Here’s details on the last two Nest Collective’s Campfire Club shows for July, continuing a season which has already seen a sheaf of singer-songwriters, Western folk traditionalist, griot musicians, choirs, chamber jazz bands, storytellers and folk-rappers temporarily take over London’s more obscure green spaces and playgrounds for various unamplified concert evenings, giving us doses of round-the-globe musicianship, occasional sedition and general acoustic glory.
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Easy bit first…
The month’s sixth and final concert, on 27th July, features Teesside folk trio The Young’uns, who “have cemented their reputation at the forefront of the English folk scene in the last few years. As Colin Irwin put it, in ‘The Guardian’, “the harmonies are glorious, the wit is waspish. The songs are powerful, the banter is relentless and the audience is happy. What’s not to like?” Having taken their uplifting voices, powerful songs, spine tingling harmonies and raucous humour to audiences across the UK and around the world, The Young’uns won the title of ‘Best Group’ at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Award in 2015 and 2016. They returned in 2017 with an extensive October UK tour and an eagerly anticipated new album, ’Strangers’ – a collection of folk songs for our times; a homage to the outsider, a eulogy for the wayfarer and a hymn for the migrant.”
The preceding fifth concert, on 26th July, is a little more complicated.
Replacing Anglo-African folk-griot trio Koral Society is Pete Yelding. A cellist and singer-songwriter who grew up as a classical string player, Pete found his true musical self by diversifying into sitar, into playing in rock bands and with rave jam bands, and in his collaborations with Mandinka Griots and Gnawa musicians from west Africa. Rootswise, he comes from a travelling show people background of caravans, off-grid communes and circus pitches. All of this informs the music which he creates now, from prolonged classical-folk song crossovers to jazzy Arthur Russell-ish diary musings to highly processed mingled-instrumental dronework.
Headlining is Abatwa (the pigmy), the project name for a group of genuine Rwandan Pigmies – or, more correctly, Batwa people – fitting in a London show immediately prior to their appearance at WOMAD the following Sunday. Both performances have come about due to last year’s release of the album ‘Abatwa: Why Did We Stop Growing Tall?’, Batwa recordings compiled by Ian Brennan – producer, writer, lecturer, activist and self-taught ethnologist and and someone who’s led a broader and more meaningful life than most, in which twenty years of work in anger management, violence prevention and conflict resolution in various places and situations across the world has run in parallel with socially-conscious music promotion and with record production. In particular, Ian’s been an exemplar for capturing unvarnished field recordings of imperfect but natural performers – ordinary people simply singing and playing the music from their own cultures rather than representing it as any kind of cultural stars.
This partially (although obviously not wholly) explains why I know more about Ian than I do about the Batwa he recorded; or, indeed, whichever particular Batwa are playing at the west London art studios which Nest Collective have taken over for the evening. The ‘Abatwa’ album itself features Batwa singers, Batwa instrumentalists and (overturning any ideas of hermetic cultural purity) Batwa rappers. Ian has described their nation as “one of the most marginalized, voiceless and endangered populations in Africa. In fact, their name is frequently taken in vain as a slur towards unrelated others. Historically, the tallest Abatwa women have attracted outside attention and then been taken as wives by other tribes. This has contributed to the growth of their tribe remaining limited physically. Though for the most part they were left alone during the (Rwandan) genocide, some members of the tribe actually participated in committing acts of genocide.”.
Nothing’s straightforward here; and while the complexity and contradictions of this story and this music are probably more than a single concert will be capable of revealing. We can hope for some of the album’s original performers – including rapper Rosine Nyiranshimiyimana, traditionalist master musician Emmanuel Hatungimana, and Umuduli music-bow family players/voice harmonizers Ruth Nyiramfumukoye and Patrick Manishimine – but whatever shape the show takes, it should at least provide a window onto a neglected, threatened world, and perhaps more.
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Dates and links:
- Campfire Club: Abatwa (the pygmy) + Pete Yelding – Kindred Studios, 18 Saltram Crescent, West Kilburn, London, W9 3HW, England, Thursday 26th July 2018, 7.00pm – information here and here
- Campfire Club: The Young’uns – Glengall Wharf Garden, 64 Glengall Road, Peckham, London, SE15 6NF, England, Friday 27th July 2018, 7.00pm – information here and here
Misfit City 
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