Another Saturday Night on BBC London 94.9 FM

1 April 06

Sue Steward and Seasick Steve

For the second week running, a sense of amusement and delight coloured everything our ping pong guest said.

As journalist, picture researcher and DJ, Sue Steward was ahead of the world music game before it started, being on the editorial team that launched Collusion back in 1980. The term world music didn’t exist then, and as the magazine ranged wider than any advertiser or marketing department could cope with, it didn’t last long. But every issue has become a collectors’ item.

Next, Sue Steward and Gerry Lyseight launched the Mambo Inn in the conviction that Londoners might like to dance to something other than house and pop. It took a while to prove their point, but with Max Reinhardt and Rita Ray added to the DJ team, the Mambo Inn became a South London institution.

Sue dropped to the DJ substitute bench as she set out to research and write a book, Salsa: Musical Heartbeat of Latin America (Thames and Hudson, 1999), which is still the best introduction to this music, based around interviews with all the main participants still alive at the time, admirably concise and sumptuously illustrated. Long-time live music reviewer for the Daily Telegraph and Evening Standard, Sue has also been a regular contributor to Straight No Chaser, Songlines and The Observer Music Magazine.

Tonight’s visit was triggered by two related events in London, the annual La Linea Festival of Latin American music which spreads across several venues throughout April, and Tropicalia at the Barbican. The latter combines an art exhibition with a series of concerts featuring virtually all the main participants in the explosion of art and music with a political and social edge in Brazil in the late 1960s and early ‘70s, that led to several singers being exiled to London. The roster is remarkably comprehensive, including Gilberto Gil, Caetano Veloso, Gal Costa, Jorge Ben, Tom Zé, Os Mutantes.

Between us, Sue and I previewed some of the artists appearing at these two events, while taking side trips to celebrate the hybrid inventions of Beck and David Byrne, Seu Jorge and Free Hole Negro.

In the middle of all this, sat Seasick Steve. Now resident of Norway, but irretrievably American, Steve has lived more lives than a cat, many of them involving freight trains, flop houses and fragments of fleeting love. Steve made his first album just after he passed his sixtieth birthday, and now he’s ready to put out another. Tonight he sang two songs from the new one, delivering wry epigrams in his beguilingly believable voice as his guitar added the commas, full stops, question-and-exclamation marks. This was his third live session with us, and he’s welcome back anytime. Steve plays the Spitz on Wednesday, opening a blues festival there with Son of Dave on the same bill. Irresistible, unmissable.

Full details all gigs in Alan Finkel’s Live in London on the menu bar above.

Book for La Linea at the ¡Como No! website, http://tinyurl.com/h2jex and for Tropicalia at the Barbican’s - www.barbican.org.uk/tropicalia/

Many thanks to the Radio Academy for the surprise Award last Thursday: http://tinyurl.com/ev4w3

The programme is live from 8 till 10 every Saturday Night, broadcast on FM radio in the London area (BBC London 94.49), on Sky TV throughout the UK and online worldwide at www.bbc.co.uk/london where it is archived for the next seven days in the Listen Again facility.

If you have any comments, queries and corrections, please post them in the Feedback forum where they can spark off further reactions from other listener/readers.

The Live in London information that inspires the last 30 minutes of each programme is drawn from a much fuller listing compiled for the website by Alan Finkel.

On Demand archives for both the BBC London and World Service shows (see below) are linked from the menu bar at the top of this page where your comments, questions and corrections are welcome in the Feedback forum.

The Radio Archive at Mondomix hosts a dozen highlight programmes from the past, including Emmanuel Jal from Jan 28th, and last year’s shows with Damon Albarn, Darko Rundek, Brian Eno, Sierra Maestra and Explainer, the celebration of the music of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and the live show from WOMAD Reading with Lura, Oki, Huun Huur Tu and Chango Spasiuk.

Your comments, questions and corrections are welcome in the 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.

The Radio Archive at Mondomix hosts a dozen highlight programmes from the past, including Emmanuel Jal from Jan 28th, and last year’s shows with Damon Albarn, Darko Rundek, Brian Eno, Sierra Maestra and Explainer, the celebration of the music of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and the live show from WOMAD Reading with Lura, Oki, Huun Huur Tu and Chango Spasiuk..

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 to the archive of weekly playlists.

Guest pics by Alan Finkel

In the playlist below tracks marked with an asterisk were chosen by Sue