sidetracks & detours present PASS IT ON # 72 weekly supplement Sunday 20 10 2024

sidetracks & detours

present

PASS IT ON # 72

weekly supplement Sunday 20 10 2024

Hear The Call by Akela

COME FOLLOW YOUR ART

“horses” head for Arrecife

The latest episode of the long running soap opera about Jason deCaires Taylor´s wonderfully phlegmatic sculptures has aired in the Lanzarote press. We have covered each step of what seems a comedy of errors here on Lanzarote. Regular readers will know that the artist made his name with a similar exhibition on the banks of the Thames in London, and subsequently Lanzarote seemed to laud him as their own and placed some of his installations along the waters edge near Castillo de San Jose in Arrecife.

The Cabildo of Lanzarote is once again studying the possibility of placing these statues created Jason deCaires Taylor, which in the past were located on the coast of the Castillo de San José. Faced with this new project, the socialist councillor Benjamín Perdomo expresses his rejection. “Oswaldo Betancort is making the Cabildo try to spend 200,000 euros again to reinstall the sculptures of Jason deCaires Taylor, repeating the same mistake that we announced in 2019 when they were removed because they were considered unsuitable for the environment and for the artistic work that defines Lanzarote as a tourist destination.”

In response to this complaint, the CEO of SPEL, Héctor Fernández, explains that the possibility of re-installing these figures is being considered, since “a commitment was made to the artist who made them.”

“The idea is to reuse the horses that were in a warehouse, unused, and thus take advantage of the transfer made at the time by the author and which expires in 2026,” he explains.

However, they will not return to the surroundings of the San José Castle, but rather “alternatives are being sought that have visibility from Arrecife towards the sea. We are working on this, but subject to a series of authorisations that we are requesting from the Port Authority and from Heritage”.

He also said that negotiations are underway with the artist and that there are indeed plans to invest 200,000 euros in this. “We are negotiating and have reached an agreement in principle on that amount to relocate them.”

Although he points out that this amount of money comes from the Central Government, as part of a tourism sustainability plan.

Regarding the PSOE’s position that these sculptures are not aligned with the island’s identity, Fernández explains that “these horses were made for Lanzarote” and expresses an opinion contrary to its link with the island. “These sculptures are a way of monitoring the rise in sea levels and the island is committed to sustainability. I think it is perfectly aligned with the destination’s strategy.”

Therefore, it must be located in an area of ​​the coast where the rise and fall of the sea level can be seen on the horses. On the other hand, the future reopening of the Atlantic Museum is also being considered. “Work is being done to correct the financial deficit that it had,” he says, pointing out that the aim is to achieve financial neutrality for this activity dedicated to scuba diving.

This is actually a fascinating story about an artist and his critically and publicly acclaimed pieces that have seen him, and his work, become a the subject of a major UK tv programme. You can type in the artist´s name into our front page search facility and follow the tale from the initial installation to wherever we are now, so Come Follow You Art.

Meanwhile, there is plenty of good news, too, in this edition of PASS IT ON.

For instance, Mercedes Minguela, an occasional contributor to these pages, has found A Place For Poetry. Meanwhile one of our invisible angels , Alfred Michael has been busy following festivals on our behalf and having recently visited Havant Music Festival he today also previews the The Womex 24 Folk Festival.

Carusoe, our correspondent who delivers island insights from Lanzarote is facing a clash of dates, and it seems that on this occasion the poetry wins against the music !

Jazz In Reading brings us their weekly Live Jazz listings and promises ´a riot of music and humour´!

Jazz On Air, as always, is in the snack of HOT BISCUITS served up by radio presenter and writer Steve Bewick.

We were delighted to see a review from Rochdale Music Society flop down in to our e mail in-tray, reviewing a recent violin and guitar performance. As always, Graham Marshall´s piece is informed and informative.

Our chief Americana correspondent, Peter Pearson continues his series about the various movers and shakers of the genre. Today he looks at Mike Curb´s contribution to Music Row.

Of course we also posted our daily Monday to Friday free not-for-profit blogs, and if you missed them you can find them safe and secure in our easy to negotiate archives of over 1,200 arts related free to read items.

CONTENTS

1 )  A Place For Poetry THE UNIVERSE IN THE WORD by Norman Warwick

2 ) Following Festivals HAVANT MUSIC FESTIVAL by Alfred Michael

3) Island Insights: Casa de la Cultura, Yaiza CONCIERTO CORAL Y MUSICAL by Carusoe

4 )  Live Jazz at Progress Theatre, Reading A RIOT OF MUSIC AND HUMOUR Simon Mayor & Hilary James

Sunday 20 October 7:30pm preview from Jazz In Reading newsletter

KAREN SHARP QUARTET

THE MIKE GOFF QUARTET

5 ) Jazz On Air: HOT BISCUITS served by Steve Bewick

6 ) Live Music Rochdale Music Society OSCAR TABOR violin & DOMINICCESZAR guitar review by Graham Marshall newsletter

7 ) Reader´s Perspective: All Points Forward MIKE CURB´S CONTRIBUTION By Peter Pearson

8 ) Celebratory  music tour Chris While & Julie Matthews STILL SINGING AND PLAYING by Len Danear

9 ) Trying Timesc CANTERBURY TALES AND TRAVAILS by Michael Higgins

1 )  A Place For Poetry

THE UNIVERSE IN THE WORD

By Norman Warwick

Spoken words stand out from those read silently. They are remembered because they are spoken and this gives them a basis for becoming part of our individual and collective memory.

Nor should we underestimate the thrill of reading or reciting a poem of one´s own to a listening audience.

It is for that reason, and because all the poetry events offered by Mercedes Minguela deliver thought-provoking readings, that I am so looking forward to reading at this event.  At Mercedes´ major outdoor event in Teguise a couple of years ago I read Doing The Spacewalk and augmented it with John Stewart´s homage to Armstrong, the first man on the moon. This time I´ll deliver Where Imagination Begins, and wrap it around So Have I by the American folk musician, Richard Dobson.

I hope to see you there.at

EL UNIVERSO EN LA PARABLA, VELADA DE LECTURA, BIBLIOTECA INSULAR, 23 10 24 19.00 H, ENTRADA LIBRE

poets include: Mercedes Mingeula, Ignacio Romero, Tere Perera, Manuel Martin and Tily Sanchez

2 ) Following Festivals

HAVANT MUSIC FESTIVAL

by Alfred Michael

I flew down to Havant Music Festival last week to undertake some earthly duties for PASS IT ON. Imagine my surprise when I almost bumped into DCI xxx (she who cannot be named) doing some undercover work for us down there. She seemed to be standing guard next to a huge golden harp, so I quickly flew straight back home in case she saw me. We have a lot of golden harps up where I live, and I didn´t fancy having to find storage space for another one. St. Peter can get very testy about storage space.

I can say though that I heard Margaret (don´t use her surname) waxing lyrical, to almost every passer-by, about the whole event. I assumed her similarly anonymous Chief Inspector had gone wandering off to find her a drink, so I also had to be careful not to bump into him.

I gather, though, that they are planning to return to Lanzarote but dates have yet to be confirmed.

(see Margaret, our detective reporter, right, with the festival´s golden harp.)

Manchester Folk newsletter promised some heavenly highs and brought news of the Womex Festival 2024, that takes place next week. The event is taking place from Thursday 24th to Saturday 26th October with gigs and workshops taking place all over Greater Manchester.

Worldwide Music Expo (Womex) offers music lovers a unique opportunity to attend this prestigious music industry event, featuring fifty live sets from artists from around the world. Their music will span diverse genres including folk, afrobeat, roots, jazz, reggae and electronica.

Folk fans will especially enjoy performances of some award winning Orkney based contemporary folk from the trailblazing Gnoss, as well as from Japanese neo-folk fusion band, Mitsune. Fans can also catch Welsh triple-harpist Cerys Hafane and Kurdish tembur player and singer guitarist Ali Dogen Genultag as well as many others.

Check out fuller details on line.

3) Island Insights: Casa de la Cultura, Yaiza

CONCIERTO CORAL Y MUSICAL

by Carusoe

P

We include the poster shown left but sadly we received it only from a reader who felt she could share it with us.

Unfortunately (or, in fact, very fortunately) we had already purchased tickets for a classical  concert at The Camel House, which we will be reporting on in a forthcoming issue of sidetracks and detours, our Monday to Friday not-for-profit daily blog

Regular readers will know that we have, in the past, delivered reviews of concerts held at both The Camel House and the Casa de la Cultura.  The two venues could not be more different: one, grand and opulent, the other tiny and intimate. Their acoustics are excellent, and their audiences are knowledgeable and appreciative.

We love them both equally but we cannot do everything, so we will ask our friends Juana and Mercedes, who we would expect to be attending the Casa de la Cultura, and we will try to string together a brief review from what they have to say.

Look out for that in next week´s issue

4 ) Live Jazz at Progress Theatre, Reading

A RIOT OF MUSIC AND HUMOUR
with Simon Mayor & Hilary James

Sunday 20 October 7:30pm

Preview from Jazz In Reading newsletter

Simon Mayor & Hilary James

This fine English duo have a wide variety of accomplishments to their credit.

Simon Mayor’s current position is as one of the world’s foremost mandolinists and composers for the instrument. His many-faceted career includes his own series on BBC Radio 2, two nights at Wembley Arena with the BBC Concert Orchestra, an 8-week trailer for The Simpsons (USA TV), an album in the Classic FM Top Ten chart, and causing mayhem at a Canadian humour festival. But he claims his most thrilling moment was a journey through the square window on BBC’s iconic childrens TV show Playschool!   

Hilary James’ ‘elegant singing’ (Daily Telegraph) easily crosses the great musical divides from British ballads to blues and Berlioz. She’s renowned too for an unlikely taste in bass instruments (she could turn up with her giant mandobass or slimline semi-acoustic double bass), accompanying Simon on guitar on anything from bluegrass to Vivaldi. She’s famed too for an unusual taste in bass instruments, most notably the mighty bass mandolin. Have mandobass will travel!  

If they have a speciality, it’s an ability to perform a truly diverse array of music with respect and affection, held together by Simon’s famed introductions which range from the wry to the hilarious. Their shows can include anything from Vivaldi and Berlioz to Scottish, Irish and English ballads, Gershwin, Berlin, ragtime and originals including at least one of their gruesomely hilarious children’s songs (reminiscent of Belloc’s ‘Cautionery Tales’).

’Just fantastic to go and see live’ BBC Radio 3

Originally from the north of England, they met as students at Reading University, where they discovered a shared passion for music. Hilary sang with the University Big Band and presented the University Folk Club while studying for a degree in Fine Art; Simon studied Russian while learning to play mandolin, violin and guitar. Before graduating they won a national music competition and played many gigs including the main stage at the Cambridge Folk Festival

Captivating live performers, they have toured the globe from Seattle to Singapore, taking in a truly diverse roster of world, folk and classical festivals, including the Classical Mandolin Society of America, Rudoldstat World Music Festival (Germany), the Vancouver Folk Festival (Canada), the Stephen Leacock Humor Festival (Canada), The Henley Festival, and Cheltenham Literature Festival.

They share a passionate interest in children’s music and have worked extensively with young people in theatres and schools, as well as writing and presenting music education programmes for BBC Radio and TV for six years. They have recorded five ‘Musical Mystery Tour’ children’s CDs of original songs and the ‘Musical Mystery Tour’ songbook is published by Faber Music.

Live Jazz: Crowmarsh  Saturday 26 October

KAREN SHARP QUARTET

Preview by Jazz In Reading

Karen, a multiple award winner and prominent artist on the jazz scene will be appearing with her long established line-up of Nikki Iles (piano), Dave Green (double bass) and Steve Brown (drums) – world class musicians who also happen to be great friends. They have been together as a band for twelve years and it shows!

Together they create a unique sound that is warm, spontaneous and exciting, incorporating free flowing improvisation with almost telepathic ensemble playing. The quartet have recorded two albums to date, ‘Spirit’ and ‘The Sun, the Moon and You’ both of which include familiar, lesser-known and original tunes showcasing the unique spirit of a band with a shared passion for strong melodies, group interplay and respect for the jazz tradition.

Crowmarsh Village Hall, Benson Lane, Crowmarsh Gifford, OX10 8ED

L

Live Jazz

THE MIKE GOFF QUARTET
with Dylan Thomas read by Tom Neill

Saturday 23 November  7:45pm
The Alan Cornish Theatre,

Oakwood Centre,
Headley Rd, Woodley, Reading

This will be a performance of Stan Tracey´s 

A Child’s Christmas: Jazz Suite, inspired by Dylan Thomas’ ‘A Child’s Christmas in Wales’

Mike Wilkins (right) Tenor Saxophone

Birmingham Conservatoire and Leeds College Of Music alumni. A regular soloist at The Rose And Crown in Oxford, Goring Community Jazz Club, Ma Bessie’s Pig Foot Band, as well as guest soloist at Windsor’s Jazz Vanguard. Mike also plays with Big Colors and Blake’s Heaven big bands.

Martin Pickett Piano
Steve Kershaw Double Bass
Mike Goff Drums

Tom Neill Narrator

Acting work includes tours of The Great Gatsby, The Cherry Orchard, Benjamin Britten’s Death In Venice & Brecht’s The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui. Also a composer commissioned for Battle Festival, Reading Council, Alleyne Dance and BAFTA nominated Mighty Penguins, amongst others. Following their sold-out performance of Under Milk Wood Jazz Suite, the Mike Goff Quartet return with a second Stan Tracey classic, this time inspired by Dylan Thomas’ much-loved short story: A Child’s Christmas In Wales.

With antics in the snow, snoring uncles, doting aunts, and an errant hippopotamus, Thomas’ nostalgic tale evokes the happiest memories of Christmases past. Energetically interpreted and elevated in seven tunes by the great British composer Stan Tracey, and played in full by the region’s top performers, A Child’s Christmas In Wales promises new memories to cherish this festive season.

5 ) Jazz On Air:

HOT BISCUITS

served by Steve Bewick

The Linley Hamilton Quintet is making waves with their new CD, “Ginger Hollows,” which has garnered a positive review from Gary Heywood-Everett. This album is described as instantly accessible and impassioned, with a blend of hard-bop and soul-jazz influences that showcase Hamilton’s growing confidence as a leader. The Lancaster Jazz Festival recently featured performances by Modern Viking, Charlotte Keeffe, and Maja Bugge, each bringing their unique sound to the stage. Keeffe’s quartet was noted for its contemporary jazz, while Bugge’s performance was a meditative audio-visual homage to her home city. The Jazz Avengers, an 8-piece ensemble known for their hard-hitting performances, recently played in Hong Kong, presenting a fusion of jazz, funk, and Japanese animation style. Julian Costello & Vertigo’s track “Sorry But No” adds to this rich tapestry of jazz music, with its subtle rhythms and deeply melodic jazz that allows all instruments to speak in beautifully arranged compositions. For those interested in exploring these vibrant sounds, Steve Bewick’s Mix-cloud offers a gateway to these and other intriguing jazz experiences

All this will be on the turntables as share HOT NISCUITS next week

Join us at www.hotbiscuits .miccloud.com

6 ) Live Music Rochdale Music Society

OSCAR TABOR violin & DOMINIC CESZAR guitar

review by Graham Marshall (left) newsletter

Here’s my somewhat belated Review of the Rochdale Music Society’s first concert of the 2024-25 Season:

This was the first of the six concerts making up Rochdale Music Society’s 2024-25 Concert Series and took place in St. Michael’s Parish Church, Bamford, at 7.30pm on Saturday, 28 September. It featured the somewhat unusual instrumental combination of Violin (Oscar Tabor) and Guitar (Dominic Cesarz) with a programme that displayed both the performers’ technical skills and the wide range of musical styles for which this sound world is eminently suitable.

So, the audience was treated to works from the eighteenth century to the twentieth with some of them in very up-to-date arrangements.

There were spirited performances of Concert Duos by well-known composers like Vivaldi (18th cent.) and Paganini (19th) as well as two not so well-known 19th cent composers, the German, Scheidler, and the Italian, Carulli whose music proved to be well worth the concert minutes given to it by Oscar and Dominic.

Other composers whose music, sensitively arranged and presented, were Bartok (Rumanian Folk Dances), Vaughan Williams (‘The Turtle Dove’ song) and Piazzolla (Two Tangos from his monumental ‘L’Histoire du tango’).

There were songs from the Twentieth Century Hit Parade as well. Louigay’s ‘La vie en rose’, made popular by Edith Piaff in the 1940s and 50s, André and Schwandt’s ‘Dream A Little Dream Of Me’ (often sung by Ella Fitzgerald and turned into a pop hit by Mama Cass) and Pearl Django’s song, ‘L’indifference’ all came across as authentically motivated by the guitar/violin combination. So, too, did the final item on the evening’s programme: ‘Por un Cabeza’, which means in horse racing terms winning ‘by a head’ and has been featured in several well-known films as inevitable background music to scenes of possibly shady activity!

There was nothing shady about the Cesarz/Tabor Duo’s performance, however. They provided a delightful evening of the high artistic standards we have come to expect from those invited to perform for the Rochdale Music Society, whose next concert will be in St. Michael’s on Saturday evening, 2 November when the B!Z’ART PIANO DUO will be at the keyboard playing a wide range of most enjoyable music.

Details of the Society’s concerts are to be found on the website: www.rochdalemusicsociety.org

and in the Events Calendar on Rochdale Online.

7 ) Reader´s Perspective: All Points Forward

MIKE CURB´S CONTRIBUTION

By Peter Pearson

Last week I wrote about the changing face of Nashville and in particular its impact on historic Music Row. Mike Curb’s influence has been a major factor in the development of Music Row since 1969. Most seem to view his influence as a positive factor in that development but there are some who have concerns.

Mike Curb was born in 1944 in Savannah Georgia but grew up in California. He began his musical career as a teenager writing songs and performing as leader of a local musical group.

At 18 he founded Sidewalk Records, so called because he had difficulty getting the name Curb Records at the time and Sidewalk was the nearest alternative. By this time he had formed his own group called the Mike Curb Congregation.

Soon he was composing music for commercials and progressed to composing songs and soundtracks for films.

By 1969 he had chalked up sufficient success that MGM approached him to become president and partner in MGM Records.

He brought his label, now called Curb Records, into the company and became 20% owner. Curb also became Chairman of Robbins, Feist and Miller, one of the largest publishing companies in the world. Those positions lasted from 1969 to 1974 and during that time, he worked on the soundtracks for MGM films Zabrinskie Point, Ryan’s Daughter, The Strawberry Statement, No Blade of Grass and Frank Sinatra’s Dirty Dingus Magee. His most successful composition was for Kelly’s Heroes, starring Clint Eastwood. That yielded a hit single, “Burning Bridges,” co-written by Curb and released by the Mike Curb Congregation. That single was a Billboard top 40 chart hit and a number one record in many parts of the world.

Whilst with MGM he achieved further success producing the Osmond Brothers and Marie Osmond, as well as Hank Williams Jr.’s first number one hit, a song co-written by Curb called All For The Love Of Sunshine. The involvement with Hank Williams JR in 1969 began Curb´s involvement with Music Row.

When MGM sold out to Polygram in 1974 he got back the Curb label and continued on with it. It is one of the few independent labels still in existence.

In 1976, he entered politics, serving as co-chair of the Ronald Reagan California Campaign for President and later as co-chair of President Gerald Ford’s California campaign. In November 1978, Curb was elected California’s lieutenant governor, the same year that Democrat Jerry Brown was elected governor. During his 1979 to 1983 term, Curb, a Republican, served as acting governor for about one year, guiding the state during disastrous floods, fires and a threatened prison guard strike. He also served on the University of California Board of Regents and the California State University Board of Trustees. In 1982, he was elected chair of the National Conference of Lieutenant Governors. Then in 1983 and 1984, at President Reagan’s request, he served as Chairman of the Republican National Finance Committee during the president’s re-election campaign, responsible for raising more than $100 million.

After this stint in politics he returned to music with Curb Records and signed such acts as Lyle Lovett, The Judds, The Everly Brothers, Chris Hillman’s Desert Rose Band and The Righteous Brothers.

By the mid-1990s, Curb had moved his family and Curb Records to Nashville. This was because many of his recording artists were there, and because Curb’s other business is motor car racing, for which Nashville was an important venue.

Once established in Nashville, Curb started to acquire further properties on Music Row. To date he owns 12 properties on the Row, including the site of the Bradley’s legendary Quonset Hut. He says that his mission is to protect as many properties on the Row as he can from non-music related development. In 1998 he founded the Mike Curb Foundation, a philanthropic organisation which supports music education and works to restore historic music industry locations.  In 2003 his Foundation established the Mike Curb College of Music and Entertainment at Belmont University, a private University adjacent to Music Row.

His philanthropic gifts to music seem to have no bounds. In April this year his foundation donated $58m to Nashville’s Belmont University to back the expansion of its Curb College of Entertainment and Music Business and pay for renovations of the Buddy Lee Attractions/Capitol Records building. In recent weeks it has been announced that he has donated $500,000 to Los Angeles Occidental College’s John Branca Institute for Music. The gift establishes the Mike Curb Endowed Program in Popular Music History, which will bring a variety of guest speakers and career-development events to Occidental students, alumni and others.

Despite all this he is not without his critics. Some say it is all about tax breaks and legacy. He has also been criticised for turning much of Music Row into a campus of the private Belmont University.

He has also had contract disputes with numerous artists  on his label and has been criticised for restrictive business practices. Lyle Lovett signed a record deal with Curb and after 27 years sought release from the deal. He had considerable difficulty doing so and named his final recording for them as Release Me. Curb is said to pay below industry rate royalty payments.

Whichever way you look at it, though,  he has been incredibly successful and generous with his donations in furtherance of music education and the preservation of historic Music Row.

8 ) TAKING MUSIC ON TOUR

Chris While and Julie Matthews

by Norman Warwick

An album that Julie Matthews recorded with Pat Shaw, a few decades ago now, (sorry Julie) became one of my very favopurite albums on first hearing. In the course of those decades, though I also came to learn that Julie is not only a great performer but is also one of the UK´s greaest songwriters. You could pick a double album full of her songs and any of them would stand comparison with the likes of Richard Thompson. Blue Songs On A Red Guitar was a song I took to heart on first hearing. It has stayed joint top of my playlists with a song by John Stewarts called Dreamers On The Rise. Her musical partnership with Chris While has stood for 35 years and more. They have different but well matched voices and each brings complementary song writing skills to the table. NPW

Chris and Julie will have been a duo for 30 years this year! It will be a busy year for this award winning and longest lasting female duo in the country!​

​​In case they’ve so far passed you by, Chris While and Julie Matthews are the longest-lasting female duo in Britain and have played more than 3,000 gigs, appeared on over 100 albums, written hundreds of original songs and reached millions of people around the world. Now, 30 years after their debut, they sound as fresh and vital as ever!

​“The undisputed queens of British folk duos continue to come up with the goods.

1st class songs delivered with to die for harmonies, immaculate musicianship and melodies that lodge themselves in your brain” 

The Guardian  

​These women far outclass their many famous American cousins, and prove just how immediate and powerful well-written and performed music can still be. Awe- inspiring.

Dirty Linen

​

Chris and Julie are on top form and can’t put a foot wrong 

‍fRoots.

And by the way, there is a new album on the way.

Check out their web site.

9 ) Trying Times

CANTERBURY  TALES AND TRAVAILS

By  Michael Higgins

The University of Nottingham has issued a warning to students studying The Canterbury Tales, the 14^th century collection of stories by Geoffrey Chaucer. And the warning? Well,… wait for it,… ‘ it contains explicit reference to the Christian faith, as well as violence and mental illness’. This was a surprise to me for two reasons, One: the Tales are told by Christian pilgrims undertaking a journey from London to the shrine of St Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral, and Two:  the tales are well known for their characters – The Knight, The Wife of Bath, the Miller and so forth and once were rather dubiously famous for having rude words for the human erotic geography. Once upon a time there would have been warnings about that perhaps but strangely not at the University of Nottingham.

It has since been remarked that the Tales do also contain references to just about everything else, including rape, imprisonment, natural calamities, seduction, trickery, anti-semitism and poets (in this case Chaucer) reading bad verse too for good measure. But the University fails to give any warning for these. All that seems to bother this supposed seat of learning is that a rather comic tale of diverse characters meeting at the Tabard Inn and never even making it to Canterbury has, rather unsurprisingly, mentioned Christianity.  Hardly surprisingly the University has now been accused of ‘demeaning education’, not to mention Christianity, with its strange, but very selective, trigger warning. Frank Furedi, of the University of Kent (in which county Canterbury  Cathedral sits) said, ‘The problem here is not would-be student readers of Chaucer but virtue-signalling , ignorant academics’  Well that puts the boot in for St Thomas.

Mr Furedi also said that ‘warning students of Chaucer about Christian expressions of faith is weird. Since all characters in the stories are immersed in a Christian experience there is bound to be a lot of expressions of faith’. Not to be outdone, Andrea Williams, the chief executive of Christian Concern, says that ‘Trigger warnings for Christian themes in literature are demeaning to the Christian faith and stifle the academic progress of our students. To censor expressions of Christian faith is to erase our literary heritage.’

She has a point there. Until very recently the fact that Britain and Europe were Christian countries with centuries of Christian spirituality and practice behind them was without question. The modern trend for University and teaching elites to profess anti Christian bias or atheistic or agnostic views has, as one used to say before this age of language purging, ‘queered the pitch’. For as Ms Williams adds, ‘True education engages and fosters understanding, not avoidance.’

Nottingham University’s reply merely repeats an old mantra that it ‘champions diversity’, adding that ‘Even those who are practising Christians will find aspects of the late-medieval world view alienating and strange’.  But what is really strange here is that a body of learning would need to warn adults about reading of the qualms and panderings of human beings who lived six hundred years ago and treat them like children.  But the university bubble seems to like doing this, from providing ‘safe spaces’ where students can escape news of the words and events they do not wish to hear about.  With increasing use of ‘no-platforming’ speakers and writers whose views the students, or more likely, the academics do not like, to censoring pre-21st century writings to take out old words which the modern reader may find offensive, selective prohibitions increase.  At one time students went to university to learn about things they otherwise would not dream of and use their own judgment in liking or disproving of in later life. Now it would seem they must remain forever children to the wise fathers of the campus.

But then I suppose I should not be too surprised, Chaucer lover that I am, at Nottingham University’s fall into the general anti-pre-modern age sentiment. With other universities no longer teaching Anglo Saxon and Middle English to concentrate on the more modern, popular and trendy literary works I wonder how much longer anyone will get to appreciate our older writers, albeit in modern spellings and phrases.  Even the term Anglo Saxon is being abandoned in the face of ‘racist’ outcasts using the phrase to mean, well, the ‘white’ race.

If one wanted to apologise for the Christian viewpoints expressed in the Canterbury Tales, one has only to look at Geoffrey Chaucer himself who famously apologised to the church for his writing such a critique of the trendy pilgrimages of from model Christians to the shrine of an English Saint who defied a king and was martyred by four knights seeming to act in a King’s name.  So, a Christian apologising for criticising Christian Pilgrim’s eh? What’s not to love?

Lighten up Nottingham, stop playing the Sheriff!  Or so might the chap clothed all in Lincoln green in one of the Tales say, as well as the chap they called Robin Hood in another. And this April, like Chaucer’s pilgrims, set out on pilgrimage, even if it only was to read the opening lines of the Canterbury Tales where benevolent wind and sun quicken  ‘the tender shoots and buds, and the young sun,/Into the Ram one half of his course had run’ – and get out a-readin’.  Yes the Ram is the Aries of the Zodiac.  If the Nottingham  killjoys had actually read the Canterbury tales they might have warned us about  astrology in it so be warned now.

From Monday From Monday 21^st October until Friday 25^th October our contributors will be speaking to  contacts old and new whilst following sidetracks and detours in search of arts related news. They are seeking to track down a man with a suitcase full of dreams.

We have no doubt we will uncover stories of angels and demons, and I´ve heard a whisper that one of our writers is looking at the myths and legends created by Led Zepelin.

We think of these ´sidetracks and detours´ as being a little bit like those followed by the Aboriginal Songlines that travel writer Bruce Chatwin brought to wider notice half a century ago. The concept of those Songlines, a way of (preserving? commemorating?) creating a kind of A-Z,  that helped  nomadics walk their way across Australia and its outbacks to arrive at a pre-conceived destination was a concept I could not understand, even after reading Chatwin´s meticulous descriptions of the methodologies required.

Nevertheless, even a nebulous notion, or even its faint echo, suggesting Man might be able to navigate his way across the earth, and therefore through life and its limitations, is an aphorism I have since followed throughout my life. In some way I chase songs on their light years of travel. Some (well, a couple) of my own songs have turned up in destinations I could never have predicted.

The world, though, wasn´t always kind to Bruce Chatwin, and even his biographer seemed to damn him with too faint a praise, suggesting Chatwin was a difficult man to like, even if easy to admire.

There seemed in his biography to be hints and allegations of chicanery, perhaps even misappropriation and yet what shone through the life-story, and the book of Songlines itself, was the trust Bruce Chatwin seemed to so easily to establish with those Aboriginals he spoke with. We will also give a précis of Chatwin´s career and lifestyle both before and after Songlines.

We will, too, recommend Nicholas Churchill´s biography of Chatwin. It seems to me to be a diligent work by an author seeking to present a balanced view, even if his criticism seemed harsh and his approval too muted.

As usual, we will take Saturday off work to watch the football (and Strictly) on telly.

We will then return on Sunday 27^th October with another PASS IT ON.