The Music Show

The bouzouki has been a feature of Irish folk music since the mid-1960s, and one of the instrument’s finest modern exponents is Daoirí Farrell . He’s also a singer and a song collector, and he's brought his instrument into our studio to demonstrate how the three things fit together. Post-post-modern chanteuse Meow Meow returns to The Music Show to talk about The Red Shoes, the third show in her se...

In February 1975, Keith Jarrett turned up at the Cologne Opera House to play a solo concert. He was tired, hungry and in pain, and the Bösendorfer piano was falling apart. Technicians worked on the instrument before and after that night’s opera performance, and the 18-year-old promoter talked Jarrett into going on. Still tired, still hungry (dinner arrived too late), still in pain, and very much a...

Lajamanu is one of the most remote places in Central Australia, and it’s where we meet Wanta Jampijinpa Pawu-Kurlpurlurnu, his father Jerry Jangala Patrick OAM, and the music producer Marc ‘Monkey’ Peckham. Crown & Country is a new album and film that’s come out of more than a decade of friendship and collaboration between Wanta, Jerry and Monkey. Blending Warlpiri Jukurrpa (Dreaming) songs, c...

On the 25th of August, 1975, Bruce Springsteen released Born to Run, the "dividing line" of his career. Starting with the title track, written on the edge of his bed in a rented cottage in New Jersey, Born to Run signalled the arrival of Springsteen, and the E Street Band.  A child of the Kennedy, King, and Malcolm X assassinations, Springsteen transformed classic rock and roll images - the road,...

The Glasgow-based singer Quinie travelled across Argyll on her horse Maisie to collect old Scots songs for her new album Forefowk, Mind Me. On this record, Quinie (whose real name is Josie Vallely) pays tribute to her ancestors as well as Scots Traveller singers like Lizzie Higgins, whose deep connection to the land has been expressed beautifully in song for generations. She speaks to Andy about a...

“Ships become obsolete; fine furs are ravaged by moths, faded by the sun, worn by rubbing against show cases; garments go out of style; the gold watch grandfather handed down is replaced by a thin one. Change and decay is all around — except in violins. Death rarely comes to the violin.”  So wrote Arland Weeks in 1929, in The Scientific Monthly. Dr Laura Case gives Andy a potted history of the vio...

Seraphim Trio have been making chamber music together for over twenty years. Pianist Anna Goldsworthy  joins Andrew Ford to talk about her relationship with violinist Helen Ayres and cellist Tim Nankervis, as well as the women composers – famous and lesser known – they have recorded as part of their latest album Radiante. Written from the small shed on his allotment in Northern England, the lyrics...

Aspirations of modernity, progress and innovation drove music through the 20th century. For French composer Maurice Ravel, inspiration from (and imitation of) his peers, of the voices and styles around him, made him a true original. He pulled from Spanish music, 18th century music, Viennese waltz and jazz, and yet within seconds it’s always possible to hear Ravel’s own, distinct, voice. To mark th...

Almost every description of South African singer, cellist and composer Abel Selaocoe starts with a phrase like “genre-defying”, but Abel refers to himself as genre defining. Wherever he tours, he brings with him a lifetime of musical influences ranging from his childhood in Sebokeng, a township outside Johannesburg, to adolescence at Soweto’s African Cultural Organisation of South Africa, to study...

Ellen Stekert has spent a lifetime in folk music. She got her first guitar at 13 (to assist with her rehab after contracting polio) and soon after high school she became enmeshed in the Greenwich Village folk scene, crossing paths with the likes of Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie. Ellen released four albums of traditional songs in the 1950s and then focused her career on academia, teaching English,...

Brisbane trad band Amaidí say they perform "doofy folk stuff": accordion, guitar, banjo and fiddle augmented by stomp box and electronics. Amaidí means nonsense in Gaelic but it's more than just silly stuff, with their new album Beyond Cape Capricorn reflecting the broad and often dark influences of Scottish and Irish music in the Australian folk tradition. That being said, there's plenty to dance...

What do an actress mired in scandal, a grieving political dissident, a previously enslaved African celebrity, and a court composer have in common? They’re all integral to the story of Messiah becoming a cornerstone of the musical repertoire. Heard now more often at Christmas, it was premiered at Easter in 1742 after three rapid weeks of writing by Handel, and it suggests, as author Charles King sa...

Tony Wellington returns to the show to race through the 1980s in a single episode. It's a decade of contradictions, where big hair, commercial pop hits, lip syncing and the music video meet rap, independent rock, and house music. From girls on film to video killing the radio star, from talking about a revolution to being touched for the very first time: how do you sum up the triumphs and tragedies...

JJJJJerome Ellis styles their name with five Js because it’s the word they stutter on the most. The artist, writer, composer and multi-instrumentalist has released a new album Vesper Sparrow which layers spoken word, vocals, saxophone, hammered dulcimer, organ, electronics and more. JJJJJerome speaks to Andrew Ford about the musical opportunities that speech disfluency provides, and what we can le...

Reed and Oak - composed and performed by DOBBY, words by Cate Kennedy. One of two winning poems from our Middle of the Air competition, run in collaboration with Red Room Poetry .

The Arbour - composed and performed by Leah Senior, words by Giles Watson. One of two winning poems from our Middle of the Air competition, run in collaboration with Red Room Poetry .

In August, ABC Radio National and Red Room Poetry put out the call for Australian poets to submit new poems to be set to music by two great local musicians, DOBBY and Leah Senior. Now, to mark the end of AusMusic Month, the two winning poems, and the songs that they have become, are premiered on The Music Show. Andy talks to DOBBY, Leah, and the two winning poets Cate Kennedy and Giles Watson, as...

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander listeners are advised that this program contains the voices of people who have died.  As a post-war kid, Leo Sayer first heard rock & roll on Radio Luxembourg on a radio late at night. His career has taken some major swerves: he was an illustrator, a graphic designer (he worked on album covers for Bob Marley), then a blues harmonica player. Most famously t...

Lolita Emmanuel is a creative researcher. She’s a musician, a storyteller, and an academic (moments away from finishing her Doctor of Musical Arts) and she’s part of this year’s ABC Top Five Arts residency. That's early career researchers in the arts who’ve come to Radio National to make shows about their work.  Lolita is Assyrian and Armenian, and her creative practice, which forms the basis of h...

Most people would think of Paul Grabowsky as a jazz pianist. And they wouldn't be wrong, except he's much more than that. He's a composer of film scores, orchestra works and operas, a band leader (he founded the Australian Art Orchestra) and an inveterate collaborator. Just this year, he's released three albums: a recording of standards with singer Michelle Nicolle; a duo with guzheng player Mindy...

Both Sides Now was written by Joni Mitchell in 1966, when she was just 21 years old. She wasn't the first artist to record it though - in true folk tradition, the covers began before her own version was released in 1969, and they haven't stopped since. Both Sides Now is our most covered Cover Story song so far, with over 1,700 versions in as many styles as you can think of. Including, of course, J...

Senegalese kora master Seckou Keita's relationship with the West African string instrument is delicate, thoughtful, and expansive. Through developing his own tunings, and taking his music further than the traditions of Casamance, the region of southern Senegal he's from, he's connected his instrument with jazz, classical, and other African musical traditions. He's in Australia playing a series of...

In 1983, the Manly Ferry was making its way to circular quay and James Reyne was laying down Reckless (Don't Be So...) with his band, Australian Crawl, for their EP Semantics.  Since then, the song has had a permanent place in lists of great Australian songs, in no small part due to some very different covers. Some by Australian music royalty (from Paul Kelly to John Farnham), and some from furthe...

Martin Hayes is one of the world's most celebrated fiddle players, and a very influential figure in Irish traditional music. He draws from the musical tradition of County Clare and interprets it within a wider contemporary context, and has collaborated with an impressive slate of artists from Paul Simon to Yo Yo Ma. A longtime friend of the Music Show, Martin Hayes speaks with Andy ahead of his 20...

Time After Time was a last minute addition to Cyndi Lauper's debut album She's So Unusual in 1983 - a final songwriting session between Lauper and Rob Hyman filling a gap on the tracklist.  Since then, it's been through the wringer with not one but two versions recorded for MacDonald's ads, turn-of-the-millennium EDM, and a turn by Miles Davis ("the most honoured I ever felt" - Cyndi Lauper; "he c...