My wife is currently reading the autobiography of Helen Keller, who, from a very early age, lost both her sight and hearing. I simply can’t imagine what that must be like - a very different kind of life I guess, though, certainly in Keller’s case, not without joy and a sense of fulfilment . It’s hard for anyone born (especially since the invention of broadcast sound) to conceive of a life without music; it’s all around us a lot of the time. Just step into the garden a moment: hear the radio blaring from the guys working on the loft conversion in the next street, the pounding bass of a passing car as it drives by, or the sound of a child practising piano scales.
A running theme of our past Bank Holiday weekend seems to have been popular music - not intentionally planned though, things simply fell out that way. We’d booked several months back to see Eric Bibb in concert at the Assembly Hall in Tunbridge Wells. We possess several of his albums and have always enjoyed listening to these, so it was very satisfying to get an opportunity to catch him live. He is a highly accomplished blues performer, a beautiful songwriter with a distinctive and very pleasing voice. On Sunday evening he had a band of excellent musicians and backing vocalists accompanying him. His daughter Yana Bibb, a skilled jazz vocalist, provided the support for the first part of the evening. The Bibb family are something of a musical dynasty: Eric Bibb’s father Leon was very active in the New York folk music scene of the 60’s, his godfather was the legendary Paul Robeson and his uncle was the jazz pianist and composer John Lewis. You get the feeling that the musical luminaries of the sixties like Bob Dylan, Judy Collins, Odetta etc regularly dropped by the Bibb family home like my mother’s neighbours in the valleys of South Wales used to pop round to borrow a cup of sugar. Eric Bibb himself moved to Sweden in the Seventies and now lives in Finland. I see one of the dates he has for his current tour is Porthcawl in South Wales - a favoured holiday destination of my family’s when I was a child. I’d love to see him again if I had the opportunity and excuse to pay a visit to Wales at the end of the month! He’s playing at a number of locations all over the UK - so I hope you take the opportunity to see him. Check out Eric Bibb's website for details.
A running theme of our past Bank Holiday weekend seems to have been popular music - not intentionally planned though, things simply fell out that way. We’d booked several months back to see Eric Bibb in concert at the Assembly Hall in Tunbridge Wells. We possess several of his albums and have always enjoyed listening to these, so it was very satisfying to get an opportunity to catch him live. He is a highly accomplished blues performer, a beautiful songwriter with a distinctive and very pleasing voice. On Sunday evening he had a band of excellent musicians and backing vocalists accompanying him. His daughter Yana Bibb, a skilled jazz vocalist, provided the support for the first part of the evening. The Bibb family are something of a musical dynasty: Eric Bibb’s father Leon was very active in the New York folk music scene of the 60’s, his godfather was the legendary Paul Robeson and his uncle was the jazz pianist and composer John Lewis. You get the feeling that the musical luminaries of the sixties like Bob Dylan, Judy Collins, Odetta etc regularly dropped by the Bibb family home like my mother’s neighbours in the valleys of South Wales used to pop round to borrow a cup of sugar. Eric Bibb himself moved to Sweden in the Seventies and now lives in Finland. I see one of the dates he has for his current tour is Porthcawl in South Wales - a favoured holiday destination of my family’s when I was a child. I’d love to see him again if I had the opportunity and excuse to pay a visit to Wales at the end of the month! He’s playing at a number of locations all over the UK - so I hope you take the opportunity to see him. Check out Eric Bibb's website for details.
The reason why I said our weekend had a musical theme was because we also watched the George Harrison documentary, Living in the Material World, directed by Martin Scorsese. This is a film in two parts, beautifully realised through hundreds of clips and interviews with those who knew George. If you grew up in the Sixties as I did, The Beatles were inescapably part of your life. And George, the youngest of the four, was in many ways the most fascinating and complex character, often upstaged by Paul and John in the song-writing stakes, he too created some wonderful songs including Something, While My Guitar Gently Weeps, My Sweet Lord and dozens more. If you haven’t seen this film (I’d caught about half of the second part on TV a few years back)and if you’re interested in The Beatles, The Sixties, George Harrison, or all three, this is an excellent film which I can highly recommend.
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