'The Power Broker' by Robert Caro

18 December 2024

When we saw David Hare’s play ‘Straight Line Crazy’, about the legendary New York urban planner Robert Moses, a couple of years ago (reviewed here in April 2022) I suggested that the two main incidents dramatised in the play would have made brilliant episodes of the design podcast '99% Invisible’. So when I learned, in December 2023, that ‘99% Invisible’ was planning to spend the whole of 2024 running an extended ‘online book club’ to celebrate the 50th anniversary of ‘The Power Broker’ - Robert Caro's Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Robert Moses - I was immediately on board. ‘The Power Broker’ is a monumental 1,300-page work which masterfully chronicles how Moses, never elected to public office, became one of New York's most influential figures. He transformed the state through ambitious park and highway projects, while his ruthless approaches to securing and maintaining power developed a horrific web of corruption, prejudice and racism. ‘The Power Broker’ is brilliantly written and meticulously researched: Robert Caro conducted 522 interviews with those with firsthand experience of the relevant events - including Moses himself - and took seven years to write the book. I have been reading roughly 100 pages each month, in time to listen to each of the 12 monthly podcast episodes reflecting on the relevant chapters and featuring guests including Pete Buttigieg and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Incredibly Robert Caro, now aged 89, is still writing (trying to complete the fifth volume of his mammoth biography of Lyndon B Johnson) and it was fascinating to hear him interviewed on the podcast. As 2024 draws to a close, I feel a sense of accomplishment joining the select group who have read the whole of ‘The Power Broker’ and I'm struck by how its themes of power, urban planning, and social equity remain startlingly relevant today, 50 years after its publication. You can find more details about the 99% Invisible Breakdown of The Power Broker and listen to the podcasts at: https://99percentinvisible.org/club/

Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert

17 December 2024

For the past 25 years the Northampton Symphony Orchestra’s annual Christmas Cracker concert has, for me, marked the start of the festive season. This Sunday afternoon family-friendly event is always huge fun and this year’s concert, at the Spinney Theatre in Northampton last Sunday, attracted a large, enthusiastic audience. Alongside a few Christmas carols and Leroy Anderson’s ‘Sleigh Ride’ we always include a narrated piece. This year’s choice, Iain Farrington’s ‘The Scary Fairy Saves Christmas’ was new to most of us but incredibly enjoyable. The words, by Craig Charles, written in rhyming couplets, are dark, mischievous, witty, occasionally controversial and very funny - assembling a cast of goblins, elves, witches and dwarves to create a bleakly comic version of ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’. Our performance, narrated by William Thallon, went extremely well, with conductor John Gibbons co-ordinating the complicated joins between music and narration in this long piece very effectively. The rest of the programme included ‘A Christmas Dance’ - Frank Bridge’s lovely interweaving of the folk dance ‘Sir Roger de Coverley’ (which is mentioned in Charles Dickens' ‘A Christmas Carol’) with ‘Auld Lang Syne’. And, following our recent performance of  JS Bach’s 'Toccata and Fugue' arranged by Stokowski, on Sunday we played another piece from 'Fantasia', ‘The Sorcerer’s Apprentice’ by Paul Dukas. This is a notoriously difficult piece (particularly as it is so well known) but I think our performance was very impressive, featuring brilliant performances by the bassoonists, Sian Bunker, Tim Hewitt, Heather Pretty and Frank Jordan. We always include some film music in the Christmas Cracker and this year we concluded the concert with selections from the ‘Harry Potter Children’s Suite’ by John Williams. This kept William Thallon busy as he both played the iconic celeste theme and read new verse introductions to each of the movements, written specially for the concert by Frank Jordan. The movements from the suite featured the different sections of the orchestra in turn (with excellent recorder playing by Graham Tear and Helen Taylor and dramatic violin solo by Richard Smith in ‘Diagon Alley’), before bringing us all together in ‘Harry’s Wondrous World’, introduced in Frank’s words:

So as the season casts its spell,
We wish you joy and hope as well.
May Christmas shine, bright and true,
With magic and wonder surrounding you.
Merry Magical Christmas!

The NSO Horns at Hogwarts

'The Proof of My Innocence' by Jonathan Coe

13 December 2024

Jonathan Coe is one of my favourite writers and I particularly enjoy his novels that set fictional events against the backdrop of recent British Politics - from the Thatcher Government of the 1980s (in 'What a Carve Up!') to New Labour (in 'The Closed Circle') to Cameron's Coalition Government (in 'Number 11’, reviewed here in January 2016) to Brexit (in 'Middle England', reviewed here in January 2019). His latest book, 'The Proof of My Innocence', which I have just finished reading (as an unabridged audio book, narrated by Sam Woolf, Alana Maria, Charlotte Worthing, Mark Stobbart and Roy McMillan) is set during Liz Truss's 49-day tenure as Prime Minister. While it does explore the Conservative Party's lurch to the right, 'The Proof of My Innocence' is also a murder mystery, with Coe parodying the current trend of 'cosy crime' novels (much like Kate Atkinson did in her recent Jackson Brodie novel 'Death at the Sign of the Rook', reviewed here in October 2024). But overall it's a novel about writing, where nothing is quite what it first seems (even the title has a double meaning). Much like David Lodge's 'Therapy' this is a novel where it pays to think about who is telling each section of the story. Like David Lodge, Jonathan Coe writes accessible, entertaining prose that is much cleverer than it first appears. 'The Proof of My Innocence' is not his funniest work but it is a very enjoyable and satisfying puzzle.

'Just Another Missing Person' by Gillian McAllister

13 December 2024

Gillian McAllister writes crime thrillers that are meticulously plotted and genuinely scary, with twists that repeatedly pull the ground out from underneath the reader. Having enjoyed her previous three books I have now finished her latest novel 'Just Another Missing Person'. This appears to be a fairly conventional tale of the police investigating the disappearance of a young woman, but it quickly becomes much more complicated. Each chapter is presented through the eyes of one of the main protagonists but we are never properly introduced to these narrators so we naturally make assumptions about their role in the story, misleading ourselves ahead of the inevitable plot twists. This is fiction you have to read squinting between your fingers at times but it is always gripping.

'Come From Away' by Irene Sankoff and David Hein

5 December 2024

On 11 September 2001, when US air space was closed following the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre, 38 transatlantic flights that were in the air en route to America were diverted to the airport in Gander, Newfoundland. This tiny Canadian town had a usefully large airfield because it was built as a refuelling stop in the days when planes couldn't make it from Europe to the States in one hop. Suddenly, on 9/11, the 9,000 inhabitants of Gander were faced with accommodating the unexpected arrival of 7,000 tired, confused and scared passengers who had not yet been told why their flights couldn't continue to the USA. In 2013 the remarkable story of the Newfoundlanders' hospitality became a very successful stage musical, 'Come From Away' with book, music and lyrics by Irene Sankoff and David Hein, and on Saturday we were at Milton Keynes Theatre to see it. 'Come From Away' is a lovely show - moving, poignant, funny and inspirational. It uses ensemble narration, with each member of the large cast stepping up in turn to tell us the story of those few incredible days, while constantly rearranging chairs to become passengers on an airplane or customers in a bar etc. The music - provided by a lively on-stage band - draws on the folk music of the Canadian maritime provinces with its Celtic influences. The musical doesn't shy away from the painful reality of the terrorist attacks but it's ultimately a celebration of humanity and the entire sold out audience of 1,400 people rose to their feet at the end in genuine warmth. Do go to see 'Come From Away' if you get the chance.

Mozart Requiem

28 November 2024

On Saturday we made a first visit to the Bristol Beacon concert hall to see a performance of Mozart’s Requiem with Bristol Ensemble. This was the culmination of Massive Mozart - a Bristol Beacon Community Programme project. 214 local singers had spent the day working with the choral conductor Jeremy Jackman. Their performance was very impressive: it was lovely to hear such a large chorus and the orchestra and soloists (Harriet Eyley, Samantha Price, Elgan Llyr Thomas and Benson Wilson) were all excellent.

Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert

20 November 2024

Back in the summer, when I told a group of my friends who have rarely or never been to see me play in the Northampton Symphony Orchestra, that our next concert was going to include Holst's 'The Planets', they all immediately booked tickets, months in advance. And they were not the only ones who wanted to see this particularly popular piece of classical music: our performance sold out weeks ago and we amassed a waiting list of 80 people hoping for returns. On Saturday evening our packed audience, huge orchestra and women's chorus meant there wasn't a spare seat in Christchurch, Northampton. The first half of the concert started with Leopold Stokowski's arrangement of the 'Toccata and Fugue' by JS Bach - famously conducted by Stokowski alongside Mickey Mouse in 'Fantasia'. We then played the 'Four Last Songs' by Richard Strauss - one of my favourite pieces of music - with the excellent Northampton-based Irish soprano Alison Roddy (who sang Hamilton Harty’s setting of ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ with NSO last year, reviewed here in June 2023). Alison gave a stunning performance and the orchestra’s leader Richard Smith played the achingly beautiful violin solo in ‘Beim Schlafengehen’ wonderfully. I had previously played the 'Four Last Songs' with the City of Peterborough Symphony Orchestra (twice), Milton Keynes Sinfonia and Northampton Symphony Orchestra but Saturday was the first time I have played the first horn part with its gorgeous solo in 'September'. This was a nerve-racking and emotional moment for me as it brought back memories of the last time we played the 'Four Last Songs' with NSO in 2010 (reviewed here in November 2010) when the horn solo was played beautifully by David Lack in his first appearance with the orchestra for 18 months after treatment for cancer. Dave died in 2014 and is still fondly remembered and much missed. 'The Planets' by Gustav Holst is in the top ten most popular requests from BBC Radio 4’s ‘Your Desert Island Discs’. It's a piece many of us grew up knowing: my Mum and Dad had a LP of 'The Planets' which my brother and I used to play over and over when we were little. We last performed 'The Planets' with NSO at the Derngate in Northampton in 2011 (reviewed here in June 2011). Every performance feels like a very special occasion. The piece requires a vast orchestra (including two harps, two timpanists, organ and quadruple winds) plus a women's chorus whose ethereal wordless harmonies drift us off into outer space at the end of the final movement 'Neptune'. I thought our performance on Saturday went incredibly well. Conductor John Gibbons kept us from wallowing in the weightier moments, maintaining a brisk delicacy to many of the movements that demonstrated how well written and orchestrated this popular piece is. Getting to know 'The Planets' again over the past few months I can see its influence on so much of the best film music. This was the first time I have played the first horn part in 'The Planets' and I enjoyed playing the exposed solos at the beginning of 'Venus'. There were brilliant solos from across the orchestra (too many to mention them all but I was particularly impressed by Peter May's tenor tuba solo in 'Mars'). And the women from the Northampton Bach Choir provided a chillingly beautiful delicate moment to finish an amazing concert. We livestreamed our performance of 'The Planets' to give those who hadn't managed to get tickets a chance to see it and you can watch the recording at: https://www.youtube.com/live/hfZlcSSB1AQ?si=NhFFuVbqccyOFEzU (wind forwards to 21 mins).

Bellowhead

15 November 2024

On Sunday, almost exactly nine years since we saw the great folk big band Bellowhead at the Riverside Theatre in Aylesbury on their farewell tour (reviewed here in November 2015), we were back at the Riverside to see the glorious return of Bellowhead. Initially reunited for a one-off live online performance in 2020 (reviewed here in December 2020) Bellowhead are now touring again and it was wonderful to see them live once more. The band seemed to be having a ball and you could feel the warmth from an enthusiastic sold-out audience that was revelling in an opportunity they had not expected to come around again. Bellowhead paid tribute to their former colleague Paul Sartin who died of a heart attack in 2022, at the age of 51. But this was a joyous celebration of which he would have been proud. I think I had a smile on my face through the whole performance: this is life-affirming joyous music, performed with gusto, mischief and glee. Possibly the best gig I have ever been to. This fan video from their recent appearance in Nottingham gives a flavour of the atmosphere on this reunion tour: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiD6-yBYqwM

'Othello' by William Shakespeare

7 November 2024

On Saturday we were at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon to see Tim Carroll’s new RSC production of ‘Othello’. After seeing Clint Dyer’s National Theatre production of ‘Othello’ set in a 1930s fascist state (reviewed here in March 2023) and Iqbal Khan’s RSC production in a contemporary setting with scenes of water-boarding and torture (reviewed here in June 2015), this was a much more conventional version of the play. Judith Bowden’s sparse set features a bare stage without furniture and simple but effective use of gauze curtains and beautiful Elizabethan costumes. This simplicity serves to focus all our attention on the acting, which is excellent throughout. The four principals are particularly strong: The English-American actor John Douglas Thompson plays Othello with an American accent, emphasising his role as the outsider; Will Keen is a quietly hissing Iago; Juliet Rylance’s Desdemona has a confident, cheerful positivity; and Anastasia Hille as Emilia visibly wears her guilt for the support she knows she should not have given Iago. James Oxley’s unaccompanied choral music (sung by the cast) provides a beautiful but sinister backdrop to the emerging tragedy.

Tom Robinson

1 November 2024

We are long-time fans of Tom Robinson (last reviewed here in January 2024) and last Friday we made a first visit to Club 85 in Hitchin to see the latest incarnation of the Tom Robinson Band playing songs from the albums ‘Power in the Darkness’ (1978) and ‘TRB Two’ (1979). As always Tom introduced in the support slot a young musician he has been championing on his BBC 6 Music radio show. Rob Green is a 19-year-old alt-soul/pop singer songwriter from Nottingham who writes lovely thoughtful songs and gave a very cheerful, confident performance. The Tom Robinson Band were in great form. You can see their encore performance of ‘War Baby’ featuring Tom, Lee Forsyth Griffiths and Rob Green at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzyR84nrPrI

Henry Normal and Nigel Planer

23 October 2023

I've been a fan of the poet/comedian Henry Normal for 30 years: I last saw him at the Ampthill Literary Festival in 2022 (reviewed here in April 2022). One of the first times I saw him was on our first ever visit to the Edinburgh International Book Festival in 1995 when he appeared alongside the comedian and actor Nigel Planer. This was a fascinating and memorable session in which Nigel Planer, who had been writing poetry since his teens, read some of his poems in public for the first time. He was incredibly nervous and Henry Normal was very supportive. So it was fascinating this week - almost 30 years later - to get to see Henry Normal and Nigel Planer on stage together again at The Stables in Wavendon. Nigel Planer has now published several books of poetry and a novel and was much more confident, his delivery showing his skill as an actor. After performing separately the two of them came together for a Q&A session which reflected on their careers across TV, film and radio and their memories of working with Rik Mayall, Adrian Edmondson, Linda Smith, Steve Coogan and others.

BBC Young Musician 2024

23 October 2024

I've followed the biennial BBC Young Musician competition closely since it started in 1978 and I have written here about it every two years since 2006. You can read all my previous posts about BBC Young Musician at: http://culturaldessert.blogspot.com/search/label/BBCYoungMusician. BBC Young Musician 2024, which came to its climax last weekend, saw some significant changes to the format, doing away with the instrumental categories that have defined the competition since it began. Rather than separating the contestants into strings, woodwind, brass, piano and percussion until the grand final, this year 50 young musicians were auditioned to select the 12 best players, regardless of instrument. Two quarter finals and a semi-final then reduced the field to 3 for the concerto final (broadcast on Sunday). I was surprised how well this radical change worked: it allowed the same three judges to oversee the entire competition (rather than having specialists for each of the instrument categories) and by broadcasting excerpts of all 50 auditions the television audience saw many more young musicians than in previous years and saw more of those who made it right through to the final, building our understanding of their personalities and musicality. But the lack of categories did seem to further favour string players and pianists (who were already the most common overall winners of the competition) - with no brass players or percussionists (and only two wind players) making it beyond the initial auditions. (Though I suppose you could argue that the category format may have previously prevented many more outstanding pianists or string players from getting to the concerto final.) The standard of contestants seemed even higher than in previous years, with many 'wow' moments throughout the various rounds. And I think Sunday's concerto final at Bristol Beacon was one of the best ever, in that I think all three finalists will go on to be well-known professional musicians - comparable with the 2016 final (which featured Sheku Kanneh-Mason, Ben Goldscheider and Jess Gillam - now firmly established as the perfect TV presenter for BBC Young Musician). But I did have some criticisms of the final. After the 2022 final restored the incredible spectacle of a concert consisting of five full concertos it was a great shame that we were restricted to three concertos again this year. And, by doing away with the instrumental categories, for the first time ever the final featured two musicians playing the same instrument. The fact that both pianists then chose to play the same concerto (Rachmaninov's 2nd Piano Concerto) was an amazing and fascinating twist but even further reduced the sense of the final as a concert. Comparing two very different performances of the same work was surprisingly compelling - and reminded me of the experience of playing the Rachmaninov 2nd Piano Concerto with the Northampton Symphony Orchestra in two consecutive concerts in 2019 with two different pianists who took contrasting approaches to the piece (reviewed here in October and November 2019). I was also disappointed that the concerto final was not broadcast live. Knowing that it had been recorded a few weeks ago made me paranoid about accidentally reading something online that would give away who won - making me feel like Bob and Terry in that episode of 'The Likely Lads' where they are desperately trying to avoid finding out the result of a football match so they can watch the highlights later without knowing. The insights into each movement of the concertos provided by BBC National Orchestra of Wales conductor Ben Gernon were really interesting and helpful but inserting these video clips between the movements in the broadcast ruined the atmosphere of the live performance. I was surprised by the dropping of the tradition of a performance at the end of the concerto final by the winner of the previous BBC Young Musician competition and the disappearance of the Walter Todds Bursary, previously awarded to a performer or performers who show great promise but do not reach the Final. But these are minor quibbles: the TV coverage continues to be beautifully put-together, entertaining, serious and respectful. And all three 2024 finalists - Ryan Wang, Shlomi Shahaf, and Jacky Zhang - gave thrilling performances, with Ryan Wang an outstanding winner.

'The New Real' by David Edgar

23 October 2024

On Saturday we were at The Other Place in Stratford-upon-Avon to see the Royal Shakespeare Company/Headlong production of 'The New Real' - a new play by David Edgar, directed by Holly Race Roughan. This reminded me a lot of David Edgar's 'Playing With Fire' which we saw at the National Theatre in 2005 (starring Emma Fielding and David Troughton - reviewed here in October 2005). In that play a New Labour high-flyer is sent north from London to sort out an ailing local authority with disastrous results. 'The New Real' uses a similar device, but on a global scale. The demise of communism in Eastern Europe, following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, led to many newly independent nascent democracies seeking the expertise of America and the West to develop their electoral processes. David Edgar's dark satire shows how this may have inadvertently instigated the wave of populism in Eastern Europe that then swept West to the UK and USA. In 'The New Real' two American political strategists (played by Martina Laird and Lloyd Owen), who have worked together successfully on US election campaigns, end up advising rival candidates in the presidential election in a fictional former Soviet state, resorting to increasingly underhand tactics to avoid losing their personal battle with each other. Caught in the middle of this feud is their British pollster Caro Wheeler (the excellent Jodie McNee) - who provides the moral conscience. The play is a fascinating thought-piece, though sometimes hindered as a drama by a George Bernard Shaw-like tendency to have the characters engage in long, rigorous, debates of ideas that feel like essays rather than dialogue. Nonetheless it was enjoyable, thought-provoking and very well acted.

Adderbury Ensemble concert

23 October 2024

Regular readers may have noticed that I don’t go to a lot of chamber music concerts: I’m not sure why, because those few occasions I have been persuaded to attend have always been really enjoyable. And the fact that I first wrote these exact words here in November 2009 (after attending a performance in Bedford by the Galliard Ensemble), and haven't featured much chamber music here since, rather reinforces the point. Last Friday we were at the Radcliffe Centre in Buckingham for a string quartet recital by the Adderbury Ensemble from North Oxfordshire. It was a lovely concert, featuring quartets by Haydn and Shostakovich and the original string quartet version of the 'Simple Symphony' by Benjamin Britten. The Adderbury Ensemble finished the performance with a couple of arrangements by the Danish String Quartet of traditional Scandinavian songs and dance tunes (from the excellent album 'Wood Works').

'Death at the Sign of the Rook' by Kate Atkinson

17 October 2024

It's been five years since Kate Atkinson's last Jackson Brodie novel ('Big Sky', reviewed here in July 2019) and I had forgotten how brilliantly entertaining these light-touch crime stories are. 'Death at the Sign of the Rook', the sixth novel in the Jackson Brodie series (which I've just finished reading as an unabridged audio book, narrated by Jason Isaacs) is a mischievously metatextual homage to the classic country house murder mystery. Kate Atkinson effectively inserts Jackson Brodie into an Agatha Christie plot, complete with a dowager marchioness, a local vicar and a butler. Brodie finds himself a participant in a murder mystery game being staged in the present day in a stately home - but it feels like he has stepped back in time to the age of a very different kind of detective. It's an incredibly enjoyable comic novel in which even the most clichéd characters are carefully and believably drawn. And Kate Atkinson's usual technique of alternating points of view to build a plot which none of the participants fully understand proves particularly entertaining and effective. Although there are references to the earlier books in the series 'Death at the Sign of the Rook' is a self-contained story which would be enjoyable whether or not you have read the other Jackson Brodie novels.

'Tom Lake' by Ann Patchett

17 October 2024

I’ve never seen Thornton Wilder’s play ‘Our Town’ but I was aware of its ubiquitous status among repertory and community theatre groups across the USA. Ann Patchett’s latest novel ‘Tom Lake’ focuses on a production of ‘Our Town’ in which the actors seem increasingly confused with their characters. I was looking forward to ‘Tom Lake’, having enjoyed Patchett’s earlier books 'Bel Canto' (reviewed here in December 2023), 'State of Wonder' (reviewed here in January 2024) and ‘Run’ (reviewed here in June 2024). Not content with its allusions to ‘Our Town’, ‘Tom Lake’ features three sisters marooned with their parents, during the Covid-19 pandemic, in the family cherry orchard - creating a number of Chekhovian references. Ann Patchett uses lockdown as the excuse for a clever narrative structure in which Lara is finally telling her grown-up daughters the full story of her brief acting career and her relationship with a man who would go on to become a famous movie star. All of this happened before Lara married the girls’ father but, as in any family, the children have probably been told some of the story at an age when they didn’t fully understand or remember it. Their enforced family time during lockdown finally provides the opportunity to unpick the details of their mother’s youth - or as much as she decides to reveal to them. It’s a beautifully written and meticulously constructed novel, with its revelations carefully timed.

Tuscany

17 October 2024

We had a wonderful holiday in Tuscany last week, visiting Florence, San Gimignano, Volterra, Siena and Lucca. In Florence we visited the Uffizi Gallery and the Bargello Museum, immersing ourselves in works from Giotto to the Renaissance giants Leonardo Da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael. Bizarrely, by contrast, in Volterra we came across an excellent exhibition of works by Banksy ('Realismo Capitalista'), at the Centro Studi Espositivo, which was really interesting. We loved the Tuscan hill towns of San Gimignano and Volterra - imposing small walled cities, with high buildings lining both sides of the paved pedestrianised roads within the city walls. San Gimignano is known as the Medieval Manhattan for its amazing skyline of high towers. The main square in Siena - Piazza del Campo - is a stunning sight: the setting for the annual Palio di Siena horse race is a huge, sloping expanse of paved tiles in diagonal slices fanning out from the Palazzo Publicco (city hall) towards a crescent of high balconied buildings. And in Lucca we walked right around the city walls - really a large fortified grassy mound rather than a wall, with a broad tarmac road along the top, encased by pretty avenues of plane trees. It was a lovely sunny autumnal day with the leaves drifting down onto the walls and lots of people walking or cycling around the perimeter of the old town.

'Empire' podcast: 'America: The Empire of Liberty'

3 October 2024

After a bit of a break, I've recently returned to listening to the excellent Empire podcast hosted by Anita Anand and William Dalrymple (originally reviewed here in January 2023). In particular, I've been listening to the series about America, which started with episode 148 (May 2024). The episodes on the Founding Fathers, George Washington, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin et al. and the American Revolution were very engaging, connecting me back to the excellent 2008 TV miniseries 'John Adams' starring Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney.

But it's the exploration of the Native American populations that covered the continent prior to the arrival of the Europeans in the 1500s that have been truly fascinating. Before European contact, Native American cultures in North America were highly diverse. I hadn't realised their degree of urbanisation. Around the year 1000 CE, Cahokia in present-day Illinois was a central city with a population of over 10,000 people. Part of a larger civilisation that included many satellite cities, Cahokia's central plaza was the size of 30 football fields, surrounded by large flat-topped pyramids used for religious and political purposes. Similar large-scale urban centres existed throughout North America, challenging the traditional narrative of Native Americans living solely in small scattered settlements. Francis Spufford's novel ‘Cahokia Jazz’ (reviewed here in February 2024) constructs a parallel universe in which the city of Cahokia is still going strong in the 1920s, dominated by a First Nations people who are led by a hereditary monarchy and have embraced a version of European Catholicism. In reality many of these Native American cities were abandoned by the 1500s, with populations living in more spread-out communities.

Contrary to the common portrayal of Native Americans as one monolithic group, there were hundreds of distinct nations across North America, each with its own customs, languages, political structures and territories. The notion of an empty continent ripe for the taking by the Europeans is now completely refuted. And the treatment of Native Americans by the United States government was often brutal and genocidal. The Indian Removal Act of 1830, which forced the relocation of tribes along the 'Trail of Tears', dispossessed Native Americans of their lands through horrific extermination campaigns including the use of poison. Chillingly, this policy of Indian removal in the 19th century influenced ethnic cleansing in other parts of the world, from Russia to German South West Africa to Nazi Germany. Russian officers in the Caucasus region in the 1840s saw the forced expulsion of Native Americans as a model for their own treatment of the Circassian people, one governor reportedly telling an American visitor that "Circassians are just like your American Indians" shortly before Russia deported 500,000 people. Even Adolf Hitler drew upon the American example when justifying the Nazi conquest of Eastern Europe, equating indigenous inhabitants with Indians and declaring that the Volga River would be their Mississippi, echoing the displacement of Native Americans from their lands.

The podcast format is very engaging, particularly the episodes with a guest historian, an expert in the relevant topic, to be quizzed by the hosts. I especially enjoyed the episode with Kathleen Duval discussing her book ‘Native Nations, a Millennium in North America’. The Empire podcast continues to be a rich source of fascinating, vibrant and relevant history, making me want to rush off and read all the books on the topic that they mention. All episodes of ‘Empire’ are available to download at: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/empire/id1639561921

Bagedai

27 September 2024

Bagedai are a band from the Chinese province of Yunnan who blend traditional Wa music with reggae, creating accessible but intriguingly different rock music featuring five powerful female singers backed by electric guitars and drums alongside traditional Chinese instruments. Their self-titled debut album manages to sound both surprising and familiar - eerie and upbeat. Listen at: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_nSEgjqTSv6xIZ6KNJDhj__gojqlAeU2CE 

Charles Ives' 150th anniversary

20 September 2024

Having spent most of my working life in endless discussions about the value, relevance and definitions of ‘amateur’ and ‘professional’, I have long had a soft spot for the composer Charles Ives. Ives (1874-1954) was a symphonist, a prolific writer of songs and an innovative modernist whose departure from traditional tonal harmony echoed his contemporary Arnold Schoenberg. Ives’ works also managed to incorporate elements of American folk music, jazz, and marching band music. He is now regarded as the most important American composer of his generation - admired by Gustav Mahler and championed by Leonard Bernstein. But Charles Ives was most definitely an amateur composer, continuing his day job as an insurance broker while composing at the weekends - not for financial necessity but because he was very good at insurance brokering and chose to keep music as his hobby. As we approach Ives’ 150th anniversary (on 20 October) I have been reading a lot about him and listening again to his symphonies (I would recommend Gustavo Dudamel’s 2020 recording of the Complete Symphonies with the Los Angeles Philharmonic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbmjAg00BzE&list=PLEhQ5Ooc2lLrR9KGN26CYBwF0fz_fACld). And this episode of BBC Radio 3’s ‘The Listening Service’ from June 2023 provides a great introduction to ‘All American Ives’: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001n25z