unoriginalname38 – the blog of Dave Cole

The Daily Telegraph on Charlie Gillett

I'd like to recommend this article in today's Daily Telegraph on Charlie Gillett by Peter Culshaw. Mr Culshaw sings the praises of Charlie Gillett, the hugely influential host of World of Music on the BBC World Service and, until his illness last year, of the Sound of the World on BBC Radio Four. I started listening to World of Music when I bought a digital radio and then found Sound of the Worldand it is, I think, the best music programme on any radio station. It is always varied and always entertaining and has introduced me to artists that are prominent on the 'world music' scene that I had never heard of, not least Tinariwen and Ali Farka Toure. When I did a radio show, Ozymandias is Back, at the LSE Students' Union's radio station, PuLSE, I frequently pinched songs that Gillett had played a couple of nights before.

Culshaw does point out that the UK music industry is Anglophonic in a way that the Spanish is not Hispanophonic or the French Francophonic:

The conservative nature of British radio disappoints him. "If you think of how other aspects of life have changed - the number of foreign players in the Premiership, the diverse range of global restaurants in the high streets - radio here is pretty xenophobic." He is puzzled that multi-million selling artists such as Spain's Manu Chao or Cesaria Evora from Cape Verde are so rarely played on Radio 1 or 2.

In other countries I've been to, there is at least music sung in English as well as the native language or languages and frequently other tongues as well.

You can listen to Charlie Gillett on the World Service online.

xD.

Labels: Music

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