Reggae City. This year, they got The Beat

It’s year 2 for Reggae City: a festival – an all-night festival, but a festival nonetheless – that explicitly showcases what Reggae means in Birmingham. It means a lot to a lot of people. The long term plan is to mean a lot more, as it grows into a big, yearly, urban festival. But, as always, there are obstacles. 

Reggae City showcases music – the core of which is British Reggae – that is both diverse geographically and chronologically. Alongside the cream of new and local 21st century reggae crews, there’s a slot for Ranking Roger’s Beat, and visiting acts from Jamaica, Brazil and Poland, as well as other UK based acts. 

The event is managed by Kambe events, who also handle Shambala and some other fine events. John Walsh from Kambe was, as usual, impressively calm and relaxed when I talked to him. 

35 years of snapping: Pogus Caesar

Photo by Dee Johnson, 2011

Take a shot of something that interests you; a subject that you care about; something that matters. Hold on to it. Then, come back to it in ten, twenty, or thirty years. It's amazing what perspective that can bring.  

That's what Pogus Caesar does. I’ve known Pogus for ages. Lots of people around music in Brum have. He’s done lots - radio, television, painting, documentation, books, multimedia projects - across tons of areas. 

In  April of this year, the British Museum acquired four of his photos of the 1985 Handsworth Riots for their permanent collection. If you want the full details, check him out on Wikipedia. It’s a long entry.

We’re talking photography, and for this blog especially, photography that deals with the musicians in this town. You've built up a huge body of work going back well over thirty years. Was that planned in any way?

"I started off as a pointillist painter, making images with tiny dots, my major influence was the French painter Georges Seurat… and I wound up taking photographs without any real view of how these might become relevant in years to come. It was important to just document."

Micro-festivals and New Folk. The Old Dance School and Goodnight Lenin: lots on their plates

Goodnight Lenin on a jetty; Old Dance School on the run

The web has rewritten the way we hunt out new music, not always for the better. For a start, there's no road-map. Of course, that could be a good thing.

Old-school record shops have been crushed and swept away; their online replacements throw 'priority' acts at you. You have to step past that, and that is where I particularly miss the old way of doing things. 

But instead we now have the power to endorse and recommend, and this works in a lot of different ways. It’s changed things. Online momentum can build worldwide for any act that is able to reach an audience. Ironically, one of the music genres that have gained most from this is one of the oldest: folk music. There’s been a huge resurgence in folk and folk-associated forms in the past ten years. Singer-songwriters are coming to the fore again; new bands are enjoying success to rival the 70s veterans.

And this is, I think, down to three factors.

Birmingham Reggae production houses and the third generation. Friendly Fire, The Elephant House and more

They say Birmingham exports more reggae and sends more bands and sound systems out on tour than Jamaica. That's a hell of a statistic.

True or not, 21st century Birmingham reggae is still huge. It's still at the heart of music making in the city: a continuing hotbed for reggae, dancehall and old-school/new-school mash-ups. Sympathetic promoters and enthusiastic audiences abound. There are (at least) two production houses, both in Balsall Heath, pretty much a stones’ throw apart. There's way more to talk about than one blog post can cover. 

Let’s go round again: Red Shoes continue, Dangerous Girls re-unite.

Revisiting the good old days isn't always the best of ideas. But sometimes it works beyond everyone's wildest dreams. It just depends on what you may be looking for. 

Sometimes people do it for fun and memories; sometimes, there’s unfinished business. Sometimes it’s just the right thing to do, at the right time. And sometimes the results are just not what you might expect.

And it’s never the same. 

This post covers two bands who have split and reformed. One's Punk, one's Folk. And, before you ask - yes, they do have a lot in common.

The Songwriter's Cafe 2012 season: old skills, new talent. Intimate live performances streamed to the world.

All photos courtesy of Richard Shakespeare

On Thursday 3rd May, the 2012 season of the Songwriter’s Café gets underway, with live performances from a secret Birmingham venue, streamed online from this web address to a vocal and appreciative world wide audience. 

The webcasts go live, weekly, at 8.30pm UK time (that's 3.30pm ET), from Thursday May 3rd until 26th July. 

And to mark this, this blog post comes with audio! I’m interviewing the two hosts of Songwriter’s Café, and it’s fitting that you should listen to them, because they’re both fantastic talkers; I could listen to them all day. Paul Murphy is the live host of Songwriter’s Café, and Valeria Rispo is the online host. Paul dreamed up the idea and engages and enchants the live audience; Valeria interprets and clarifies for the world wide online listenership. Songwriters Cafe is a fantastic, magical thing, and I’m delighted to be involved in a small way. The online community that gathers around the SWC live event is pretty magical too, and you get something equally unique and magical, but different, by logging on. All three parts await you after the jump.