In my recent search for any new albums by the funky Finnish band Gjallarhorn, one of my favorite finds from the resurgence of tradition-inspired Nordic roots music, I came across one of those great blog/resource sites that combines enthusiasm and eclectic taste to bring lesser-known world music to a wider audience. CD Roots: music from the road less traveled is run by one guy, Cliff Furnold, and provides a source not only for world music CD purchases, but also Furnald’s thoughts and opinions of music as it emerges.

“I like the music I carry and I hope to offer you a crack in the window on the world,” says Furnald. “The CDs you will find here are often personal favorites, unusual music that often defies a simple naming of genre. Some is very traditional, from places you hear little about, and ought to hear more. Some is extremely avant garde, making its own rules as it goes. My favorites combine deep traditional roots with wild and innovative energy. What they all share is a human touch, a personality that goes beyond the mere making of music and into the very heart of art.”

His current collection achieves this goal, offering works from American jazz combined with Swedish traditional, to guitar music from a classical music-trained African family, to a group using ancient Sicilian Arab poetry for their base. This is better than getting your feet wet in world music — it’s diving in fully clothed. Furnald’s blog covers some really random releases, including, recently, a Norwegian percussionist using instruments formed out of ice.

Funky indeed.

There are some habits that are so ingrained in us that we forget they’re there, like background noise, until someone points them out to us. A way of sitting, a morning ritual, a nervous tic. The habits that irritate, and the habits that provide a soothing rhythm to our lives.

I have few habits related to music (always excepting the Beatles, which I was practically suckled on) except a single weekly one that has fed my thirst for Celtic music for nearly fifteen years. In that time, I have cancelled social engagements, shoved guests out the door without ceremony, and rearranged radio locations, all so I could listen to the Thistle & Shamrock.

Broadcast from Edinburgh to a US audience through National Public Radio, this show devoted to Celtic music has been a landmark for Scottish and Irish folk since 1981, when Fiona Ritchie, with her delicious Scottish burr, established an unexpected touchstone with a one-time fundraising special.

Over two decades later the Thistle & Shamrock continues to entertain Celtic music lovers by broadcasting traditional and cutting-edge albums mixed with poetry, interviews, and folk music festivals. Its only drawback is that you have to find when it plays on your local NPR station (in the US) — I add my voice to all those begging Ritchie to broadcast the full show on Thistlepod, her podcast featuring new albums and artists.

I’ve loved Celtic music since I was a little kid, and have listened to Fiona Ritchie for most of my adult life. I could have stayed ensconsced forever in the world she formed through traditional artists such as The Cheiftans. But in recent years I’ve noticed that more of her shows are devoted to Celtic music abroad, from Brittany to Botswana, not only the effects traditional Irish and Scottish tunes have on worldwide folk music, but the effects felt in reverse.

This week’s show was devoted solely to that issue: “21st century contemporary Celtic music may take in Balkan tunes, African percussion, and Latin rhythms,” says Fiona. “Does it all simply boil down to world music soup, or is this cutting edge Celtic?”

True, it was hard to hear the ‘Celtic’ in some of the African rhythms or Eastern European beats broadcast, but I’ve always seen Celtic music as connecting easily to worldwide folk genres such as bluegrass. One feeds into another. In fact, one of the best concerts I ever heard was over ten years ago in a small auditorium. My small liberal arts college, located in the Midwest and started by a Scotsman, boasted at that time both an active bagpipe band and a popular African drumming program. It also hosted one of the largest Scottish fairs in the US. After one of these fairs, the bagpipe and African drumming groups played together, and as I listened I thought I’d never heard true folk music before dancing to bagpipes blasting ‘Scotland the Brave’ through the stomping rhythm of a huge African percussion group.

Fiona Ritchie had it right when she said that true Celtic music was enhanced by other world music, and vice versa. I love traditional Celtic, but it comes from the same place as all other folk: the heartbeat of a culture, and that rhythm is the same worldwide.

(First, gotta credit blues goddess Etta James with the post title.)

The US Columbus Day holiday is on Monday 8 October;  what are you doing this coming weekend?

Consider exploring American music in its birthplace.

Be a real guitar hero and head South to the heart of the Delta, because it’s time for the Helena, Arkansas Blues and Heritage Festival  4-6 October 2007.  The Festival has always been free and boasts musical legends like Pinetop Perkins in this year’s lineup.

To take a break from the jams, drive south down legendary Highway 61 (across the river in Mississippi) and visit the Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale, MS.  It’s got Muddy Waters’ home from Stovall Plantation, where Alan Lomax recorded him for the Library of Congress in 1940.  Can you imagine never hearing that magic voice and guitar?  Thank you, Alan.

Clarksdale is also the place where I discovered blues maestro James Cotton.

While you’re there on Friday, tune into blues radio show King Biscuit Time, broadcast from Helena on KFFA 1360 AM radio since 1941.

This weekend is Glastonbury weekend, and I must confess that it has left me feeling somewhat depressed. Not that I actually wish that I was at the annual mudfest, spending five days in a waterlogged tent, queuing for toilets that would even be boycotted in a refugee camp. It’s just that out of my wide selection of ne’er do well friends and miscellaneous hedonists, the only person whom I know is there is our nanny. You know that you are getting old when the only person you know who is going to Glastonbury is your nanny.

Things were so different a couple of years ago when about eighty of us in two groups headed to the Big Chill festival at Eastnor in Herefordshire. Three days of solid partying without sleep and two large encampments to retreat to when it all got too much. In truth, the Big Chill is more of a festival for those who are over the Glasto vibe – they even have hot showers for God’s sake!

The United Kingdom punches well above it’s weight for summer music festivals – especially in a country that is, as the CIA World Factbook helpfully points out, slightly smaller than Oregon! Apart from Glastonbury and the Big Chill, there are a host of others – some in the country and some in London’s Hyde Park. The website of the NME has a pretty good listing for those in the UK, or who are thinking of visiting this rainy season – sorry, Summer!

This year we have our eye on the WOMAD Festival, an eclectic festival of World Music, but with a six month old baby and a loft conversion scheduled for the end of the Summer this may well not happen – now maybe we could send the nanny on our behalf…

Since moving to the Austin area last year, I’ve noticed that many travel magazines have breathlessly discovered the capital of Texas. 

Here’s breaking news; Austin has been the Berkeley of Texas for decades, a blue, den-of-iniquity blob in the midst of a lot of red.  (For our non-U.S. readers: a “Red State and Blue State” explanation.)

Those of us who knew that already are quite bemused by the “gosh, there is a cool, hip city in flyover country!” attitude of some publishers.  Still, we cosmic cowboys think it’s nice to be noticed, especially for the live music scene.  

The insanely fabulous South by Southwest (SXSW), held every March, is perhaps the best-known music event held in the state (no, Willie Nelson’s Fourth of July picnic outgrew his Pedernales Ranch-area setting years ago.)  If you’re a musician worth your chops, you want to be seen and heard playing Austin in March.

For Joe or Jane General Music Fan, however, I’m not sure that SXSW is really the best time to visit.  First, it is a three-part extravaganza; Music, Film and a tech conference called Interactive.  The town is slammed for weeks by the sheer magnitude of thousands of visitors. Hotels are packed, restaurants overflow.  It’s bananas.  Second, SXSW is fundamentally a very buzzy, all-day all-night trade show, at least for the music and film industries.  It’s not intended for fans (although Interactive is pretty consumer-friendly, I think.)

For my money, a better pick is the Austin City Limits Festival, held for three days in Zilker Park in September and tied to the long-standing PBS series of the same name. 

This year, the festival dates are 14-16 September, and the lineup includes the usual disparate group of performers:  Björk, Bob Dylan, White Stripes, Beausoleil, Raul Malo, Joss Stone, Steve Earle, Wilco, Ziggy and Stephen Marley, Arctic Monkeys, Rodrigo y Gabriela, Asleep at the Wheel,  Yo La Tengo, Ghostland Observatory, Cross Canadian Ragweed, Ben Kweller,  Lucinda Williams, Paolo Nutini, Preservation Hall Jazz Band….Ow, my head hurts….just go see the whole 2007 lineup.

Where to stay?  Every magazine review of the city flogs the funky Austin Motel and super-Zen-hip Hotel San Jose, both of which are quite nice and probably quite sold out already for September (hey, call and check; maybe you’ll get lucky.)

Here’s what I recommend — you need a place that is within walking or cycling distance of Zilker Park.  I have now done the shuttle bus drill from downtown to the park, and while the distance is short as the crow flies and the service is pretty darned efficient, there are just so many people that it takes forever to get out of the park when the evening ends.  People dribble into the park at various times during the day, so going in is not bad, but everyone pretty much leaves at the same time at night, forcing a lot of standing around/waiting when you’re most ready to collapse into your hotel bed.  

These other hotel options are all a fairly long walk or a short bike ride on the Town Lake Hike and Bike Trail from Zilker Park back towards downtown; the trail is well-lighted at night and you’ll be pumped from the music anyway.  Try the Radisson Hotel, the Four Seasons, the Hyatt or the Embassy Suites, all next to/near Town Lake at the foot of Austin’s “Main Street,” Congress Avenue.  A little further north, clustered around the Convention Center near Trinity and 4th Streets, are the Hampton Inn, Hilton and Courtyard and Residence Marriott properties.

There is also a lesser-known Extended Stay America at 6th and Guadalupe; very handy and clean, plus it’s within stumbling distance of Katz’s Deli, open 24 hours because “Katz’s Never Kloses.”  Nothing like a bagel with lox or blintzes at any hour. 

And now the bad news….I didn’t move fast enough to write this and the 3-day tickets are already sold out, but you can still get single day tickets (buy one for each day!) or spring for big-bucks VIP tickets that cover all three days.  Move fast if you’re interested, obviously.

Y’all come on down!

Technorati tags: travel, music, Austin City Limits Festival, Austin, Texas