Another Saturday
Night on BBC London 94.9 FM
15 October 05
Ben, Matthaios, Tigran & Mostafa
 Regular
listener and forum contributor Norman Druker summed it up:
"Very
good show last night. Ben M. is a very good guest - sharp, humourous, knowledgeable
and articulate, and - most of all - incredibly unassuming. He's got such a lot
he could be arrogant about, and he certainly isn't; he just came across as a
very nice fellow. Great selection of music all round too. The Django/Grappelli
track was perfect, not a note out of place."
My first
radio encounter with Ben Mandelson was in 1983, soon after I had switched from
playing pop music to focusing on what we now call world music. I shamelessly
invited guests who knew far more than I did to provide me with a crash course
in music I had overlooked, trying to make up for a lifetime of blinkered ignorance.
Not yet confident enough to consider the ping pong format of alternating choices
with the guest, I invited experts to choose a dozen records each.
Tonight,
Ben arrived with a CD copy of that first programme (6 August 1983), and briefly
considered limiting his selections to those he had played back then. His range
of interest and expertise was already formidable – including Kenya, Louisiana,
Greece, South Africa, Guadeloupe and Sam Liberman’s Jewish orchestra from
Argentina. In the event Ben limited himself to replaying just one from that
previous show, a 45 rpm single by DO7 Shirati Jazz, and marveled that he could
never have imagined in 1983 that he would subsequently produce an album with
the Kenyan group.
In the twenty-two
years since then, Ben has been a man of many roles, including:
1. Guitarist
and mischievous conspirator in the 3 Mustaphas 3, a large band of British musicians
who each adopted the last name of Mustapha and pretended to originate in the
Balkans. Ben was “Hijaz Mustapha”. The band toured widely for several
years, inspiring other musicians around the world to form similar or parallel
ensembles, including Think of One (in Antwerp, Belgium) and 17 Hippies (in Berlin,
who coincidentally make their London debut this week, at the Spitz on Saturday
22 October).
2. A&R
man at Globestyle Records, the world music label of Ace Records. Almost 100
albums - compilations, reissues (notably launching the international career
of the Israeli singer, Ofra Haza) and original productions by Ben himself, often
recorded in difficult circumstances in countries with scant resources, including
Bosnia, Kenya, Mozambique, Madagascar and Zanzibar. Ace Records’ director
Roger Armstrong was a vital ally and co-producer on many of these trips, and
the duo were prime organisers of the legendary meeting in a London pub that
led to the coining of the term ‘world music’ in 1987.
3. Co-founder
of WOMEX, the annual international world music trade fair (which convenes in
the UK for first time at the end of this month, at the Sage, Gateshead).
4. Independent
producer, supervising several exceptional albums by the Egyptian group, Salamat
(when Ben was still calling himself Hijaz Mustapha), and most recently the marvelous
albums by Chango Spasiuk and Shiyani Ngcobo.
5. Guitarist
in the Blokes, the touring band of Billy Bragg.
[In a previous
life, Ben played guitar in the Amazorblades whose 45 rpm single on Chiswick
established the connection with Ace Records that has survived ever since, in
Howard Devoto’s Magazine, and in Orchestra Jazira, a London-based hi-life
band whose debut 12” 45 launched the Earthworks label.]
If the
volume of activity is formidable, so too is the quality – there are few
guitarists who can match Ben’s combination of technical accomplishment
and emotional impact. He plays exactly the right thing, when and where it is
needed.
In conversation,
Ben is liable to drop a phrase that is so funny and truthful, it takes a while
to recover from our laughter. And yet he sometimes conveys the sense of a man
slightly disappointed in himself, as if he could do better if only he applied
himself properly. The rest of us can only try to convey to him our awe and appreciation,
to express our gratitude and admiration, not only for what he has done, but
for who he is.
 Tonight’s
action-packed show also featured the first ever performance together by two
London-based musicians who had each impressed as part of small groups in live
sessions on previous broadcasts. Matthaios Tsahourides played pontic lyric with
the Greek singer Athena Andreadis, and Armenian musician Tigran Aleksanyan played
duduk with two Israeli women, bass player Daphna Sadeh and vocalist Yasmin Levy.
When I asked
each of them if they would be happy to play together tonight, Matthaios and
Tigran both said yes so easily and quickly, I did not realise that they had
literally never met each other before. In the hour before the show started,
they soon found much common ground as they conferred over matters of tuning
and timing, what kind of wood their instruments were made of, and who would
play what and when. Rhythmic accompaniment was provided by Iranian percussionist
Mostafa Shams, who also played with Tigran at Chilli Fried South at the Ritzy
later on the evening.
Ben Mandelson
was particularly delighted to witness this musical match-making, as he had long
been convinced that they would make a very special combination. Where is the
record label, he asked out loud, which will commission him to produce their
album?
The
programme is broadcast from 8 to 10 every Saturday Night on BBC London 94.9,
on digital (DAB) radio and on the web at www.bbc.co.uk/london
where, as always, this show can be heard for the next seven days until it’s
replaced by next week’s.
This site contains a full listing of all the upcoming gigs mentioned on the
show, stretching for several months ahead, which is displayed by activating
the "What's Going On" link on the menu bar above. If you have pertinent
information regarding live music in the London area, send it straight to Alan
Finkel
Your comments,
questions and corrections are welcome in the Feedback forum, link above on the
navigation bar, where there are separate topics for reactions by listeners to
each of the current weekly shows, on BBC London and the World Service.
A selected
archive of programmes is available at the Mondomix site - http://www.mondomix.com/en/radios.php
- where this year’s shows with Mariza, Waldemar Bastos and Toumani Diabaté
from the menu bar Choose a Programme.
Alternatively,
they are available from the Archives on Mondomix drop down
list from the menu bar at the top of this page. They are also individually linked
from headphone icons, recently added by Zee Nagre to the archive of weekly playlists.
Four shows
from last year are also available – Ping Pongs with David Byrne (April),
Aiwa (September) and Mavis Staples (Christmas Day) and the live broadcast from
WOMAD Reading (July) featuring Tinariwen, Laye Sow, Malouma and Carolina Herrera.
I also
present a weekly 26-minute world music show The Sound of the World on the BBC
World Service, broadcast four times a week in a 24-hour cycle, Tuesday-to-Thursday.
Exact times vary from region to region throughout the world. In the UK, the
programme can be heard four times throughout the day on digital radio, and at
2.30 every Tuesday morning on Radio 4. And it is available On Demand online
for seven days.
The playlist is posted in two places: at the World Service’s own site
and in the feedback forum of mine.
The link
at the top of this page leads you to the On Demand archive for the World Service
shows.
My annual
compilation Sound of the World is out now (Wrasse WRASS 169). It’s on
sale at Amazon.co.uk, which shows an early draft of the sleeve and an entirely
inaccurate running order, but you will get the right record with the correct
tracks in the proper order: http://tinyurl.com/afddr
Guest
Images by Alan Finkel.
In
the playlist below, tracks marked with an asterisk were chosen by Ben.
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