Music

Harry Belafonte, 1927-2023

Better known as a singer, Harry Belafonte performed in a number of films and was a long-standing civil rights activist in the United States. Born in Harlem, he was the son of Jamaican parents, becoming attracted to the theatre at an early age. His first film was Bright Road in 1953. followed by Carmen Jones (1954), Island in the Sun (1957) and others. He famously turned down the role of Porgy in Otto Preminger’s film adaptation of Porgy and Bess , saying the role was racially stereotyped. From 1954 to 1961 he refused to perform in the American South. He concentrated on his singing career, but...

Misogyny is not something to sing about

Eric Lee ( Solidarity 662 ) is absolutely correct in deploring the singing of Delilah by some Welsh rugby fans. Unfortunately, popular music, folk and blues is riddled with countless examples of deeply misogynistic songs. I won’t be singing along to Hey Joe by Jimi Hendrix the next time it’s on the radio. The composer of that particular ditty, unlike the Delilah lyricist, hailed from South Carolina rather than Wigan, so the murder weapon was a gun, but the motive was the same ( I caught her messin’ round with another man ). Eric mentions the Rolling Stones changing a crucial line in Let’s...

Kino Eye: Orchestra conductors on film

I haven't seen the new film Tár (with Cate Blanchett) yet. However, there are many films which feature conductors, this being rich territory for the dramatization of massive egos and conflicts, artistic and otherwise. Amadeus (Miloš Forman, 1984) is a good example. My choice is Taking Sides (2001), an international co-production with István Szabó directing and focusing on the famous German conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler (Stellan Skarsgård) and allegations of his collaboration with the Nazis while Musical Director of the renowned Berlin Philharmonic. He is interrogated by Major Steve Arnold of...

Kino Eye: Coal Miner’s Daughter

The recent death of country and western singer Loretta Lynn evokes the biographical film Coal Miner’s Daughter (Michael Apted, 1980). With Sissy Spacek as Loretta the film traces her early life in a remote coal mining community in Kentucky, and her move with her husband (played by Tommy Lee Jones) to the Pacific North West, where her singing and musical ability is discovered. She befriends fellow country and western singer Patsy Kline and goes on to a glittering career. Her songs, many of which she wrote herself, often portrayed the hardships of her early life, as in the song Coal Miner’s...

Song not slogan

My short article on the Kinder Mass Trespass in Solidarity 633, thanks to some bizarre editing, claims that the words “I may be a wage slave on a Monday, but I am a free man on Sunday” were a slogan adopted by the trespassers. In fact they are a line from the song The Manchester Rambler , written by folk singer Ewan McColl shortly after the Trespass. I originally intended the words to form a sub-title to the article, but the editor shifted them to the main text and attributed them to a slogan. I’m too old to go clambering up Kinder Scout any more, but I hope the fine tradition of rambling. and...

Challenge is better than bans

Rapper and left-wing activist Lowkey seems to have been pressured into withdrawing from a performance at National Union of Students (NUS) conference, after the Union of Jewish Students (UJS) objected on grounds of antisemitism. Lowkey is a long-time supporter of the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign and Stop the War — but it’s not his commitment to those causes that is being attacked, at least directly. Lowkey is on the “ultra” end of left anti-Zionism, where it shades into left antisemitism. For example, he called Israel a “racist endeavour” in the middle of a row about the IHRA formula which...

80 Days and the US West

Sacha Ismail’s TV review of Around The World in 80 Days ( in Solidarity 620 ) motivated me to watch the rest of the series. Initially, judging by the first episode, hadn’t thought much of it. It does get better as the story develops and Fogg and his companions further circumnavigate the globe. The programmes make a good stab at adventure drama which can be enjoyed by both adults and children. I certainly don’t recall the updated political themes, particularly the anti racist stance, cropping up in the 1956 version starring David Niven, which I saw as a kid at The Astoria, Old Kent Road. I was...

Bessie Smith's blues are current

If you’re looking for a "straight" biography of Bessie Smith, then Jackie Kay's Bessie Smith , published by Faber, is not for you. Although Jackie Kay (Scotland’s maker, or poet laureate) has clearly done her research into Bessie Smith’s extraordinary life and gives credit to Chris Albertson’s definitive 1971 Bessie for much of the factual information she uses, this is not a conventional account of a life, but a semi-poetic description of the author’s identification and imagined relationship, with her subject. Kay writes: “I don’t know what gave me the idea … to write about my life and write...

What we owe to Chris Barber

The term “end of an era” is an over-used cliché, but with the death of Chris Barber on 2 March, it is fully justified. Trombonist Barber was the last surviving bandleader of the “trad jazz” movement that for a period in the late 1950s and into the 60s was immensely popular and competed with rock’n’roll for the allegiance of Britain’s music-loving youth. But Barber was more than a “traddie” (as they were known): over the years his highly-polished bands, made up of top-quality musicians, embraced R&B, skiffle, Ellingtonia and more modern styles of jazz. Perhaps most importantly, Barber always...

Kino Eye: Woody Guthrie on-screen

At the Biden inauguration, bejewelled Jennifer Lopez’s warbling and truncated rendering of the Woody Guthrie classic This Land is Your Land was a travesty of the real thing. Fortunately, you can go online and hear the original. There is also the semi-fictionalised film of Guthrie’s life, Bound for Glory (Hal Ashby, 1976), which covers the time from when he leaves his home in the Oklahoma Dustbowl and heads for California. Angered by what he sees in the migrant camps and the brutal treatment of migrant workers, he dedicates himself, through his songs, to fight their cause. It is rumoured that...

This website uses cookies, you can find out more and set your preferences here.
By continuing to use this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions.