This
was the last of an occasional series under the generic title City,
"occasional" being a word often applied to something someone
is not quite sure about. The town we were invited to compare with
New Orleans was Leeds, as unlikely a parallel as one could imagine
except that we were concerned with a particular aspect of it: music.
"Leeds is going to expand musically",
a voice told us. "It is going to be like New Orleans."
If that perhaps is not quite the way it is, there is evidence -
with more than 200 live groups in the town - that something stirs
in what might be thought of infertile ground.
The music referred to was mainly jazz or rock.
There are in this part of the country, of course, choral, orchestral
and brass band traditions that do not vie with New Orleans and are
no worse for that, but participants in these activities have a link
with the folksier type of performers in that they do it mostly for
expression rather than money-making.
The first group we saw was a jazz group, the Jack
Bennett All-Stars, busy at rehearsal discussing who was going to
star and for how long and doing not at all badly, "Autumn Leaves",
with the vocalist enjoying doing her thing in English and French.
Another colour came next, a New Wave rock group
with what I think of as Dalek-type lyrics which are stabbed at the
audience. This was led by a young man who appeared to be doing this
on his way to an arts degree at Leeds Polytechnic.
We heard him in action and saw him in earnest
discussion with his tutor swapping phrases about "cultural
intervention" and intellectual terrorism". He seemed to
be worried about what kind of degree he would get and what the criteria
were. His tutor was unable to reassure him, although he did say
that "ideological intervention" by rock 'n' roll bands
could become part of the academic scenery, if that can be |
taken
as any kind of reassurance.
We also heard from a young mechanic with a long
line of musical forebears who not only played a mean saxophone for
money in the streets as well as indoors with a group, but had an
exhaustive experience of the lack of musical appreciation of the
police in various Yorkshire towns.
He was undeterred by 39 court appearances. The
law did not trouble him while the cameras were on him, which he
put down to that fact and the fine weather which, understandably,
inclines them to desist from unnecessary activity.
I thought he made a valid point about the ungrammatical
nature of some of the charges levelled at him and their archaic
origins and he was amusing on the foibles of Yorkshire authorities.
Sheffield, for instance, made their displeasure known on "pretty
pink sheets", in Huddersfield the magistrates had been sympathetic,
dismissed the charges and given him "two and a half quid"
to get home.
His impressive devotion was differently matched
by an obviously successful young man first seen stepping from a
red Mercedes 300SL. He turned out to be a company director and his
hobby was to make music entirely for himself at home. He sang and
played all the instrumental parts which often kept him busy taping
into the watches of the night.
Lastly there was Irish music, which eddies out
to other ethnic centres from a broth of a pub called The Roscoe.
All in all, very good television, may be occasional
but delightful, beautifully photographed and edited and with no
obtrusive interviewer. It was produced by Ian McNulty who doubtless
knew, as I did, that Leeds is nothing like New Orleans but has its
own stubborn brand of individualism and is worth keeping an eye
on for just that reason.
|
