Music

Another Busy Wednesday

~ Cheryl

Radio again today. I think I’ll only have an hour of the show, but it should be good stuff.

First up James Gibbs will be back to talk more about Wole Soyinka. I’ve managed to find a version of one of the songs that Soyinka wrote with Tunji Oyelana & His Benders (lovely band name, that) for the album, Unlimited Liability Company. The original, sadly, is only available online via YouTube.

My other slot will be an interview I did yesterday with a lady from Trinidad who has a new science fiction novel out. She’s Rhonda Garcia, and the book is Lex Talionis. You can learn more about her via Tobias Buckell’s blog. I have a full half hour of interview which I shall podcast, hopefully next week.

In the evening I will be at Mr B’s Emporium of Reading Delights in Bath where I shall be interviewing Nick Harkaway about his fabulous new book, Tigerman. That should be in next week’s radio show.

And now, to whet your appetite, here are Tunji Oyelana & His Benders.

Today on Ujima – Wole Soyinka, Reggae Orchestra, Fair Trade

~ Cheryl

As I said yesterday, I was expecting Edson Burton in the studio to talk about Wole Soyinka. I had no idea he was bring along Dr. James Gibbs, a former lecturer at the University of the West of England who is an expert on Soyinka’s work, and has been invited to Nigeria to give a speech at Soyinka’s official 80th birthday celebrations. He’s extremely knowledgeable, and also a great performed of poetry. I recommend that you listen in for his rendition of Soyinka’s famous poem, “Telephone Conversation”. I very much want to get Dr. Gibbs back in the studio once he is home from Nigeria.

The segment on Soyinka had a contribution from Tade Thompson, and a brief mention of Nnedi Okorafor’s Wole Soyinka Prize win.

In the second half hour I was delighted to welcome Norma Daykin who is the Musical Director of the Bristol Reggae Orchestra. Norma is also involved in a couple of other local bands: Meet Your Feet and JAMA. The Orchestra doesn’t have any recorded music as yet, but I played songs by the other two bands, and from the wonderful Bristol musician, Lorraine Anyesu, who was sadly taken from us much too young. One other local band that Norma mentioned was AMJ Collective. Their music is a bit long and laid back for the show, but they are really good. We talked a lot about bringing together musical styles from all around the world, and about various charity gigs the bands will be playing at (including Refugee Week next week, and Bristol Pride in July).

You can listen to the first hour of the show here.

I began the second hour by interviewing Jenny Foster, the Coordinator for Bristol Fair Trade. Jenny was one of the people featured in the You Make Bristol exhibition at the M-Shed that I wrote about a few weeks ago. I was very pleased to hear how involved Bristol is in the Fair Trade movement, and Jenny is an excellent advocate for their work. I may have been a little disparaging about Lord Lawson and commodity traders.

In the final half hour Paulette took over and interviewed a film director who is crowdfunding a project about trade unions. You can find the appeal page here.

You can listen to the second hour here.

The playlist for the show is as follows:

  • Paradise – Sade
  • Dancing Mood – Delroy Wilson
  • No Borders – JAMA
  • Untold Lies – Lorraine Anyesu
  • Pushin’ – Meet Your Feet
  • The Banana Boat Song – Harry Belafonte
  • Silly Games – Janet Kay
  • Big Ship – Freddie McGregor

The Sade was, obviously, for Nigeria. JAJA, Meet You Feet and Lorraine Anyesu were all for Norma. I’m afraid I couldn’t resist playing the Banana Boat Song for Jenny, given that she’s done a lot of campaigns around the banana trade. The other three songs are all tunes that the Reggae Orchestra covers. Paulette may have forgotten to play the last one — she tends to get deeply into the discussions.

After the show I headed off to a nearby photography studio. The station has arranged a group deal to get promo pictures of all the presenters done. I was very relieved that the lens on the camera did not break, nor the did the photographer throw me out on the grounds that be couldn’t be expected to make anything of such a hopeless case. I’ll let you know when the results come back so that you can all have a good laugh.

Ujima Tomorrow

~ Cheryl

It looks like we have a packed show for you on Women’s Outlook tomorrow. First up I’ll be talking to my friend Edson Burton about the life of the great Nigerian writer, Wole Soyinka. He (Soyinka, not Edson) will celebrate his 80th birthday next month. I know very little about him, but he does have a Nobel Prize for literature, which is no small achievement. I look forward to getting educated.

In the next segment I’ll be talking to Norma Daykin, the musical director of the Bristol Reggae Orchestra. I have been spending a happy morning texting Norma about music and I can promise you some really great tunes, both reggae classics and from local bands.

The second hour I’ll be interviewing one lady about the Fair Trade movement, and another who is crowdfunding a film about trade unions. As Norma has given me far more music than I can play in one half hour, I’ll be continuing with her selections in the second hour.

As usual you can listen in online via the Ujima website. The show starts at Noon UK time. And it will be available for the next few weeks via our Listen Again service.

Yesterday on Ujima: Jamaica, Housing & Racism in Education

~ Cheryl

Not much literary stuff on the show yesterday, but some great content all the same.

Paulette was back from her trip to Jamaica. We spent the first half hour talking about that. With us in the studio was Auntie Pearl from the local Caribbean cricket club, who is also Jamaican. We may have talked about pirates for a while.

In the second half hour Judeline and I interviewed Tony Crofts who runs an organization looking to buy up empty office space and turn it into affordable housing. This isn’t anything to do with the situation at The Fleece which we highlighted last week. Tony’s organization is very responsible, and is in fact looking to take the place of council housing, which has more or less disappeared in the UK. To give you some idea of the problem, I note that the average UK home costs around 11 times the average annual salary (compared to about 3x when I stared work), and that average rents are above what you can afford on an average salary.

You can listen to the first hour of the show here.

For the second hour I handed the mic over to Paulette who did a wonderful piece on racism in Bristol schools. One of her studio guests had been very badly treated by one school and ended up taking them to an employment tribunal, as a result of which the school was (quite rightly) deemed institutionally racist.

You can listen to the second hour of the show here.

My playlist for the show was:

  • Montego Bay – Amazulu
  • Don’t Stop (Funkin’ for Jamaica) – Mariah Carey featuring Mystikal
  • Burning Down the House – Talking Heads
  • Build – The Housemartins
  • Another Brick in the wall, Part II – Pink Floyd
  • Maggie May – Rod Stewart
  • Baggy Trousers – Madness
  • My Old School – Steely Dan

I did try to find songs that had something positive to say about schools, honest.

Today on Ujima: Flash Fiction, Autism, Somalia

~ Cheryl

Today’s show didn’t have a lot of me in it, and may well have been better for it as I was very tired and could have done better. Fortunately the biggest contribution I had was like falling off a log.

I started out by talking about a petition to save The Fleece, a very fine live music venue in Bristol, which is threatened with closure because some offices across the street are being converted into flats. If you are wondering what has gone wrong with Bristol’s planning laws, local MP Kerry McCarthy explains. Even if you don’t live in Bristol, this campaign is well worth supporting because something similar could affect any music venue in the UK.

The first guest was Bristol’s Mr. Flash Fiction, Kevlin Henney. It was fortuitous timing as Kevlin had recently won the Crimefest flash fiction contest, with a story riffing off The Bridge, which he read for us. We talked about all of the things we talked about at the BristolCon Fringe flash event, and Kevlin announced a couple of events that will be happening in Bristol for National Flash Fiction day on June 21st. Further details are available on the Bristol Flash Facebook page. He also read a second story, which was just beautiful.

The music for Kevlin was “Scorpio” by Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five (not my favorite of theirs but I had trouble finding a track that was under 7 minutes and not full of banned words); plus “Little Wing” by Jimi Hendrix, which is about as short as a rock song gets without invoking Wire.

The second half hour was taken up with Jackie talking to some guests about mental health services in Bristol. I didn’t catch all of it, but it sounded really good. I left Jackie with “Within” by Daft Punk, which seemed appropriate. (Ingrid, Valentine, it is on the album Random Access Memories — glad you liked it.)

You can listen to the first hour here.

Next up we had Judeline talking to Ian and Matt, two fabulous guys who campaign for services for adults on the autism spectrum in Bristol. I had been quite nervous when Judeline suggested this as a topic because I know several autistic people, mainly online, and I know how much crap they get from the NHS and cure peddlers. I’m delighted to say that I was absolutely blown away by our two guests. Ian and Matt are not only devoting their lives to helping autistic people, they also have a huge amount of respect for the people they work with. Matt’s job is in part to go out and talk to businesses around the city, telling them what good employees autistic people make, and how easy it is to adjust your practices to help them fit in. (The rest of his job is less happy, and involves going to places like prisons teaching them how to treat autistic people fairly and respectfully.)

I must admit to feeling a bit frustrated and jealous listening to Ian and Matt talk. At around 1%, the proportion of autistic spectrum people in the general population is about the same as the proportion of gender variant people. Here we had two NHS people talking confidently about how autism is just a natural form of human variation that does not need “curing”, and indeed can’t be cured. Ian also mentioned how improved knowledge is allowing medical practitioners to spot symptoms early on in childhood, resulting in much better lives for autistic spectrum people. In contrast, what treatment there is for gender-variant people still tends to treat us as dangerous freaks who are not really deserving of help. While were are getting much better and spotting symptoms in kids, the national media campaigns actively against providing them with treatment.

Still, I understand that Bristol is well ahead of most of the country in its services for autistic spectrum people. I’m very happy about that. I hope what Ian and Matt do spreads to other parts of the country.

For music I did a bit of research on autism forums looking for songs that autistic people said spoke to them, rather than the more common songs by neurotypical people about autistic folks. The songs I picked were “Pi” by Kate Bush, which is all about a man obsessed with numbers, and “I am a Rock” by Simon & Garfunkel. My apologies if those were inappropriate in some way.

We had originally planned to have Ian & Matt on for an hour. However, we bumped them from the final 15 minutes because tomorrow we have a really high profile guest due in and we wanted to preview that.

Tomorrow at the Silai Centre there will be screenings of Through the Fire, a film about three remarkable women from Somalia. Hawa Abdi and Edna Adan Ismail are both doctors who have done a huge amount to bring good quality medical services and training to the war-torn region. Hawa has been a Nobel Peace Prize nominee, while Edna has received France’s Legion d’honneur. The third woman featured in the film is Ilwad Elman who campaigns to rescue and rehabilitate child soldiers.

The film is currently on tour, and will be in Cardiff on Friday. Edna Ismail is touring with it, and I’m delighted that she’ll be on Ujima tomorrow lunchtime to talk about the film and her work. Today I interviewed Tove Samzelius from The Silai Centre, where the film is being shown. The afternoon screening is apparently sold out, but they are arranging to show it again in the evening.

It is worth noting that Edna Ismail is not only a doctor and peace campaigner, she’s also a high profile politician. She’s a former First Lady of Somalia, and a former Foreign Minister of Somaliland. If that’s confusing, don’t worry, I had no idea either. The region of Africa inhabited primarily by Somali people stretches all around the coast of the Horn of Africa. The southern part, bordering on the Indian Ocean, still calls itself Somalia. It is also the primary venue of the civil war, and where most of the pirates are based. The northern part declared independence 21 years ago, though it has yet to receive international recognition. (Wales is one of the few places to have acknowledged it — there are a lot of Somalis in Cardiff.) That country calls itself Somaliland.

At this point you are probably wondering if there’s a colonial aspect to this, and yes, of course there is. The region that calls itself Somaliland was formerly the British Somaliland Protectorate, while the rest of the region was under Italian control. Almost every mess in Africa can be traced back to colonial powers stirring up trouble.

I know next to nothing about Somali politics (though thanks to Sofia Samatar for patiently talking to me this morning to make sure I didn’t make a total arse of myself), and I’m not going to dabble. The point of the film is not to take sides, but to provide help, support and much-needed medical care to the people caught up in the wars. My sole contribution to the politics was to invoke Mr. Eddy Grant who has some simple words of advice for his brothers in Africa.

Unless you live somewhere with a big Somali population, the film probably won’t get shown anywhere near you. However, you can watch the trailer. Content warning for grief-stricken people.

While I’m not going to say any more about the situation inside Somalia & Somaliland, I did promise Sofia that I’d raise awareness of the plight of Somali refugees in Kenya. Here’s Amnesty International to explain.

You can listen to the second hour of the show here.

Today On Ujima: Bristol & Slavery, plus Talking Books

~ Cheryl

Today’s show began with good and bad news. The good stuff included Nalo Hopkinson winning the Andre Norton Award for Best YA Novel of 2013 at last weekend’s Nebula Awards ceremony. It also included the really good news that Ahad & Anum Rizvi, the two young Pakistanis whose plight I highlighted last week, have been released from detention and will be having their applications for asylum reconsidered.

The bad news was that today’s programming has been dedicated to our of our regular presenters, DJ Flora, who died from cancer yesterday. She was younger than me. Because she presented a late-night show I hardly ever saw her, but many of the staff at the station were very upset about it. There’s an official tribute to her on the Ujima website.

However, the show must go on, and the first hour today was devoted to discussion of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and Bristol’s role therein. My main guest in the studio was Dr. Olivette Otele from Bath Spa University who is a well known expert in the history of slavery. Alongside her we welcomed three young people from Cotham School who were with us on a work experience placement. I’m really pleased with how it went. And thanks to Olivette we had some great music. I played Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song”, Billie Holliday’s “Strange Fruit” (one of the most disturbing songs I know) and Louis Armstrong’s “Go Down Moses”. It was great to see the kids’ faces light up with recognition when they heard Satchmo’s voice.

The fourth piece of music was Violin Concerto #9 by Joseph Bologne, Le Chevalier de Saint-Georges, played by the Orchestre de Chambre, Bernard Thomas. Saint-Georges is an amazing fellow who really ought to be better known. Those of you setting books in revolutionary France should take note. I also want to see books about Nanny Maroon, one of the other amazing people that Olivette introduced us to.

The discussion includes an appeal to George Ferguson to get Bristol to do more to acknowledge, apologize for, and memorialize the city’s role in the slave trade. You can learn more about the history of Bristol’s involvement in the trade from the M-Shed website.

You can listen to the first hour of the show via Ujima’s Listen Again feature here.

I note that this was the first time I call recall having someone text the studio to tell us how much they were enjoying the show.

The second hour was given over to fiction. I had Jo Hall in the studio to promote her new novel, The Art of Forgetting: Nomad, which is being launched at Forbidden Planet, Bristol on Saturday. That was followed by an interview with Karen Lord that I had recorded during Ã…con. I still have the much longer interview that Karen and I did as part of the convention program. I’m hoping to get that edited and on Salon Futura soon.

Jo got music appropriate for epic fantasy. Bat for Lashes was a no-brainer (I played “Horses of the Sun”, because I had played “Horse and I” a few weeks ago and didn’t want to repeat). The other song I chose was “Killer on the Rampage” by Eddy Grant, because I was teasing Jo about the number of people she killed off in the book. (Really, George would be proud. Whole towns massacred.) Jo’s soundtrack for the new book, which we mentioned in the show, is available here.

Karen had asked for jazz, which I was very happy to provide. I’m sorry we didn’t have time to play either track in full. The two tracks were: “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy” by the Cannoball Adderley Quintet; and “Stolen Moments” by Oliver Nelson.

Any discussion of SF&F on the show is liable to get into name-dropping of people we know. Jo enthused about Joe Abercrombie. I invoked Juliet McKenna when we got on the question of discoverability of women writers. And Kate Elliott needs to listen to the Karen Lord interview.

You can listen to the second hour of the show here.

Next week most of the show is being run by Jackie and Judeline, but I will have half an hour with Kevlin Henney talking about flash fiction. Kevlin won the flash competition run by Crimefest last weekend, which pleased me greatly.

Yesterday on Ujima – Friends, Radio & Museums

~ Cheryl

The studio was a bit busy yesterday because we were hosting the first ever live show by @FemFMFutures, a group of young girls who had been through a training course aimed at boosting the number of women in radio. They did a great job. You can listen to their show here.

We’d planned to follow that up with an hour-long discussion of the role of women in radio, but Harriet Robinson, who was one of our guests for that, had been involved in the training and needed a bit of debrief time with her crew. To give her time, Judeline and I filled in for half an hour.

I did actually have quite a few things to mention, including Gareth L. Powell’s BSFA win, and meeting Karen Lord in Finland. The main thing I want to draw to your attention, however, is this petition aimed at saving two young people being threatened with deportation by the UK Immigration authorities. Their parents have been given leave to stay, but because they are over 18 Ahad and Anum Rizvi have been assessed separately and told to go. They have no family back in Pakistan as their entire extended family has fled the country due to religious persecution. The fight to keep them here is being led by Easton Cowboys, the local cricket club that Ahad plays for.

We filled in the rest of the half hour with a discussion of friendship and what it means in these days of social media. I wish I had been to the Pelican Books event (of which more in a later post) before we did this, because some of the discussion there was very relevant. Humans do badly on their own, and it is an open question as to whether online “friends” can fill the gap left by evaporating local communities.

The second half hour was the planned Women & Radio discussion, for which I was delighted to welcome Harriet Robinson & Mary Milton into the studio. They both have a lot of experience with BCFM (Bristol’s other community station) and the BBC.

You can listen to the first hour here.

The second hour was devoted to a new, community-led exhibition in the M-Shed. I think the best way to describe it to you folks (an idea I came up with during the show) is that it is Long Hidden for the current Bristol community. That is, the museum is looking to highlight the work of amazing people from marginalized groups in the local community. Unusually, it has reached out to those communities for the material. Many thanks to Karen, Ric, Alex & Remi for a great discussion.

You can listen to the second hour here.

The playlist for the show featured mainly songs to do with radio in the first hour, and songs by people with a connection to Bristol in the second hour. I also played a song especially for our young trainees. Here’s the full list:

  • Sisters Are Doing It For Themselves – The Eurythmics
  • On My Radio – Selecter
  • Radio Silence – Thomas Dolby
  • Bristol Rock – Black Roots
  • Stranger on the Shore – Acker Bilk
  • The Riddle – Nik Kershaw
  • Overcome – Tricky

CN Lester in Bristol

~ Cheryl

I’m going to be in Bristol all day: on Ujima at Noon and going to a Festival of Ideas event in the evening. While I’m away, here’s another Bristol event to consider. The very fabulous CN Lester, whom I have had the honor to interview, will be playing at the Queen Shilling on Friday night as part of the monthly Lickety Split series of concerts. Other acts on the bill are Muff Said and DJ Suzi Lamb. Full details here (via Farcebook, I wish people wouldn’t do that).

For those who don’t have Farcebook accounts, it is £4 to get in. The event starts at 10:00pm and is scheduled to finish at 4:00am. I have no idea what time CN will be onstage. It is also apparently a women-only event, but trans friendly. And presumably non-binary-friendly too as CN identifies as such.

I’d love to go. I’ve never seen CN play live. However, I have no idea when I’ll be able to get out of Murder Most Magical. I need to be there until the authors have finished signing, and while we won’t have Gaimanesque numbers it will still be quite busy. Also I need to be able to catch the last train home, which means being back at Temple Meads not long after 11:00pm. Ah well, maybe some of you folks can go and tell me all about it.

The Invisible Women of Pop Art

~ Cheryl

While you lot were all watching Eurovision, I was watching a very different sort of pop. BBC2’s Culture Show was running a special about the women who were prominent in the Pop Art movement back in the 1960s. It is now available on iPlayer for those who can access such things. The link is here. And here’s an extract from the program blurb:

However back in the day, pop art was not just a boys’ club. The scene was full of female artists, tussling with sexuality, violence and consumer culture every bit as much as their male counterparts. Strangely, their work has been consigned to the margins of history — they started out together, shared the same art dealers and were shown in the same exhibitions, but as the boys’ prices skyrocketed, the girls’ stayed put. By the end of the sixties they had pretty much been erased from the pop narrative.

Sound familiar? Yes, it is exactly the sort of thing that people have been complaining happens to women science fiction writers.

Of course, while I am familiar with most of the SF writers, I knew very little about Pop Art beyond the few men who have become legendary: Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Peter Blake. I was therefore delighted to discover a whole bunch of women artists who were famous at the time, even if their achievements have been subsequently erased.

My favorite work from the show was Pauline Boty’s portrait of Lewis Morley, which sadly I can’t find online. Overall, however, I really liked Jann Haworth‘s soft sculpture. I was instantly reminded of the famous Trebor Softmints commercial that used Cockney Rebel’s “Mr Soft” for the soundtrack. The author of that commercial claims it was inspired by the work of another soft sculpture pioneer, Claes Oldenberg, but the figures look very like Haworth’s and in any case I had learned from the program that many of Oldenberg’s work was sewn by his wife, Coosje van Bruggen. Much as Haworth’s contribution to the Sgt. Pepper album cover has been erased from much of art history, so van Bruggen’s role in creating work with Oldenburg tends to be forgotten.

Along the way we learned a little bit about cultural prejudice against Pop Art. I was amused to see Huw Wheldon fulminating about pernicious, low-brow influences such as movies, pop music and science fiction.

Anyway, it was a fascinating program which I am glad I got to see. And Alastair Sooke did a fine job of presenting it. Because yes, no one would have paid any attention to what the show had to say about women artists, had a man not been out front to say it, eh BBC?

Bah! Here’s Mr Soft.

And here’s the original with actual Steve Harley vocals.

That Was The Fringe That Was

~ Cheryl

Well, I survived. 🙂

Public speaking doesn’t bother me, of course. Heck, I host the Fringe events, and that’s way easier than doing live radio. Reading my own fiction, on that other hand, that’s scary, especially when I’m actually quite pleased with what I have written. However, no one laughed (in the wrong place), no one walked out, and no one told me afterwards that what I had read as utter shit, which is definite progress.

More to the point, we had seven other fine stories. I’d like to extend a particular welcome to Pauline “Mazzy” Masurel, who had us all in stitches with her stories of an itinerant comet and a pregnant Brian Cox; and to Louise Gethin who appears to agree with me that garden gnomes are not to be trusted.

The Q&A turned into a discussion of the pros and cons of writing flash, but not before I had managed to lower the tone of the evening with some probing questions. Further to which, those of you who don’t know Talis Kimberley’s song, “Clever Men”, can download it (and read the lyrics) here, or listen to it below.

Audio of the evening will follow when I have had time to edit it.

Airships Over Bristol

~ Cheryl

While many of my friends were busy celebrating the first day of same-sex marriage (congratulations, Mary & Georgina!), the mad, impetuous fools of the BristolCon Foundation were throwing an Airship Ball. There was a Victorian Picnic (complete with cucumber sandwiches, with their crusts cut off). There were Dramatic Presentations of Strange Tales of Derring Do (freely adapted from originals in Airship Shaped and Bristol Fashion). There was Splendiferous Musical Entertainment by the very talented Cauda Pavonis. And of course there were elegant costumes of various types.

Jo has done a full report on the proceedings, which I recommend to you. She has numerous photos of the finery on display. I’m just going to present one of them here. This is Heike Harding-Reyland dressed as one of the fern people from Deborah Walker’s story, “The Lesser Men Have No Language”. I particularly like the baby fern person buds around the skirts. It is very Jeff VanderMeer.

Queenie Greenie

One thing that Jo doesn’t mention in her report is that she and Roz kindly presented me with a gift of cheese, chutney and chocolate truffles as a thank you for making the book happen. It was very sweet of them, and I shall enjoy it immensely. For those interested in such things, the cheeses are Black Bomber by the Snowdonia Cheese Company and Tomi Twym by Caws Cenarth. The former is a mature cheddar, and the latter a mature Caerffili flavored with sun-dried tomatoes, spices and white wine.

Finally, profuse apologies once again to the fine people of Cauda Pavonis because I had to leave before their set to catch a train home. I did hear them doing their sound check and can warmly recommend their music. Here’s a sample.

Drowning in Aether

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

Aether - CN Lester
The cover art for CN Lester’s new album, Aether, shows CN underwater in various ways. The symbolism is apt. Aether is one of those albums where you want to turn all the lights off and just let the music wash over you. You can drown in it.

Those of you who already own CN’s debut album, Ashes, will be pleased to hear that Aether is much in the same vein, a collection of achingly melodic songs accompanied primarily by CN’s haunting piano playing. The new album, however, has a sharper edge provided by additional instrumentation — electric guitar and various bits of percussion, as far as I’ve been able to make out — played by CN’s producer, Jack Byrne. The basic feel is the same, however. If you loved Ashes (and I do), you will love Aether too.

Most of the eight songs on the album are CN’s own compositions. My current favorite is “Anonymous” because I think it makes best use of CN’s incredible (opera-trained) voice. There is also one cover version, and had you asked me to guess in advance who CN might choose to cover I would never in a million years have guessed Buffy Sainte Marie. “Cod’ine”, on the other hand, is a very CN song, and it works brilliantly in their inimitable style.

Talking of cover versions, CN has also done a cover of Billy Idol’s “White Wedding” as a trailer for the album. It is not actually on the album, but you can listen to it or download an MP3 below.

Promote your mixtape at ReverbNation.com

I’m not really competent to do a proper music review, but if there’s one on So So Gay that should fit the bill if you want such a thing.

The album is available on Amazon and iTunes as an MP3 download. This is the point where I tell you smugly that you really should have backed the crowdfunding campaign for the album, because I have both a physical CD and wav copies of the songs. Copies of the CD will be available from CN whenever they play live gigs, and I note that they’ll be in Bristol on May 17th, of which more nearer the time when tickets are available.

More information is available from CN’s website, but what I recommend you do is listen to this podcast of the interview I did with CN on Ujima last month. It contains some fascinating discussion of gender bending in opera, and the world’s first woman opera composer, and CN talking about their career in trans activism. CN has kindly given me permission to include the two tracks from Ashes that we played during the show (which I have patched in direct from the album download for best quality).

One of the things we discuss in the interview is the Welsh National Opera’s Fallen Women season. They’ll be at the Bristol Hippodrome in April performing Puccini’s Manon Lescaut on Friday 11th and Verdi’s La Traviata on Saturday 12th.

No Radio, But Playlist

~ Cheryl ~ 4 Comments

There was no radio show today, for reasons well beyond my control. This is a shame, because we had a great show reflecting on International Women’s Day planned, and I had put together a playlist of songs by women from around the world. As you can’t listen to it, I thought I might share the list with you here.

  • Barbados – Rihanna, “Only Girl in the World”
  • England/Pakistan – Bat for Lashes, “Horse and I”
  • Benin – Angélique Kidjo, “Voodoo Chile”
  • Australia – Merril Bainbridge, “Garden In My Room”
  • Germany – Nena, “99 Red Balloons”
  • Denmark – Savage Rose (Annisette Koppel), “Where Have All The Flowers Gone?”
  • Wales – Cerys Matthews, “Awyrennau”
  • USA – Diana Ross, “Theme From Mahogany”

Yeah, I was going to play a song in Welsh. That would have confused people.

Also I know nothing about music from most of Asia and South America. Feel free to enlighten me.

Today on Ujima – Crime & Education

~ Cheryl

The first half hour of today’s show was given over to a local writer whose debut novel has been released today to much fanfare. Someone Else’s Skin by Sarah Hilary is widely tipped to be one of the hottest properties in UK crime fiction this year. I’m not surprised. It is a very powerful book, and of particular interest to Women’s Outlook as a major theme of the book is violence against women. My thanks to Sian Norris for reminding me about the Counting Dead Women project so I could bring to light the dreadful statistics of murders of women by their husbands/boyfriends/families in the UK.

For those of you saying, “I don’t do crime novels”, I note that an awful lot of SF&F is actually crime fiction of one sort or another. Also Sarah’s book, while definitely a police procedural, is not a mystery. As I say in the interview, it has definite similarities to a horror novel. It sure scared me anyway.

Sarah is having a launch party at Foyles on Friday. I’ll be there, as will Nikesh Shukla, Tania Herschman and doubtless a whole load of other Bristol literary folks.

The second half hour is all about free schools and academies, and the creeping privatization of the British education system. My guest was Christine Townsend, a well known local activist. My producer, Paulette, who is an ex-teacher herself, also joined us. Half an hour wasn’t nearly long enough. I’m sure we’ll have Christine back again soon.

You can listen to the first hour of the show here.

For the third half hour I handed control over to Judeline for the “Lighter Look At Life” segment and for “Woman of the Week”, who this week was our new intern, Ingrid Hoxha. Her family emigrated here from Albania when she was young. Amongst other things, we allow Ingrid to make it clear that she is not related to That Man.

Finally I took the reins again for a brief round-up of LGBT History Month. I got to ask some of the team what they had learned during February, and Paulette made me blush.

You can listen to the second hour of the show here.

As with the rest of the month, the music has been all LGBT-related. This week I played Tracy Chapman, Soft Cell, Goldman (feat. Smiler), Queen Latifah, Dusty Springfield, Lucy Ray and Bronski Beat. The final song is one that is very important to me. I was delighted to be able to thank Lou Reed live on the radio. I’m sure he’s listening, somewhere.

Joanne Harris – One Of Us

~ Cheryl ~ 4 Comments

The Gospel of Loki - Joanne HarrisYesterday evening I was in Bath to see Joanne Harris at Mr. B’s Emporium of Reading Delights. She was on tour with her new book, The Gospel of Loki. I’m a sucker for Norse mythology, so of course I am interested in the book, but I came away thinking that I had just met an old friend. Let me explain.

These days everyone and her sister is a science fiction and fantasy fan. We all watch the Marvel movies, we all follow Game of Thrones on TV. You can’t go anywhere without finding fellow geeks. However, a lot of those people have come fairly recently to geekdom. Many of you lot, on the other hand, have been reading SF&F for decades. There’s a term used amongst established fandom reserved for people we thought might be outsiders but turn out to be just like us, people whose life stories and attitudes are instantly familiar. We say that they are “one of us”. I guess it dates back to the days of fandom as a ghetto.

Well people, she might have had a No.1 best selling mainstream novel, but Joanne Harris is most definitely “one of us”. She regaled us with stories of reading her way through the children’s section of her local library so many times that the librarian reluctantly gave her a ticket for adult books. She talked enthusiastically about her love of mythology and fairy tales. She spoke scathingly of people in the publishing industry who think that fantasy is only for “immature” readers.

Here’s an interesting thing. If I closed my eyes and just listened to her talk about writing, and about fantasy, it could have been Neil Gaiman speaking. It was uncanny the way that Joanne appeared to be channeling Neil. I was not surprised to discover that they have become fast friends recently. Joanne is worried that she is developing Neil Hair, which is quite scary.

Some of the audience were clearly fans of her mainstream fiction. She fielded several questions about her having “changed genre”. Her response was that she’s still writing exactly the same books, just about different people with different amounts of magic in them. The first book she ever wrote was fantasy (recently reworked and packed as a YA novel), and she has been writing fantasy ever since.

I had noticed that for the new book Joanne has acquired a middle initial: M. I asked her if it stood for Menzies. She responded that actually it stood for Michelle, which is her middle name, and that she was using it as a signal to book buyers. She went on to add that she had always admired the way that Iain Banks had maintained two superficially separate careers. Perfect answer.

Of course there were questions about Loki. Someone else asked about Sleipnir so I didn’t have to. The horse story is in the book. Joanne said she had been happy to have been contacted by a young trans person who found Loki’s gender ambiguity empowering. Another tick in the win column.

Look folks, I haven’t read this book yet. However, I am certain that Joanne Harris can write. Number 1 best seller, remember. I am also absolutely certain that she knows her Norse myths inside out, and that she approaches myth in a similar way to other writers whose work I admire. So I am pretty sure that I am going to love The Gospel of Loki, and that most of you will too.

Then, of course, Joanne will get added to that long list of fabulous women fantasy writers who get overlooked when lists of great names in the field are drawn up. And because she is very good at feminist arguments too (see this from today for an example) she is going to become one of our best allies in that particular fight.

All in all, it was an excellent evening. I know you couldn’t all be there, and some of you might be quite jealous by now (hi Martha!). But you can get a partial sense of the evening because the Bookshop Band has posted a recording of the song they wrote for the event. It’s a bit rough, being the first time they had performed it (inevitable when you write songs especially for book readings), and I guess they actually mean it to be called “Rooting for Loki”, but they are lovely people and very talented.

PS: Thor: The Dark World is out on DVD and Blu Ray on Monday. Squee!

Today On Ujima – LGBT History Month Part III

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

Another Wednesday, another show in the bag. I’m very pleased with this one.

In the first hour I have the fabulous CN Lester in the studio to talk about the history of opera and their own music. Along the way we get to talk about Francesca Caccini, the first woman opera composer, and we play music by Noah Stewart, a gay black opera singer. We also play two tracks from CN’s debut album, Ashes. Inevitably CN and I talk about trans issues too.

You can listen to the first hour here.

The first segment in the second hour is all about new things for the new year. Has the team made any resolutions? If so have them managed to stick to them all the way through to February? CN and I enthuse about whisky.

Segment two sees our regular team member, Judeline, getting a go in the Woman of the Week slot.

In the final half hour Patsy Staddon joins us to report on the Women and Alcohol conference that took place in Bristol on Monday.

Along the way we play music by the amazing trans woman, Angela Morley, and from the “Dirty Blues” revival group, Vinyl Closet. I strongly recommend the podcast on the Vinyl Closet website. Once you have listened to it, you will never be able to hear any Little Richard song, or Elvis Presley’s “Jailhouse Rock” in the same way again.

You can listen to the second hour here. I’ll get a podcast done of CN’s interview as soon as I can.

Here Comes The Insect Invasion

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

Today John Scalzi and Mary Robinette Kowal have been having a bit of fun with the fact that younger (which I think means under the age of 70) members of SFWA have been described as a “‘vocal minority’ of insects”. With a little bit of help from Ursula Vernon, who drew the recruiting posters, they have launched an insect army.

Oh no, an Ant Invasion! There’s only one thing that SFWA needs now. Some music for a future age.

You may not like it now but you will
The future will not stand still

Cheers Adam, that was perfect.

Tiptree Results Announced

~ Cheryl

The winner and honor list for this year’s Tiptree Award have been announced. Details are on their website. It is great to see a book by an Australian writer, published by a UK small press, come out on top. Rupetta was a finalist for the Crawford as well. Definitely worth a look.

The Tiptree honor list is always full of good recommendations. I’m delighted to see Ancillary Justice on this list. The book has now won Best Debut in the Kitschies and an honor list placing in the Tiptree. I am waiting patiently to see if the various male reviewers who went on and on about what a badly written book it is might consider why they felt that way about it. (Not that it is perfect, by any means, but I found some of the reviews mind-boggling.)

Also on the list is Hild by Nicola Griffith which I love to pieces and will be getting a UK edition later in the year.

Eleanor Arnason’s Big Mama Stories is from Aqueduct Press and therefore available in the bookstore.

There’s lots more there that I want to read, but the final thing I want to mention is not readable, it is music. Here’s the Archandroid.

Even if it makes others uncomfortable
I will love who I am

Yeah, the booty don’t lie.

Book Review: Redefining Realness by Janet Mock

~ Cheryl

Redefining Realness - Janet MockThis is something of a departure for me, because this book is not science fiction or fantasy, it is a trans autobiography. While that may not be of interest to many of you, it is a really good book. I was lucky enough to get an early (and signed!) copy, because I was a backer of this film on Kickstarter (also a biography of an amazing trans woman of color). It is out in the US next week, and in the UK in the middle of March.

My review of Redefining Realness contains a lot of personal references. I hope Janet Mock can forgive me for that, but I can’t really express how I feel about the book without explaining how Janet’s story relates to my own. You can read the review here.

While I was writing the review, two piece of music came to mind. The first is by one of my favorite disco divas, Amanda Lear. It is marginally non-work-safe due to scantily clad boy dancers.

I forgive you for Bryan, Amanda, really I do. I was too young at the time anyway. *sob*

And here is Peter Sarstedt with the song I mention in the review.

Dedicated, as ever, to successful #GirlsLikeUs everywhere.

Update: US folks, Janet will be appearing on Piers Morgan Live tomorrow. I expect the questioning to be every big as inappropriate and disrespectful as Katie Couric’s show with Carmen Carerra and Laverne Cox. And having read Janet’s book I have a pretty clear idea where the conversation will go. Thankfully I have every confidence in Janet’s ability to handle it.

Let’s Help Make Great Music

~ Cheryl

If there are upsides to being part of a despised minority group, one of them has to be the ability to meet talented young people who would be far beyond your social circle, were they not also part of your group. CN Lester is an amazingly brilliant musician. If they were not trans, I suspect they’d be doing world tours with some opera company or another. CN would be friends with the Great & Good, as the British upper classes like to style themselves, and never see the likes of me. Instead, I not only get to chat to CN occasionally at trans events, I get to have them on my radio show next month. How cool is that?

Anyway, CN’s album, Ashes, is a regular fixture on my playlist when I’m working, and I’m delighted to see that there will be a follow-up. CN is currently seeking funding for it via IndieGoGo. There are only a couple of weeks left, and it is only half way to target. In a blog post today CN talks about some of the obstacles that being trans (or indeed a member of any minority group) puts in the way of a career in music (or indeed any other art). Sometimes crowdfunding is the only option. I hope that some of you will take this opportunity to help some really fabulous music to get made.

Oh, and the radio show: February 19th. Look out for it.