Lines on Music

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Busking… most musicians do it at some stage or other, for some it is even their primary income. From BB King, to Tracy Chapman, to Ed Sheeran many household names in the world of popular music have cut their teeth busking. Playing on the street provides musicians with a unique performance environment, which requires particular strategies to draw and hold an audience… not everyone can do it.

In this episode, ‘Street Music’, we speak to Dr Elizabeth Bennett about her co-authored report ‘From Brass Bands to Buskers: Street Music in the UK’, where we dig down into the cultural history of street entertainment and busking. We also speak to Dr Diana Omigie and Heather Thuringer about their research paper ‘The Busking Experiment: A Field Study Measuring Behavioural Responses to Street Music Performances’ to find out what scientific methods and research approaches around behavioural analysis can tell us about what makes a successful busker.

The episode begins and ends with the music of Toulouse ensemble Les Fanfleurs Brass Band. You can find our more about the band at their website here http://www.lesfanflures.fr/welcome/fr

If you have enjoyed this podcast please do subscribe, leave a positive review on iTunes and share with those who might be interested. Feel free to offer your feedback about the show or get in touch by connecting on Twitter: @linesonmusic or via our website www.linesonmusic.com

In this episode we speak to the London Django Collective. The Collective was born out of the desire to create a local and innovate forum for musicians influenced by the musical legacy of Django Reinhardt. The Collective remains in the spirit of Django, whilst pushing the genre of ‘gypsy jazz’ in London forward into a modern sphere.

In the conversation here we discuss the collective itself; their motivations for putting it together and its formation, we talk about this idea of an emergent London sound and how that sits relation to the Parisian sound that fans of this music will likely be most familiar with. Finally we discuss some of the recordings, the group has recorded a great collection of original songs in the style, reflecting the modern jazz manouche sound as it stands today but also, pushing at it’s boundaries by drawing in more influences, which you’ll hear about in this episode.

All of the music you hear in this episode comes from the London Django Collective. If you would like to know more go to https://www.facebook.com/londondjangocollective/

If you have enjoyed this podcast please do subscribe, leave a positive review on iTunes and share with those who might be interested. Please also do feel free to offer your feedback about the show or ideas for future episodes and topics by connecting on Twitter: @linesonmusic or via our website www.linesonmusic.com

The London Django Collective are:
Harry Diplock (guitar), Robin Katz (guitar), Kourosh Kanani (guitar), Jeremie Coullon (guitar), Matt Holborn (violin), Giacomo Smith (clarinet), Pete Thomas (bass) and Simon Reed (bass).