look at fRoots

I'm doing that right now as the new July edition has just come through my letter box. The cover feature is about The Devil's Interval (subtitled The Rise & Rise Of The Younger Tradition) in which Jim Causley, Lauren McCormick and Emily Portman (undergraduates on the Newcastle tradmus degree), discuss at length with Brian Peters their wide-open attitudes and experimental, ingenious, part-switching approach to vocal harmony which manages to sound entirely unforced and spontaneous, while being in fact highly sophisticated. Yes, they've been back to their roots and have the deepest respect for source singers but don't copy them blindly but seek to take the music forward. Significantly, they enthuse graphically about the new type of venue, performance spaces run by young people who are products of an eclectic social and musical background to whom it is entirely natural to have so-called 'traditional' English instruments (like melodeons growing on apple trees maybe?) playing eastern music followed by Japanese techno, Congo-Brazilian collaboration and finishing up with a DJ. Places which so-called 'f*lkies' around here would view with disdain if they knew about them and would never dream of attending. They should. It's the future.

A final quote from Jim talking about a 3 a.m. set at Glastonbury:

It fascinates me how you can put this music in front of people who haven't heard it, and it sounds so exotic to them, even though it's from their own backyard. I feel like saying 'this is our world music here!'