I was going to include details of Blowzabella’s appearances at Sidmouth Folk Festival this year alongside a selection of other concerts but just found there was too much I wanted to say, so here is a short history of the masters of drone, which we ran in segments back in 2013 courtesy of Paul James of the band.
Folk Radio UK is a media sponsor for this year’s Sidmouth Folk Festival (29th July – 5th August). Don’t miss the afternoon Cellarful of Folkadelia concerts we’re presenting which you can read about here.
Blowzabella at Sidmouth
Blowzabella are running a dance workshop at The Bulverton on the afternoon of Saturday 30th July (3:15-4:45 pm) and a “Big Night Out” at The Bulverton later that evening (8-10:30 pm). There is also a double-header concert at The Ham on Sunday, 31st July (3:15-4:30 pm) with Ben Paley, who has been playing the fiddle music of the US, Sweden and the British Isles since he was six, as well as singing songs from the repertoire of his late father Tom Paley.
Download the full Sidmouth Folk Festival programme here.
If you still need to get your ticket, check out the flexible range of ticket options, and choose from week, day or event tickets. Details here: https://sidmouthfolkfestival.co.uk/tickets/
Individual event tickets can be purchased here.
In 2018 Blowzabella celebrated their 40th Anniversary with their Two Score album, reviewed here. As stated by David Kidman, “The strongly individual blend of instrumental colours continues to make great capital out of the twin poles – droning hurdy-gurdy and (English) bagpipes, underpinned by supremely chunky, driving bass – with plenty of busy, cooking interest in the tasty intermediate layer of melody provided by diatonic button accordion, violin, viola, soprano and alto saxes, clarinet and penny whistle, all surfacing through the texture in various delightful and surprising permutations over the course of the disc. The special Blowzabella groove is less of a “wall of sound” and more of an intricate, dynamic and constantly interweaving tapestry, whether on the stomping, animated rhythms of the dance tunes or the carefully configured yet spontaneous-sounding backdrops and settings to the songs.”
As mentioned, in 2013, we ran a series of Blowzabella tour blogs by band member Paul James in which he introduced us to Blowzabella and gave us a valuable insight into the band’s fascinating history. As the original piece was spread over four guest posts, I’ve pulled elements of this together below.
Introduction
Blowzabella compose their own music, which is influenced by English and European traditional dance music. Many of their tunes have become “standards” in the modern folk repertoire and are played by people all over the world. Many bands who experiment with the boundaries of folk music cite Blowzabella as a major influence.
They have played everywhere, from the main stage of Glastonbury Festival to the far reaches of West Africa, South America and the Far East.
The current lineup has been in place for many years now, featuring Andy Cutting – diatonic button accordion; Jo Freya – vocals, saxophone, clarinet; Paul James – vocals, bagpipes, saxophone; David Shepherd – violin; Barn Stradling – bass guitar; Jon Swayne – bagpipes, saxophone.
Blowzabella – In the beginning
Blowzabella was formed in Whitechapel, London, in the autumn of 1978 by Bill O’Toole (bagpipes, flutes) from Sydney, Australia; Jon Swayne (bagpipes, flutes) from Glastonbury, Somerset; Sam Palmer (hurdy-gurdy), Chris Gunstone (bouzouki, tapan) and Dave Armitage (melodeon, percussion, bass curtal) who are all from London. Dave Roberts (melodeon, percussion) joined in late 1979 when Bill returned to Australia. Before the band was named Blowzabella, some of them played occasionally with Paul James (bagpipes, woodwinds), Juan Wijngaard (hurdy-gurdy), Peter Lees (hammered dulcimer) and Cliff Stapleton (recorder, hurdy-gurdy).
When the band began, Jon, Bill and Dave were studying woodwind instrument making at the London College of Furniture in Commercial Road, Whitechapel, London E1. Sam had recently finished the instrument-making course at the college and had begun making hurdy-gurdies. Jon, Dave Armitage and Sam lived in an area of run-down tenements rather optimistically called Fieldgate Mansions near the Whitechapel Bell Foundry, the East London Mosque and the men’s hostel where Joseph Stalin once stayed. When Jon finished college and returned to Somerset, he passed on to Dave Armitage his flat at 14 Fieldgate Mansions, Myrdle Street, Whitechapel, London E1, which was Blowzabella HQ for the next five years or so. Chris lived in Blackheath and was heavily involved in Balkan music and dance. This led to there being a Macedonian “wing” of the band called Izvoren who played with Balkan dance groups around London. Australian multi-cultural music guru Linsey Pollak (Macedonian gaida, kaval, saxophone) was in London around that time and played Balkan music with some of the band and Peter Lees, a wonderful hammered dulcimer player, who they met at the College, did a few gigs with Blowzabella in the very early days.
The Name
Blowzabella is the name of an English jig tune from the late 17th or early 18th centuries. The band came across it in Wrights’s “Complete Collection of Celebrated Country Dancing” while searching in the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library at Cecil Sharp House for one-octave English tunes to play on the bagpipes. The “blow” and the “bella” seemed to describe the sound they made and the name stuck. There is also a bawdy song of the same period, “Blowzabella my bouncing doxy” (using the same tune); “Blowzabella” being one of many 17th-century slang words for a woman who made her living on the streets.
Early days
Bill (co-founder Bill O’Toole) had been playing zurnas (loud double-reed woodwind instrument) on stilts in Australia and had the idea of literally elevating the band. The first public performances in 1978/79 were at festivals and fairs, with Blowzabella drawing attention as an energetic stilt walking dance band in bizarre costumes. The line-up was Bill O’Toole, Jon Swayne, Chris Gunstone, Sam Palmer and Dave Armitage. Bagpipes were very much to the fore playing the tune, with the hurdy-gurdy close behind and a driving rhythm being supplied by the bouzouki and percussion – usually a Balkan double-headed tapan or a side drum. The repertoire was a mixture of English, Balkan, French and Flemish traditional dance tunes. Bill made the first sets of bagpipes the band used, Sam made hurdy-gurdies, Jon made flutes and recorders and later went onto pipe making and Dave Armitage made curtals and bombards. This was partly because they could and partly because there were so few others making the instruments they wanted to play at that time. Since then, the band have continued to work with a number of instrument makers, and the band’s sound is partly the result of their work.
In the early days, the band played at alternative festivals, including the Festival of Fools, the Albion Fairs, Barsham, Rougham Tree and Hood Fairs, in the street, at parties and at college gigs. Those festivals were unusual in the way they brought together such a wide variety of alternative entertainment – street theatre, all kinds of bands, stand-up comedy, improvised music, new circus, free poets, performance artists, pagans, bikers, locals and people of all ages. From 1978 onwards, members of the band would go to a festival in central France in a small village called Saint Chartier. In its early days, the festival was predominantly about the traditional music, dances and instruments of central France, particularly the bagpipes, hurdy-gurdy and accordion. The alternative festivals, with their creative atmosphere and eclectic mix of contemporary, independent artists and Saint Chartier, with its great musicians and all-night playing and dancing, were major formative influences on Blowzabella.
The Blowzabella “wall of sound”
In December 1980, Paul James (bagpipes, saxophone, woodwinds) and Cliff Stapleton (hurdy-gurdy) joined the band. Paul, Cliff and Juan Wijngaard had played together since about 1975. Cliff’s theatre company The Mountebank Zanies, did many performances in the mid to late 1970s with Juan, Paul and others, and later, the first Blowzabella line-up providing the music. Paul soon became the band’s organiser and was responsible for organising and producing all their albums and tours from then on. Dave Armitage, who had left in 1980, rejoined in late 1982, playing bass curtal and percussion. Dave Shepherd (violin) – who knew Dave Roberts and Dave Armitage and had played in the folk rock band Dr Cosgill with Paul since 1977 – was invited to join in 1983. This was a period when the band started composing their own tunes and when they played at all the major European Festivals, including the main pyramid stage at Glastonbury Festival. It was also the heyday of The Three Daves (Armitage, Roberts and Shepherd) – all great players, dancers and enthusiasts of traditional English dance music. In the early 1980s, John Offord(violin) and Guy Crayford (guitar, mandola) occasionally sat in when one of the regular members was unavailable. Also, during this time, the band struck up a long-standing friendship with the singer Frankie Armstrong which culminated in the album Tam Lin in 1984 and some live performances in Britain, Europe and Canada. Recordings from this period: Blowzabella (1982), In Colour (1983), Tam Lin (1984) and Bobbityshooty (1984). Book: Encyclopaedia Blowzabellica. Blowzabella tune and dance book.
By 1985 the band needed a fresh injection of ideas and energy and Paul approached Jo Freya (vocals, saxophone, clarinet), who was perhaps best known then as a member of the Old Swan Band, a very young Nigel Eaton (hurdy-gurdy) and Ian Luff (cittern, bass guitar). When Dave Roberts decided to step down, that made room for another astonishing young player – Andy Cutting (diatonic button accordion). The band made a leap forward, building on everything that had gone before, greatly increasing the amount of music composed by the band, and honing the sound and reputation of Blowzabella as a powerful live band. During this period, they travelled widely across Britain and Europe, touring East Germany before the fall of the iron curtain, around Brazil and a tour that took in Sierra Leone, Ghana and Nigeria. Recordings from this period: The B to A of Blowzabella (1986), Pingha Frenzy (1988), A Richer Dust (1988), Vanilla (1990).
The usual pressures associated with constant touring led to the decision to stop playing in December 1990. The band members stayed in touch and would sometimes play together in twos and threes while moving on to do their own musical projects. In 1996 Dave Roberts tragically died. Dave was a great musician with an encyclopaedia of tunes and dances in his head. He had a special gift for being able to instantly play virtually any kind of tune, even if he’d never heard it before that moment, in any key, with any kind of musician, even those he’d only met 5 minutes previously. A natural musician with great technique, he was also a modest person who never sought the limelight and was often happiest providing a solid and reliable platform for others in the band to build on.
Ian, Jon, Andy, Nigel and Dave played a few gigs as Blowzabella from 1996 to 2001 and wrote some new tunes. Paul organised a 25th-anniversary celebration in 2003 and Andy Cutting, Nigel Eaton, Jo Freya, Paul James, Ian Luff, Dave Shepherd, Jon Swayne played some memorable gigs, including a huge, hot and atmospheric performance at St. Chartier Festival in central France in July 2003. The band had a lot of new material and enthusiasm and decided to carry on, although Nigel Eaton stepped down at the end of 2004 and another major young talent Gregory Jolivet from Bourges (hurdy-gurdy) was invited to join. Ian Luff left at the end of 2005 and the band invited Barn Stradling (bass guitar) to join. Greg and Barn were obvious choices for the band, both havng grown up listening to the band’s music and both having the flair, originality and tune writing skills to make a major contribution to developing the band for the future.
The Music
Since 1978 the band has developed an enormous repertoire of traditional and self-composed dance tunes. Despite making many albums, most of their earliest repertoire never made it onto record, although much of it is published in their first tune book – The Encyclopaedia Blowzabellica – a new edition of the book is now available from the band. In the early days, the band borrowed traditional tunes from all over England, Europe and the Balkans and adapted them to their needs and instrumentation. Although the band are known for popularising European dance music in the UK – they are equally well known for popularising English traditional dance music and dances in Europe. As the band progressed, the ability of band members to compose and arrange their own material grew in importance and started to define what the band was about. In 2004 the band published a book of their own compositions called New Tunes for Dancing Blowzabella tune and dance book.
British and European traditional dance rhythms are pan-European. The local and regional differences are akin to accents and dialects of the same basic language. These differences are best expressed through local variations in instrumentation, tuning, phrasing, tempo and the style of tunes. A polka from Poland and a polka from Ireland sound far apart in character but they obey the same basic rules of time signature and rhythmic emphasis. From the outset, the band realised that there were far more similarities than differences in the music across Europe, and it partly explains why they became equally popular in all the European countries where they played. They had a knack for sounding familiar enough to be accessible and foreign enough to be interesting to audiences both at home and abroad. Possibly because they concentrated on dance music – the most basic language and one which needs no explanation or translation – they were able to build an audience of people of all ages with very different musical tastes.
Influence
The band’s whole approach – independence and self-sufficiency, strong performances, unusual instrumentation, interesting arrangements and choice of dances, and above all, their ability to write many new tunes that have become “standards” in the folk repertoire in Britain, Europe and beyond – has proved to be influential and many musicians in the UK, Europe and further afield, who experiment beyond the boundaries of “folk” music, cite Blowzabella as a major influence.
Dancing
The line-up has always included musicians who are also good dancers and dance teachers Dave Armitage, Chris Gunstone, Jo Freya, Bill O’Toole, Dave Roberts and Dave Shepherd. They showed the audience how the dances went and because they were also musicians in the band, rather than a guest, they were able to influence the way the band played in terms of tune structure, tempo and the inner rhythms that make dance music work.
Workshops
In addition, the band made a conscious effort to engage with their audience by staging an annual Blowzabella Workshop Festival (1984 to 1990), which introduced large numbers of people to playing and dancing and that contributed to the formation of bands in several countries. The band still do Blowzabella Day events which feature workshops on dance, instrument technique and arranging music as a band.
Band website https://blowzabella.co.uk/
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/blowzabella/
Twitter www.twitter.com/blowzabella