the film-maker´s work is ´both accessible enough to capture the boundless imagination expected of most blockbuster directors, and artful enough to allow subtext and thematic issues to resonate beneath surface-level narrative.
In case you haven’t heard, in 2023 we’re moving English Folk Expo to Manchester’s Northern Quarter, the vibrant musical heart of Manchester, where you’ll find some of the most well established and iconic music venues in the city
We surely give licence don´t we to our young generation to challenge the attitudes of their elders, so long as we are there to pick them up when they learn the hard way why those attitudes prevail. Those of us so old that we still don´t get it might tut at all this talk of trans-gender and those of our age, even well intended, might get some of our responses wrong, but as Crosby Stills And Nash implored of the young, to ´teach your parents well.
Poetry is the echo of love, therefore, it seeks a language of peace, of tolerance. Behind the great poets there is an ethic that helps us to be above violence, war, discrimination or hatred. Poetry is a way of traveling through the territory of querencia, of recreating its hidden values of tolerance and dialogue, poetry, is what we sometimes think and do not dare to say because we can seem very naïve in a world of complex discourses, which shy away from simplicity.
The more stories we slide through language barriers, the more truths we tell, the more we talk and listen to one another and read the great writers of all nations and look at cultures and listen to tongues´, the more likely it is that these stories will indeed travel for light years and become a source of wisdom.
Jazzfuel put together their list of some of the best jazz documentary films out there. Of course, with a list that runs to 10, they missed out some other brilliant ones. We at Sidetracks & Detours selected just a few at random of those with our readers to give a flavour of how comprehensive organisation is Jazzfuel.
The Anglo-Celtic music that inspired Guthrie via the Carter Family and inspired the Dropkick Murphys via the Dubliners was a crucial connection point. But just as important, if not more so, was the shared commitment to bettering the lives of working people. Guthrie not only wrote songs about farmworkers (“Pastures of Plenty”), organized labor (“Union Maid”) and immigrants (“Deportees”), he also sang to those people in schools, union halls and outdoor camps.
On 2nd August a brand new project was launched in Littleborough, the brainchild of artist, and writer, Liz White, who realised that many older people and people with visual impairments are not able to access poetry. Based in Hare Hill House I delivered a series of 6 two hour workshops using the Park, House, Littleborough and their history for inspiration.
There are excellent reviews of Moon To Gold. This wonderful collaboration has been picked all across the jazz media but nothing beats word of mouth in raising an artists´s profile,…..so once you have bought the record and played it I am sure you will want to tell others. Please do, loudly and proudly, because this is the real deal.
Even when Freddie is at her most alienated and resistant towards her birth culture, she seems able to lose herself in the music of the country. In one memorable scene set in a casual Seoul club, she escapes the pressures of social interaction, of being defined and defining herself, to dance by herself; the scene lingers, as Freddie closes her eyes and is able to be herself.
SIDETRACKS & DETOURS: 7 / 12 / 25 classical, jazz, folk, rock, americana; songwriters & invisible angels7th December 2025 - 7:00 am
SIDETRACKS & DETOURS Pass It On 2/11/2025 Jenny Bray, Nash and Asher, Opus 222nd November 2025 - 7:00 am
A LITTLE BUNDLE OF SUMMER. sidetracks & detours 3rd September 2025 featuring Jazz Artist, Jenny Bray. Broadcaster and writer, Steve Bewick, Expo Folk and Sound Roots3rd September 2025 - 7:00 am