Fiamma Fumana Official WebSite

From Mother to Daughter

Artistic director Donald Shaw and his people at Celtic Connections have called a press conference and gone live with the 2008 website. What a lineup! Flook, Steve Earle, k.d. lang, Liam Clancy, Mercedes Peòn (we crossed path at Folkwoods, in Holland), Solas, old glories Moving Hearts, Eliza Carthy, Peatbog Fairies, Le Vent du Nord, Michelle Shocked, Bill Wyman (BILL WYMAN?), Capercailie, Trilok Gurtu… And yes, we are there too, in the Voices of the world together with theBulgarian Women’s Choir Angelite. No Uncle Earl, though: their place - quite appropriately with the rest of the night’s lineup, I think - has been taken by the Aberfeldy Gaelic Choir, conducted on this occasion by Margaret Bennett, high-ranking vocalist and mother of our much-missed Martyn. Gulp. We really must be super-ready for that.

I’m just back from WOMEX, still in Sevilla this year. It’s very hard work, trade fair by day and showcases by night: and got there straight from a different conference, eChallenges in The Hague, so I was missing sleep before I even started. But it was good fun, I could feel a lot of energy. I’ve met a lot of friends: Drew, Steve, Ian, obviously, but also many others, from Gudrun Holck to Shooglenifty, from Yatrika (from Skirball in Los Angeles) to Andrés and José Luìs from Ollinkan in Mexico City, from Roddy Campbell of Canadian magazine Penguin Eggs to the Grand Old Man Christoph Borkowsky from Piranha. To my great surprise, Globalquerque patron Tom Frouge put a contract in front of me: he is working in connection with the New Mexico Film Commission to sync various movies, and he wants FF on his roster because we are “very unique” (which, when I think about it, is probably true :)). And many Italian friends, Paolo Sgevano (who’ll read this post the next time he googles himself, ciao Paolo!), Giovanni Callea, the Tuscans from Suoni e Armonie, “spiderman” Alessandro from Nidi d’Arac wih spiderwife and spiderbaby (cute!), Valerio Corzani and even Paolone Ferrari, who I had not seen in ages!

But the best was the music. Because of the damn The Hague conference I missed Balkan Beat Box - this year’s true sensation - and Tanya Tagaq (must be destiny: we did a festival together in Canada, and our performances were always overlapping). But I made up for it: Seun Kuti (Fela’s youngest son, thoroughbred Nigerian afrobeat), Mayra Andrade (we met her in Mexico, but her voice got thicker and more mature since. She’s always beautiful!), Alamaailman Vasarat (reminescent of Leningrad Cowboys, and just like them Finns), the fun (if a touch kitsch) electro-gypsies Caravan Palace, 3Canal (nice clothes, but I’ve heard ska-reggae before, thank you very much. This is the one band I did not like), and male singers from Marseille Lo Cor de la Plana. So nice! I had not realized how much I missed hearing beautiful nice music, music unlike the usual stuff that you hear on the radio or TV, sang in Occitan, Nigerian pidgin, Portugues, with a wide array of instruments and vocal styles. Two-guitars-bass-drums-sang-in-English-because-it’s-the-language-of-rock is great, but let’s face it, I’m like - next! Come and hear, then you tell me whether or not 99% of your indie rock-post rock bands are going to sound cold and formulaic in comparison.

Ending up with a light note, with Fiamma Fumana girls not being there the Miss WOMEX throne was vacant. My vote goes to an Italian, Greta Meda of Promo Music: they have the best-looking booth, because her colleague Marcello Corvino, too, usually gets noticed by the ladies.

She’s not writing about it on the blog (being modest!), but this week Lady J goes back to school. She’s been offered a place as a Ph.D. student at University of Siena: she is going to study Hiistroy of the modernization, with a dissertation about… rice weeders! Which seems a really sensible choice, given the extra privileged access to sources we enjoy. I hope she will interview me too, since I feel like a honorary mondina myself ;’)
Meanwhile, I arrived in Sevilla to attend WOMEX. I’ll write about it in the next few days.

Shooting for the Mondine movie is officially finished: we have been editing since September. For now, Zambe the director has put together this showreel, which contains footage (and audio) from the Detroit show cut with clips shot in various other occasions (at Arezzo on May 1st, in Detroit, on the rice paddies) and vintage repertoire material. It was really emotional to watch it… I can’t wait for the film to be finished.

This man is Ricardo Franco Levi, the internet communication genius who had the idea to draft a bill to regulate blogs that no one feels the need for. Typical: Chris Anderson showed that the world is a better place when physical bottlenecks to diversity (of information, in this case) are removed, Ricardo Franco Levi replaces them with regulatory bottlenecks and we are back were we started. This is bad policy, arrogant and ignorant, and will not be tolerated. Please, would everyone sign the petition to kill the bill that would take independent blogs away from us. This has nothing to do with FF, but I just felt I had to blog it.

Royal Concert Hall, Main Auditorium - Festival website

GREAT NEWS! Frusion’s Ian Smith called me to announce that Celtic Connections has booked our show for the 31st of January 2008, with Mondine and all! We are still waiting on the details (press conference is on Wednesday next week), and the same night the website will launch, but it appears they are setting up a “Voices of the world” night with us, the Bulgarian Women’s Choir (not sure which one) and American girls Uncle Earl. The whole thing should take place in the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall… the ladies will be delighted, especially Agnes, the Scottish Rice Weeder, a Glaswegian…

An anonymous photographer Kev Howard sent Roberta these shots of our Solfest 2007 show, in England. Thank you, thank you so much!

Yesterday I went to Innovation circus’s Mobile Music Forum. Paolo Barbesino was there, presenting a M-Metrics research on mobile music. Here’s what I understood:
the whole Italian digital music market is worth 17 million euro. That’s peanuts. A single ceramic tile company in Sassuolo spends 2-3 million just to participate in Cersaie, the annual industry fair.
about two thirds (10 million) of that come from mobile music
the research uses data from a panel of 5,000 interviewees in each of the five main European countries. Really big time!
the research must have cost at least a couple million euro, so a figure comparable to the overall value of the Italian digital music market.
In the mean time - reports Il Sole 24 Ore quoting my friend Enzo Mazza, FIMI’s director (Italian branch of IFPI) - digital music in Italy grows slowly: +15% in 2006, which does not compare well to +116% in e-commerce. Enzo, do you not suspect that your associates are getting it wrong?
In te mean time the overall market for recording music in Italy loses another 18% to 600 million euro. And Radiohead decide to disintermediate their music: Il Sole quotes the remark of a top manager in an important European label: “When the best band in the world wants to cut us out, I am not sure there is going to be a future for this business.”