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Travel notes
Life, John Clewley, Published on 23/05/2023
» Cambodia, like many Southeast Asian countries, enjoyed a golden era of popular music during the 1950s and 1960s, when Phnom Penh, known as the "Pearl of the Orient" became an important cultural centre, a breading ground for the meeting of Western rock and pop and Cambodian music. Author Dee Peyok in her fascinating new book Away From Beloved Lover: A Musical Journey Through Cambodia (Granta, UK, 2023) notes that "the music of East and West merged across Southeast Asia to the most fascinating mélange of instruments, attitudes and expressionism".
When East meets West
Life, John Clewley, Published on 17/01/2023
» In 2017, the Japanese band Minyo Crusaders released their debut album, Echoes Of Japan (P-Vine, Japan), to great acclaim. The band's reworking and updating of Japanese folk music, or minyo, on a rhythmic bed of Caribbean, Latin and Afrobeat was truly inspired, and perhaps pointed the way for other fusion bands in East and Southeast Asia. The aim was to revive minyo as "music for the people", as quoted by World Music Central.
Documenting a documentarian
Life, John Clewley, Published on 14/09/2021
» Alan Lomax, who died in 2002 at the age of 87, wore many hats. In his long life, which spanned much of the 20th century, he worked as a folklorist, archivist, producer, writer, scholar, oral historian and filmmaker. He was also a musician and producer who played a key role in researching and preserving folk traditions, particularly in the US and England (spurring the folk revivals in the 1940s, 1950s and early 1960s in both countries).