Tuesday 9 December 2008

Quote of the week from Jimmy McGovern, cited by Russell T Davies in Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe on screenwriting last week: "I would rather be confused for 10 minutes than bored for 5 seconds". 

I was listening the new Gotan project live album again this week - well, half-listening to it: good as it is, it's long on feel and short on content - and it made me think about how difficult it would be to do something similar with Scottish music. With their stuff, a track starts, and you can instantly tell it's tango even though the tune or the singer doesn't come in for another couple of minutes. The beat and the groove just have certain inflections and vocabulary. But you can't do that with Scottish traditional music, because there's no accepted accompaniment style that has sufficient character to carry a sense of identity. Why's that then?

I'm having to readjust to playing again, learning Hertel partitas and reading soprano clef. It's disposable music really, but good fun.

Just space for a quick plug for Sandy Semeonoff's show on Celtic Music Radio next Tuesday, 'cos he's playing one of my tunes along with some Buddhist funeral music from Thailand ...