first sustained exposure to foreign languages and cultures, and perhaps the experience had a significant underlying long term effect. Although I did not always live happily ever after, and like the Princess I had to learn to take the rough with the smooth, I have done a lot of traveling in places sometimes far, far stranger than Fairyland could ever be.

As you may have guessed by now, this is a blog about music and, curiously given its title, “The Singing Ringing Tree,” bares no musical memories at all. Other than that it was a disappointment I have no recollection whatever of the climactic tintinnabulation of the supposedly musical shrub itself, nor do I remember any of the music that may or may not have enhanced the visuals throughout the tale. In truth I became side tracked from the programme I had intended to write about, which was “The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe” another European classic of 1960s children’s TV. It was made by Franco London Films (FLF TV) of Paris.
Of the programme itself I remember little, it was black and white, and Robinson Crusoe was played by a handsome young actor called Robert Hoffman. Back in the early 60s it seemed to be the only daytime TV that existed until the Banana Splits came along, followed by the appropriately titled, “Why Not Turn Off Your Television Set And Do Something More Interesting Instead”. There was, it was widely felt by parents in general and my mother in particular, something deeply immoral about watching television during daylight hours back then. I‘m now certain that there‘s something pretty iffy about the medium more generally, though mother has since revised her views extensively and has become a devotee of Richard Whitely. However, I should digress no further.
The greatest impact that “The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe” had came not from its story, which was already familiar to us all I suspect, nor anything to do with its visual production values, nor its very spare dialogue - it was clearly a pan-European production over which a narration in any language could be superimposed - but, for the English language version at least, the wonderful music that bound the whole thing together.
For those who are familiar with the series the name Robinson Crusoe cannot be heard without also instantly recalling Robert Mellin and Gian-Piero Reverberi’s gorgeous orchestral opening theme music. This theme is but the first, and arguably most sumptuous melody, of an entire suite the two composers created to illustrate the entire story.

http://www.amazon.com/Adventures-Robinson-Crusoe-Various/dp/B000003QRM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1280592381&sr=1-1

Mellin and Reverberi have both worked as jobbing musicians of note for decades. Robert Mellin is a music publisher too and also composed “Stranger on a Shore,” the late clarinetist, Acker Bilk's big hit from the 60s. Even his less well known songs have been recorded by the likes of Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra and Nat “King “ Cole. Gian Piero Reverberi, in addition to playing piano, composing, arranging and conducting, is also something of a musical entrepreneur and has led the light music ensemble Rondo Veneziano since founding it in 1979.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vrQhsLZMG0&list=QL

Fado

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Qvr87le6fk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ElLSBx9Jo8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=va1y4tg_s_U

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COy6qy2kgkY

Fado is a form of song associated with the Portuguese cities of Lisbon and Coimbra. Though similar there are stylistic differences in both the music and the manner of performance in the two cities. Thanks to recent performers like Mariza, the Lisbon style of fado is now known more widely than it was. However Coimbra, which is a much smaller place best known for its university - with which the homegrown form of fado is closely associated - has yet to find its star and be raised above the local horizon. Perhaps this is because Coimbra fado is most often performed in the street, on church steps and in other public places rather than in private venues and therefore exists relatively free of commercial demands. I understand that musicians of the Coimbra school can however still be hired to serenade a loved one at a time, and beneath a window of ones choosing. If that doesn’t trump chocolates and red roses dump the ungrateful bimbo allegro assai.

Though there are various theories about its origins, the roots of fado are just as complex and varied as any form of music. It arose as a distinct form in the early 19^th century and is said to be amongst the earliest of urban folk musics. Thematically fado lyrics make frequent reference to the sea, the fates of those away on voyages, and the yearning of those awaiting their safe return.

Thankfully perhaps fado bears little or no relation to flamenco, though some persist in referring to fado as, “the Portuguese equivalent of flamenco,” which is true in only a very limited sense. It’s a bit like suggesting that Morris dancing is the English equivalent of flamenco, or that flamenco is the Spanish equivalent of Mongolian overtone singing. However like much flamenco fado is essentially torch song material, requiring a particular haughtiness of delivery and a demeanor fit only for the most spoiled of princesses, at least of its female performers. Shirley Bassey, had her birth place been closer to the banks of the Tagus than to Tiger Bay, would have made a cracking fado singer; as it was she had to make do with the frocks alone. Another common and perhaps more accurate analogy, at least in terms of lyrical thematic content of loss and loneliness, is with the blues.

Though the most renowned performers on the international stage are nearly all women there are male fado singers too. Indeed the Coimbra school is traditionally sung only by men.

The voice of singer Carlos Ramos had a peculiarly plaintive character. I like his voice very much even though it does have something of the whining schoolboy about it. Actually, I’m sure it’s the nasal edge that gives it its particular charm. Though a far more limited instrument than either Mariza’s or Bassey’s, lacking both their range and power and consequently their drama, there is however something reassuring and modest about the tone of his voice. Above all he sounds honest and that is perhaps the substance of his charm.

It was early autumn, the beginning of a new academic year. I had spent much of the preceding summer traveling in Portugal, drifting; taking the scenic route from Faro, Lagos and Praia Da Luz on the Algarve coast up to Porto in the north via Coimbra. I’d occupied my time listening to a little fado here, looking at a dab of contemporary art there, sustained by concoctions of pork and cockles, tripe and beans, pastelade de nata that varied in quality from deeply disappointing to ambrosial, and an occasional tot of a delicious Portuguese brandy, Macieira. It had been a fairly aimless and lonely journey really, pleasant enough after the enforced sociability of the preceding year‘s teaching but, after more than twenty years of solitary traveling, I was beginning to realize for the first time that my own company was growing thin. Little did I know it then but marriage would soon be beckoning.

After Portugal I returned to Benghazi and my flat high above the narrow, bustling street of Via Torino, one of the old city’s busiest shopping streets with its strange mixture of carpentry workshops, green grocers that smelled of damp earth, boutiques selling wildly colourful, transvestite on acid diva’s dresses that the local women pour their ample curves into for wedding parties that are, sadly, forbidden to men; there are cosmetics shops too, and also an ice cream parlour where a quarter dinar buys you a vast frigid rainbow in eye-shadow pastel tones balanced on a sugar cone; the best pirate DVD shop in town is halfway down, set slightly back from its neighbours - and thus affords the Via‘s only few metres of sidewalk - there you can purchase all the very latest in six-months-out-of-date Hollywood blockbusters, or even a rare classic of the silver screen that must surely have somehow drifted here, like the flotsam on the rocky shore just three minutes walk away; there’s a cake shop or two, a small supermarket that sells the best flat bread on Earth and where, nearby, a discrete doorway leads to one of the few functioning Christian churches in Libya, the most Muslim of countries; and amidst all this is Shareef al Madjbri’s small gloomy cavern bursting at the seams with plastic goods, trinkets, kitchenware and a long lifetime of miscellanies that might not actually be part of the stock at all. I never dared ask for fear that his natural generosity and the Arabic tradition of hospitality prompted him to give me yet another gift. Above all of this rowdy, day and night commercial to and fro there are hundreds of apartments occupying the upper floors of buildings that are between two and seven stories in height and ranging in quality from reasonable luxury to near abject slummery. All of this, and so much more, in a single street no more than a quarter of a mile from beginning to end.

While visiting Coimbra I had bought two CDs of music for Portuguese guitar and, having settled into a domestic routine in Benghazi once again, it became my habit to listen to them on Saturday mornings as I went about my chores. The Portuguese guitar is a peculiar instrument, it’s not actually a guitar at all - my friend Mr Pedantic would have you know - more a mandolin on steroids, which makes it a member of the cittern family and therefore only a cousin of the guitar. It’s tuned high and always sounds to me as though the strings have been tightened almost to breaking point and, being strung in double courses, it is quite jangly too. In the wrong hands I fear it would sound like a cross between a demented ice cream van and guitar that’s been sniffing freely at the helium.

The two CDs were Carlos Paredes (1925 - 2004), “O Melhor de Carlos Paredes: Guitarra,” and a compilation of Portuguese guitar music, “Biographia Guitarra.” Paredes, the son of another renowned guitarist, Artur Paredes, was regarded as the great 20^th century maestro of the Portuguese guitar and did more than any other musician to popularise the instrument abroad. He was also a composer, especially known for his film music. His is an album of instrumentals and illustrates his highly decorated style of playing; not for nothing was he known as “the man with a thousand fingers.” For my taste his playing is too flashy, too virtuosic, I suspect that I would really prefer to listen to the man with ten thumbs as long as he had as much musical talent as Paredes. On this point I‘m sure that Emperor Joseph II would have agreed, for there really are just too many notes. Given the bright, edgy register of the instrument, that astonishing torrent of notes sometimes sounds almost panicked.

For a while the compilation, “Biographia Guitarra,” just tinkled away in the background, little more than muzak that came into focus every once in a while between bouts of laundry and vacuuming. Though focused on the Portuguese guitar about a third of the tracks feature singers. One day as I settled for a mid morning cup of tea after an especially heavy session with the mop and bucket the voice of Carlos Ramos penetrated the atmosphere and I quickly became aware that I was enjoying listening to it very much.

He was singing a song called, “Minha Guitarra,” (“My Guitar”), accompanied by the guitarist Francisco Carvalhino, which is appropriate enough given the compilation’s title and the fact that Ramos himself was originally a guitarist, only taking up singing late in his career.

　

　

Palestinian Delights

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGKUeHTSe3s&feature=related
The story of the lute is one that parallels the story of the Renaissance and the spread of knowledge, especially scientific and technological knowledge, from Asia and the world of Islam across medieval Europe. Thus we can follow the etymological development of the word lute, or so the story goes:

One of the most popular instruments in Arabic music even today, the 'oud (pron: /aoud/) is an ancient, pear-shaped, large bodied, unfretted, plucked instrument, usually with eight strings in four double courses.

Given its prominence in Muslim musical culture the 'oud would most likely have been carried into Spain during the early part of the Islamic occupation of the Iberian Peninsular. This began in 710AD, when the Berber first began to take an interest in Visigothic Hispania, and came to an end nine centuries later, in the early part of the fifteenth century. In Spanish the Arabic, al 'oud (the 'oud, if you will) soon became el oud.

From Spain the instrument was carried into France and taken up by troubadours and their like, and so in the course of time, there being many a morphological slip twixt cup and lip, el oud became l'ute.

Comprenez-vous? ...Oui? Bonne.

Anglo-French history being the sorry and fractious tale it is we are now but a short and sadly inevitable step away from our charming Gallic minstrel being bashed on the head and robbed of his main means of earning a crust. And so, among other assorted plunder and an interesting dose of the Auvergne itch, l’ute was thus brought home to the shires.

“What do you call that when it’s at home?” someone asked. “Well, if memory serves, I think the bloke said it was a lute. Just before we put him to the sword, it was. Anyone for a sing-song?”

And there you have it; but as I was saying, unlike its European counterpart the ‘oud is still very common in Arabic music, and rightly so. Musically and visually the 'oud is a thing of great beauty and a treasure to behold. Among its best present day exponents are The Trio Joubran, three Palestinian brothers, and the fourth successive generation of their family to be noteworthy players and makers of the ‘oud.

In The Trio's other, mainly instrumental works, you get lots of virtuosic fireworks for your money, and what may once have been an important ingredient in the origins of flamenco.

The song, "Ahwak" (I Love You), was made famous by the great Egyptian singer/actor, Abdel Halim Hafez (1929 – 1977), and remains one of his most popular songs, still known to virtually everyone in the Arab world today. Hafez was himself so popular that it is said fourteen women committed suicide when news of his death was announced in Egypt and that his funeral in Cairo was attended by millions of people.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aR2YT9xYY38

N.E.X.T. spells...

Like almost any decade you can shake a stick at the 70s was an odd period in British fashion history. It was downright uncomfortable for those of us who lived through it as fashion conscious but self-consciously lumpen youths. Let's face it, flared trousers do not flatter the fuller figure, and as for 'slim fit' shirts, I believe the label speaks for itself, but let's leave them in the closet, shall we? The flowers and the pacifist pretensions of the late-60s had withered and died away to be replaced, among other things, by brickies in drag. There was Slade and The Sweet and there was... well, there was that bloke who dressed in tin foil, too. But they were strictly for the kids - and oh, how innocent we were. For the more mature in taste, and the art school crowd there were also the early manifestations of David Bowie and Roxy Music, and somewhere in the middle, yet ever so out on a limb, there was also The Sensational Alex Harvey Band. No art school graduates these, I'll be bound. The Sensational Alex himself was a wee Glaswegian jewish hardnut and tenement funster of the old school. His rhythm section looked like complete barmpots too, and then just for good measure, there was that guitarist... Don't let that clown's costume and the mincing about on stage fool you for a second, hen...

More than anyone else who's dressed up as a pirate in the name of popular entertainment before or since, ha, ha, me hearties, Alex Harvey just might have been the real deal.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqx5j-FuqeI

"Next" was written by Jacques Brel, and so it's well suited to the seedy, cabaret setting The SAHB gave it - and with what decadent gusto and crumpled pathos! It's a song with a story to tell, a one act tragedy set to a sinister, edgy tango and Alex Harvey succeeded in making it sound like a distressing reality. Scott Walker made the same song sound, well, just very well sung, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Q_T0jehqpQ and with a vastly overblown orchestration that makes the whole tale insipid. Walker's voice is often a wonder to behold, but it isn't the voice of a man who's ever held a small and dirty army towel around his belly. Likewise Brel's own on stage clowning went too far and rather undermined the song's robust content.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=354293676441565679#

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58Qc6LK15hU&feature=PlayList&p=7ABE43251C69BFA4&playnext_from=PL&playnext=1&index=9

Say You Don't Mind - a song from the 70s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-wekAq-s34

The jaunty string arrangement is perhaps the key; that and Colin Blunstone's voice, a rare combination of lightly smoked restraint and soaring to whatever part of the stratosphere helium exists more plentifully in. Another in a long-ish line of English choirboys gone off the rails.

The song has a polite charm and, although I don't think there's anything specifically Edwardian about it, in spite the formality of those strings, you kind of get the feeling that this is a song that might be sung by a chap in flannel bags and striped blazer while luckier fellows chink tea cups and promenade their best girl fol-de-rol of a sunday afternoon.

On paper the lyrics look pretty daffy:

"I realise that I've been in your eyes
Some kind of fool..."

To take just the opening two lines... I realise that I've been in your eyes somekind of tortured grammatical inversion, but there's poetic licence for you. Anyway, in the context of the music it sits comfortably, so what the heck. In my experience it rarely pays to look at song lyrics on the page, or scrutinise them for much in the way of profundity of meaning, as in all genres including the most highfalutin, they're really apt to seem a bit drippy out of context. There are however some fine phrases to conjure with, and the odd cracking line that it might pay one to recall at those times when a bon mot would be just the thing you're looking for. Here for instance I rather like, "What I did, stupid fish, I drank the pool." Well, I'm sure we all know that feeling.

The song came from Colin Blunstones' 1971 album "One Year", and was written by Denny Laine. This was Blunstones' debut outing as a solo performer, he'd formerly been singer with 1960s exciting new English beat comb, The Zombies.