Geography and all that Jazz

Welcome to the Real World Real World is a record label founded by Peter Gabriel and responsible for some of the most exciting and innovative music over the last 20 years or so... Some of my favourite music has been released on Real World records. There are 2 new releases which are very much GEOGRAPHICAL in nature. Here is the new version of the 'willow pattern' cover image for the first release... The first is the IMAGINED VILLAGE , which I have posted about before... This is a project to re-imagine English 'folk music' for the new century. Some superb new interpretations of traditional tunes. The second is the soundtrack for the LONG WAY DOWN TV programme, which did get a bit samey with the endless "oh look, we've fallen off our bikes again" and could have been edited down to 4 programmes sensibly... Some impressive landscapes, and a great adventure for the people involved... The sountrack is brilliant though and includes the magic of Martyn Bennett, ...

Didn't get to Womad this year, but have just ordered my copy of 'The Imagined Village', which sounds like it would be just my thing and also has a link with Cultural Geography and 'Englishness'... The following text is taken from the REAL WORLD / WOMAD website. "Every age re-invents the past to its own fancy. When Edwardian song collector Cecil Sharp roamed England, he imagined the country’s history as a rural idyll, filled with flower meadows and genial shepherds, even though the songs he found were frequently about poverty, death and fornication with faeries. Later, when the rock generation embraced the folk tradition, it was precisely these sexual and supernatural elements that appealed to singers and players like Anne Briggs, Fairport Convention and Robert Plant. Albion became, as it was to William Blake, a land of mystery and wonder. Later, in the 1980s, with acts like Billy Bragg, The Levellers and The Pogues, folk became a defiant snub to an authoritari...