Moussa Sissiokho, Johnny Kalsi and James McNally at WOMAD 2010. Photo by yrstrly

One of the highlights of WOMAD last weekend was watching a comeback performance by the Afro-Celt Sound System, who rocked the tent on Sunday evening with a tight blend of two cultures. The undoubted crowd-pleaser was a three-way drum duel between James McNally on the bodhran, Johnny Kalsi on the dhol, and Moussa Sissiokho on the tamma (‘talking drum’).  Underlay a little bit of electronica and some pipes, and the result is something that cannot fail to move you, both physically and emotionally. Its great to see musicians do that to an audience – and its even better to be a part of such primeval happenings yourself.  In such moments, the rising pace of the drums causes your mind to wander and wonder.

Here, I thought, we have a group of disparate musicians bringing their different traditions together to create something new.  Indeed, ‘fusion’ music is one of the festival’s specialities, and the Afro-Celt Soundsystem are very musch a creature of WOMAD.  But in watching the McNally/Kalsi/Sissiokho three-way, I was reminded that such music only works if the individual members have a (shall we say) traditional music upbringing.  Perhaps the discipline, and the distincitiveness of their separate musical heritages, are actually pre-requisites for their fusion music to work.

If true, it is an argument for a fairly rigourous form of multiculturalism.  Perhaps there is a value in encouraging not the fusion of cultures itself, but instead a promotion of the more traditional practices on which that fusion is based?  Only with a mature understanding of one’s culture can you confidently engage with others, and thereby play a proper part in creating something global, transcendental.

In a diverse country like Britain, this means supporting projects which pedestalise both the minority cultures, and the deeper roots of English and Celtic cultures.  This approach implies division, and the creation cultural silos, and has come in for much criticism in recent years.  But watching the talents of the musicians at WOMAD, you cannot help but percieve the long, accumulated embedded within each artist.  When you do, its natural to want to preserve and protect that history.

WOMAD flags by Wolfgang Haak on Flickr

To celebrate, the rapper MC Yogi has released an improbably titled MP3, ‘Universal Healthcare‘, which is free to download.  He was responsible for the fantastic ‘Vote for Hope‘ YouTube hit last year and I admire his open, 21st Century style of marketing.  As well as providing some free downloads to entice new fans, he also encourages remixing.

MC You can visit MC Yogi at http://mcyogi.com

In other free MP3 news, The Hood Internet have released Vol. IV of their Internet Mixtape: Swell.

The campaign put a small dent into Simon Cowell’s sales figures.  Last year, Alexandra Burke’s Hallelujah sold 576,000 copies in the week before Christmas, while this year Joe McElderry only managed 450,000.  But this hardly suggests that Cowell’s business model is on the wane – Leon Jackson only sold 275,000 copies of his single, When You Believe in 2007.  Cowell knows that a bit of controversy is good for his bottom line.  He knows that the label ‘Christmas Number One’ is an entirely relative marketing concept anyway, and modern music history is littered with classic hits which never reached that false summit.

So although the Facebook campaigners for Rage Against the Machine were successful, I can’t help thinking that there is something confused about the campaign and its aims.  They say:

… it’s given many others hope that the singles chart really is for everybody in this country of all ages, shapes, and sizes…and maybe re-ignited many people’s passion for the humble old single as well as THAT excitement again in actually tuning in to the chart countdown on a Sunday.

In taking this line, the campaigners seem to be endorsing the Singles Chart as an appropriate indicator of good and popular music, when it is manifestly nothing of the sort.  Yes, they reclaimed the ‘excitement’ for a single week… but they did so with a seventeen year-old song which was chosen precisely for its contrast with its competitor.  That is entirely different from what the campaigners have nostalgia for – new music from good bands, battling it out.  Former chart battles were essentially a positive contest, with music fans buying their favourite record.  The 2009 campaign had an entirely negative “anyone by Cowell” message, which is unsustainable.

False Metrics

Modern internet campaigns often seem to fall into the trap of chasing targets based on false metrics. The campaign for Gary McKinnon (the computer hacker in danger of extradition to the US) seems to be a victim:

lets make #mckinnonmonday ‘trend’ – TWEET4GARY NOW !!! please tweet ALL #american friends and ask them to help #FREEGARY #garyMckinnon
- @cliffsul

The aim of #mckinnonmonday is to make Gary McKinnon trend #garymckinnon Pls RT
- @dandelion101

Shouldn’t the aim be to generate anger and interest in the Gary McKinnon story? How helpful is all the constant RT’ing if it doesn’t translate to bodies at the protest, letters in the politician’s in-tray.

And it is not just impoverished grassroots campaigners falling into this trap, either.  Here is a recent tweet from a Cabinet Minister:

Support #welovetheNHS, add a #twibbon to your avatar now! – http://twibbon.com/join/welovetheNHS

Admittedly, sending the tweet is hardly a burden on Mr Milband’s resources, but its odd and disturbing that politicians and political campaigns have started to relate to us in this way.  The idea that the NHS is something to love is presumed, and the campaign becomes about forming a huge group of people around a slogan for a fleeting moment only.  Did anyone capture the e-mail addresses of those who tweeted #welovetheNHS?  If not then it seems like a wasted moment.

And as for Twibbons?  This innovation seems to me to be a hugely reductive exercise, shrinking political debate to a space 100 pixels wide.

Now, lest you assume I am engaging in pure snark, I should point out that I am as guilty of this hashtag chasing as the next person – perhaps more so.  I helped the Burma Campaign devise their 64forSuu.org project, which was, frankly, all about the hashtag.  And only today I’ve written a press release lauding the fact that PEN‘s Libel Reform petition has just reached 10,000 signatures, a figure that will something only if it serves to light a fire under either Jack Straw or Dominic Grieve.

Its very easy to raise ‘awareness’ of any given issue, but that’s not the same thing as establishing a consensus that what you are proposing is right.  And in turn, that is not the same thing as actually motivating people to action.  It would be a great shame if “taking action” became synonymous with simply sharing links and joining endless Facebook groups, because when that “action” fails to translate into meaningful change, we will only find that another generation have been turned off politics, disillusioned.   The Obama campaign has been criticised recently for its rather top-down approach to twitter, which didn’t really engage in conversation with supporters.  But nevertheless, he actually inspired people out of their houses and into the campaign HQs.  Did some of us think that Twitter could start a revolution in Iran?  Not quite (as Jay Rosen points out).  While the #IranElection tag on Twitter has been a useful tool for the protesters and for those reporting on the crisis it is clearly the people on the ground that will really put that regime under pressure (and we hope that the passing of Ayatollah Hoseyn Ali Montazeri will provide inspiration to renew that pressure).

All of which is to say that George Monbiot’s sanctimonious article this morning had the ring of truth about it:

For the past few years good, liberal, compassionate people – the kind who read the Guardian – have shaken their heads and tutted and wondered why someone doesn’t do something. Yet the number taking action has been pathetic. Demonstrations which should have brought millions on to the streets have struggled to mobilise a few thousand. As a result the political cost of the failure at Copenhagen is zero. Where are you?

We’ve been tweeting #hashtags and adding #twibbons to our avatar, George.  Get with the programme, yeah?

Overall, my impression was that the other pannelists collectively agreed to discredit Griffin with ad hominems, rather than engage with, and demolish his arguments.  Several obvious and definitive retorts went begging.  For example, in response to Griffin’s unsophisticated critique of Islam, Baroness Warsi could simply have pointed out similar hateful lines from the Christian bible.  Instead, she made a round-about speech on the contribution of Muslims to Britain which looked like abvoidance of the question.  Likewise with the pathetic nonsense about “indigenous” Britons.  None of the pannellists seemed to counter this in the definitive manner I would have liked to see.

What they needed was some poetry.  I am delighted to discover The True Born Englishman by Daniel Defoe, written in 1703.  An excerpt:

The western Angles all the rest subdu’d;
A bloody nation, barbarous and rude:
Who by the tenure of the sword possest
One part of Britain, and subdu’d the rest
And as great things denominate the small,
The conqu’ring part gave title to the whole.
The Scot, Pict, Britain, Roman, Dane, submit,
And with the English-Saxon all unite:
And these the mixture have so close pursu’d,
The very name and memory’s subdu’d:
No Roman now, no Britain does remain;
Wales strove to separate, but strove in vain:
The silent nations undistinguish’d fall,
And Englishman’s the common name for all.
Fate jumbled them together, God knows how;
What e’er they were they’re true-born English now.

It reminds me of England, Half English by Billy Bragg:

My mother was half English and I’m half English too
I’m a great big bundle of culture tied up in the red white and blue
I’m a fine example of your Essex man
And I’m well familiar with the Hindustan
Cos my neighbours are half English and I’m half English too.

Update

Andrew Sullivan makes this point in The Sunday Times, in a post about race in America: ‘Scratch white America and beneath it is black‘.

Its fashionable, yet incredibly easy to complain that the Michael Jackson death has crowded out news of other more pressing matters. Shawn Micallef sounded an early word of warning about this attitude:

There is no need to compare MJ & Iran – completely dif, just intersect on same medium, not a social/moral lesson to be learned.

Then (again via Twitter, though the link is now lost in the maelstrom) I came across this MJ/Election mash-up, and it occurred to me that coverage (be it on Twitter, blogs or the international MSM) is not a zero-sum game, and that coverage of one piece of news could promote awareness of another.

If you consider Jackson’s output, there are actually loads of other songs that could fit a revolutionary template. Songs like “Heal The World” and “You Are Not Alone” seemed (to me) quite sanctimonious and irritating when they were released. But with the passing of Michael Jackson, the self-congratulatory element to those tracks seems to dissipate. They’re now ripe for the picking as a backing track to some feel-good montages of the peaceful demonstrations in Tehran. “Earth Song”, “Black or White” and (going back a little bit further) “Man in the Mirror” also carry that We-Are-The-World vibe… as does, of course, “We Are The World”! They could all fill the role of unofficial theme-tune to a non-violent protest movement.

Too cheesy? Not one bit of it: The “Yes We Can” generation of political campaigners are unafraid of such accusations. Meanwhile, tracks like “Beat It” could accompany comedic images of Ahmedinejad and Khameni and Keyboard Cat.

I meant to post this last week, so I feel sure I am behind the curve on this one. Yet a quick search through YouTube doesn’t yield further examples. Let us know your favourites, either in the comments, or via the tips form, and maybe we’ll do a round-up or something.

+posted at Liberal Conspiracy. Comment there.

There is no need to compare MJ & Iran – completely dif, just intersect on same medium, not a social/moral lesson to be learned.

Guy captures the mood:

im feeling weird about Jacko dying. he was too weird and too great and it feels strange.

Was surprises me, is that somehow I am not more surprised.  By the time I got to know his music in the late 1980s, he had Thriller behind him and was already stratospheric, categorized alongside other immortals like Elvis Presley. Horrible to think it, but a premature death seems somehow appropriate for the narrative, the modern folklore.

It will have escaped no-one’s notice that the narrative of Susan Boyle is very similar to that of Paul Potts: the undiscovered talent, sitting dormant until middle-age.  Both tell stories of a mundane life, and both defy the judges’ expectations in the most satisfying manner.  Simon Cowell is the wicked-witch and faery Godmother, rolled into one: he is the cynic to be flummoxed, and also the bestower of fame.

Its a double-delight to watch Susan and Paul ‘turn’ the crowd in the process.  Unlike the cool kidz and the prettyboys who expect the mobb’s support (until the proven otherwise), Boyle and Potts have to win over a crushing cynicism.  And it is that sweet, sweet triumph which makes these clips so throatblockingly beautiful.

A third delight is the fact that these performances emerge from a TV format that, elsewhere, depends on precisely the cynical, sing-by-the-numbers yawnery that usually serves to suppress people like Susan and Paul.  This is clearly a feature of the auditioning process, which takes place with a live audience in situ.  Contrast this with the X-Factor, which is auditioned in lonely, acoustic-poor conference rooms.  With just Simon, Louis, Sharon and Dannicherylpaula in attendance, there is little to rein in the instinct to follow the tested formula, and the whole ungodly affair is quickly homogenized.  While token fat and/or middle-agers do get through to the second round, its generally a highly conventional face-voice combination that will win X-Factor.  The opposite seems to be true with BGT, which strikes me as much more interesting and obviously better.

Also, expect to see a Paul Potts/Susan Boyle duet album and co-tour, sometime in 2009/10. They complement each other in appearance and demeanor, and as an added bonus, their surnames could not be better suited.  Their story could be a great little Potts Boyler.  If I was a more cynical I person I might even hint at a Chart Throb/Wag The Dog style conspiracy… but watching that clip of Susan, again, drains me of all such heresy.

FOUND play at The Mill, 6th October 2008

Remember FOUND, the five-piece innovators from Edinburgh?  They are off to the South by South-West festival in Texas, and are raising money for the outing by producing a new album.  In a RadioHead style gambit, they’re giving punters the chance to choose what price to pay for the collection.  I’ve gone for £7.50 because

• I’m short of cash; and
• its pretty much the amount I would have spent for eight songs on iTunes.

You could spend as much as £49 if you’re flush.

Their online marketing techniques remind me a little of the MC Yogi tactic discussed earlier: a little something for free (or in this case, below the market rate) might lead to new paying supporters later.  Appallingly though, their Flickr photos fall foul of the same Creative Commons malaise I whined about yesterday.  Since I know the musicians personally, I’m going ahead and reproducing one of their images without fear of retribution.  But guys: It doesn’t have to be this way.

Consider the Obama track in question, which has just been shortlisted on the Daily Dish’s ‘Take Back the Campaign’ competition and seems to be doing well in the ad hoc poll. As a result, it is likely to get pretty stratospheric viewing figures in the next few days. It will certainly be viewed and downloaded by more people than, say, the next British No. 1 single (two hundred and nine thousand views on YouTube, so far).

And yet, it has been provided at no cost to the consumer. How do we reconcile that with a concern for artists rights. Shouldn’t they be paid for the work they produce? Aren’t we free-riding on the back of their talent? They’ve squandered their royalties, haven’t they?

Not quite. The fact is, in this case, exposure is everything. I wouldn’t have heard of MC Yogi, and neither would Andrew Sullivan, if the track had not been available free on YouTube. The Obama track is a loss leader, a free sample. Providing free content makes economic sense. This is more true for MC Yogi, who I hadn’t heard of until last weekend, than it is for Radiohead or Prince, who both marketed their music through high profile give-aways. In these cases, there probably would be some loss of royalties.

More importantly, the free sample serves to create a loyalty amongst new customers. If they admire the free track, then they are more likely to show their appreciation but buying the full album.  As some recent research (pdf) from British Music Rights and the University of Heartfordshire shows, young people have no problem with buying music legally if they think it is good value for money.

The icing on the cake is that the medium of delivery increases margins for the artist, while at the same time decreasing costs to the consumer. Once a track or album is created, actual delivery to the end-users via MP3 download and YouTube can be achieved at minimal cost.

None of these insights are news to people working in social networking and new media. But for many people, even in the creative industries, giving something away for free still a novel approach. So it is worth pointing out positive examples of these new marketing techniques, as they happen.

“Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun!” wrote Noel Coward. I think he missed a trick: there was no corollary ditty, about mad Scotsmen going out in the rain.

Many of my recollections of peace and contentment take place in the rain. Playing cards under a canvas canopy of an eight-man Stormhaven tent on a scout-camp; Sitting at an old desk and writing a diary during the afternoon storms in Zimbabwe; Leaning against the door-frame of a rural Brazilian villa, watching clouds sweep through the valley. Sure, rain prevents you from stepping out into the street, but it also protects you. It creates a barrier you can hide behind. It isolates you like an incoming tide. It enforces privacy. Sometimes there’s nothing better to be stranded indoors by the rain. Open the window and listen to it fall.

Although, if you’re caught out in the rain, you might as well pull a Gene Kelly, and stay out. There’s a serenity to that too. A favourite quote:

There is something to be learned from a rainstorm. When meeting with a sudden shower, you try not to get wet and run quickly along the road. But doing such things as passing under the eaves of houses, you still get wet. When you are resolved from the beginning, you will not be perplexed, though you still get the same soaking. This understanding extends to everything.

A great deal of this stoicism was displayed at the weekend, at the Dialogues of Wind and Bamboo event at the Royal Botantic Gardens Edinburgh. The sky was not kind, and we were rained upon from start to finish. However, I had the sense that sheer bloody-mindedness would prevail amongst both performers and performance-goers, and that nothing would be postponed because of the weather.

And so we persisted, but some things are obviously odd when performed in the rain. No sane person would wander out and do Tai Chi in a cold, damp park, and I felt sorry for those giving a demonstration of the art, who did their best to ignore the rain. It must be extra difficult when people with brollys are stomping past. I think this point is true of the dance pieces too – the audience were probably not as relaxed as they could have been. And if you are distracted during a performance, it precludes the possibility of giving yourself over to the dance, incapable of submitting to the pure movement.

However, I think the traditional Chinese music gained something through being played in the storm. The hum of the rain was like a backing track, which bedded very well underneath the stringed notes.

Susie Brown’s installation Natural Progression, persists until 29th June. It consists of a set of painted bamboo sticks set into the ground, forming a fence-like barrier which slithers accross the lawn. Like an organic Fred Sandback installation, it delineates the open space and makes you think twice about crossing the imaginary boundaries it seems to define. It therefore takes a little courage to engage with the piece, which you can do by blowing across the tops of the bamboo to ‘play’ their notes.

Back in the RBGE glasshouse life was much drier, although the towering, anorexic palm trees occasionally drip onto you. FOUND and the Shanghai Jazz Project teamed up to give a performance. The glasshouse, with its collision of nature and human technology, is precisely the sort of odd venue I expect from FOUND. I’ve seen them in Warehouses and Chinese Kitchens, and they’ve played in portacabins before too.

FOUND are known throughout Scotland for their love of sampling stuff, mixing and remixing what they collect into their music. For this performance, we heard them sample an old 1930s Jazz recording, supplied by the Shanghai Jazz Project. We heard the familiar hiss and crackle of the old recording, and I remember thinking that this was not unlike the patter of the rain ouside.

Dialogues of Wind and Bamboo was the brainchild of Kimho Ip. Over at the project’s website, there’s an interesting podcast discussion with Stephen Blackmore, Regius Keeper, about the twin pleasures of nature and music, and their importance in the increasingly frenetic modern world.