I've spent the past three days thinking that last Friday I saw Paul Scourfield playing an accordian. Today I discovered that he wasn't playing an accordian, he was in fact playing a melodeon. I subsequently discovered that the melodeon is also called a diatonic button accordian, so now I don't feel nearly half so foolish. Paul was performing traditional folk with Jon Loomes (fiddle, guitar, concertina and hurdy-gurdy) Upstairs at The Mag in East Dulwich. It was a relaxed and friendly evening. Our hosts, Nyge and Sue, were affable and bouncy. The low-lit room sheltering the audience from tonight's strong winds, visible in the form of a large green-leafed tree swaying and lurching outside the window, was cosy. And the musicians, apart of course from being very good, were witty and engagingly informative between songs, often seemingly beginning a tune and then stopping to say, "Oh, and another thing about this piece..." or something, before starting again. When Jon brought out his hurdy-gurdy for the first time he gave us notice in case anyone wanted to leave, before telling us that the hurdy-gurdy is depicted as the demon's instrument of choice in Medieval pictorial representations of Hell, such as Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights. Personally I think it's a great instrument. He later told me that he sometimes plays it amplified, something I'd like to hear.
There were also some floor acts tonight. We missed the earlier ones, but the stand-outs of the ones we saw were a duo recently arrived from Australia (though English and Irish by birth) called Joe and Jen, guitar/vocal and fiddle respectively, who were performing for the first time over here. They were great to listen to and great to watch. When Jen kicked in on her fiddle and the tempo quickened, Joe, sitting and playing alongside, kept his eyes fixed on her and seemed as entranced as we were.
As they were about to start, by the way, Jen spotted Jon's hurdy-gurdy lying by the wall and exclaimed, "What's that?!" as if she'd just seen a large, dead rodent. "I'll tell you later, darling," said Joe. Wikipedia says it's "a stringed musical instrument in which the strings are sounded by means of a rosined wheel which the strings of the instrument pass over. This wheel, turned with a crank, functions much like a violin bow, making the instrument essentially a mechanical violin". Later on, it was great to watch fiddle player Jen's open-mouthed fascination at her first experience of the hurdy-gurdy in action.
(A footnote a year down the line. The duo are Jen Doyle and Joe Fowler. Exactly one year later they are due to play the same venue, this time as the headline act)
(a hurdy-gurdy player yesterday)
I celebrated my birthday last night and as a result I was feeling somewhat weary by this evening. I wasn't the only one - one audience member fell asleep and two others left before they did the same - I'll put their tiredness down to it being the week's end, the venue being snug and homely and the music being soothing. I didn't fall asleep, but when at the end of the evening I'd finished chatting to Jon and Paul, instead of saying goodbye and leaving, my brain stopped working and I stood silently whilst the duo waited for me to say something else. Eventually Paul brightly told me that it was nice to meet me. I rather abruptly muttered that I'd buy a cd but didn't have enough money and used my legs to walk away. Sorry about that chaps.
East Dulwich Goose Green Fair, 11-4.
