Name Jah Wobble
Occupation Bassist
What this all about? This fortnight Glasgow welcomes ground-breaking post-punk bassist and world dub pioneer Jah Wobble. A outstanding 26-year career has seen John Wardle (his adopted name being 3 Sid Vicious mispronunciation) act as the pounding heart of John Lydon's Public Image Limited, collaborate with an unimaginably diverse array of international artists with his own Invaders of the Heart. and appear on the likes of The Word and even Ti'swas.
‘I think I surprised John and Keith with my bass playing,‘ Wobble says of his PiL pals Lydon and Levene, We never taken to anything else like that in my life. And I still fucking love it — I can't do soundchecks anymore cos I just can't wait to get started.‘
Over the years Wobble has taken on a boggling variety of styles and influences and channelled them through his own hypnotic punk- reggae sensibilities. He was way out in front of the world dance scene in the 19803. applying his towering bass to indigenous music from all over the globe. bringing a sense of spirituality to his own extraordinary style.
‘There's a lot of tossers in the music industry. but music is largely about compassion and meditation,‘ he says. ‘Now I'm a nutcase; a real neurotic monkey. Music has a meditative effect on me. It's behind and beyond thought, it's taken me on that trip — and I'm more able to deal with all that everyday shit.‘
Now something of an elder statesman of the Ieftfield music scene. Wobble recently saw a three CD retrospective of his career released on Trojan Records. / Could Have Been a Contender makes for a heady cocktail of disparate. trance-like dubs. featuring contributions from Sinead O'Connor. Nina Miranda. The Edge. Pharoah Sanders, Brian Eno and Evan Parker to name but a few. Similarly, Jah Wobble performances promise a multicultural me'lange. So what was his original motivation for all of this cross-cultural intermingling? Simply the old football adage that ‘your game improves when you play with a big team.’
(Mark Edmunson)
a Renfrew Ferry, Glasgow, Fri 5 Nov.
72 THE LIST 21 Oct—‘1 Nov 2004
WORLD BIG BIG WORLD
Various venues, Glasgow, Fri 21—Sun 31 Oct
Glasgow’s BBW is now one of the major international events of its kind, bringing performers to the city from around the globe. Often - like Miriam Makeba, South Africa’s Pops Mohamed, Cuba's Omar Sosa and France’s Magic Malik - they fly in for one-off UK performances. Festival director Billy Kelly is very happy with the solid base built up over the last decade. ‘I’ve always tried to go out and bring the best of music from around the world to Glasgow,’ he says. ‘And now I’m getting enquiries every day from musicians who want to come and play the festival. We’ve definitely built a good reputation out there. I'd say around half the concerts are from approaches by the artists.’
Such a wide spread of styles - from the Icelandic art- pop of Ske to Musafir’s ancient traditions of Rajasthan’s travelling Gypsies - means that Kelly has to plan carefully. ‘I start with a clean sheet, listen to lots of music and think about what would be a good idea, remembering our past events, then make up a short list and find out what’s available and make a pattern. The
JAZZ TI-IEO TRAVIS Henry's Jazz Cellar, Edinburgh, Wed 27 Oct
Saxophonist. flautist and composer TraVis has a long-standing fascmation With prog rock as well as jazz. and works With Gong and Porcupine Tree in that context. No big surprise. then. when he included former Caravan and Hatfield and the North vocalist Richard Sinclair on three tracks on Earth to Ether. his prog-ishly titled new album.
'I love his v0ice — it's very SDGClal. and very English, rather than pretend American. He uses his v0ice differently on each of the three songs he sings. He s0unds very fragile. but he actually has a strong sense of pitch and melody. and a big range too. He doesn't embellish it the way a Jazz Singer w0uld. but I do all that around the melody line
With alto flute.
'I haven't used vocals on an album befOre. but I saw this as similar to working Wllll trumpeter Palle MikkeIDOrg on the Heart of the Sun album. I very much imagined our two v0ices — Richard Singing and my flute — as both contrasting and c0mplementing each other in a way that
was at least anaIOQOLls With what I did With Palle.‘
Travis plays tenor saxophone on the album. but both flute and alto flute are heavin featured. He admits he is something of a proselytnzer
for an instrument that is underused in a Jazz context.
‘Flute doesn't dig in like the tenor. and some tunes — like '21st Century SchiZOid Man' — wouldn't work on it. but against that it's nimble. it's mysterious. it's emotional. it's atmospheric and it can zip
around the harmonic changes.’ (Kenny Mathiesoni
Louis Mhlanga
more dancey stuff I programme into the Arches, and the more “hard listening" goes to the CCA.’
Judging by the audience build-up for the fabulously inventive Omar Sosa - first brought to the UK five years ago by Kelly, and now a fixture of the festival - that ‘hard’ venue is going to be the first festival sell-out for the concert by the astonishing Cuban pianist, here this time in a duo with percussion. The festival has other dimensions too, with emotionally drenching music theatre from Argentina in De Lagrimas, and 3 Witness Seminar and Open Forum at Caledonian University over the weekend of 22 and 23 October looking at the Anti- Apartheid Struggle in Scotland. It includes a free screening of the prizewinning documentary Amandla, telling the story of black South African freedom music. But it’s music that takes centre stage, be it the off-the- wall adventures of French/Balkan piano and sax duo Julien Lourau and Bojan Z, Angelique Kidjo‘s pan- African dynanism, Mory Kante‘s virtuoso creation of constellations of notes on his kora, or Lonnie Liston Smith’s pedigree of sophistication on the piano, while the whole shebang kicks off with the star of the African guitar, Louis Mhlanga. (Mark Robertson)