Patti and Tricky for Summer Time

Summer time? Not quite yet. British Summer Time at least.
Music is my enchantement.

Read also below an interview in the Guardian with the wonderful Patti Smith.

TRICKY TO JOIN MASSIVE ATTACK ON STAGE FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER IN THE UK! - PLUS MORE SPECIAL GUESTS ADDED

It’s time for one of the live collaborations of the year as Tricky returns to the stage with Massive Attack for only the second time ever (and the first in the UK) at this year’s Barclaycard presents British Summer Time Hyde Park on Friday 1st July! The acclaimed artist cut his teeth collaborating with the trip hop duo in the late 1980s but did not share a stage until this year in Berlin. This will be the first time they have ever performed together in the UK.  “We’re pleased to announce that Tricky will be joining us on stage for a few shows this summer – the first one being BST Hyde Park on July 1st.” - Massive Attack Also taking to the stage on 1st July will be the brilliant Loyle Carner, Shura and Balthazar to kick off Hyde Park’s ten-day festival!  -- link: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/jun/16/patti-smith-hyde-park-london-gig-july-interview Patti Smith: ‘You decide your fate. Are you going to fall apart or own it?’ The punk-poet genius behind Horses is finally fulfilling her wish to play Hyde Park next month. She talks about life as an outsider, New York’s scuzzy past and why she loves Peter Pan Before meeting Patti Smith, I receive a few pointers: “She’s not a chitchat person. Do not be any later than 11.30am. Find her in the lobby bar and introduce yourself.” I don’t fancy getting on the wrong side of her. Smith first made a name for herself on the 1970s New York poetry circuit, giving both barrels to the men who would yell at her to get back in the kitchen. “Sometimes I’d say something intelligent,” she recalls. “Other times I’d just yell: ‘Fuck you.’” She developed into a fearless performer – confrontational, physical, refusing to conform to expectations of how a woman should act on stage. I arrive half an hour early and nervously stake out the bar - but there’s no sign of her. And it’s not as if you could miss her - at 69 years of age, she still rocks a boyish black blazer, while her hair is now a tangle of shoulder-length grey. It gets to 11.30, then 11.40, and I start to panic. At 11.50, I get a call telling me that Smith has been waiting for 20 minutes. But where? I eventually bump into her in the lobby. “Why didn’t you call my room?” she says. I stammer something about following instructions. “Oh my, I would never keep anyone waiting like that,” she says, aghast. “I am so sorry.” The next thing I know, she has linked arms with me and is telling me about her jetlag (she’s just flown in from Japan) and how she is combating it by watching her favourite detective shows. As for not being a chitchat person … over the course of an hour and a half, we manage to cover everything from the work of Japanese director Akira Kurosawa to the disaster zone that is Donald Trump, her fear of allergies, and the brief spell she spent in the early 70s working with albino blues musician Johnny Winter as a visual guide (“I would help him negotiate traffic”). Even after I turn the tape recorder off, she is not going anywhere, offering me tips to assist my pregnant wife (“No salt, that’s my little tip, because your body retains water during summer”) and filling me in on her holiday plans. It turns out that she is actually on vacation as we speak, a three-day stint in London that involves watching her friend Ralph Fiennes in Richard III, visiting the grave of French philosopher Simone Weil in Ashford, and, er, speaking to me. Officially, we are here to talk about Hyde Park, where she will perform on 1 July as support to Massive Attack. Playing there has been a lifelong dream – she remembers feeling heartbroken after Brian Jones, her favourite Rolling Stone, died, and recalls the concert the band held in the park afterwards. FacebookTwitterPinterest  Breakthrough … Patti Smith with Lenny Kaye at CBGBs club in New York City, 1975. Photograph: Richard E. Aaron/Redferns “1969,” she says. “I was in Paris with my sister, busking. I didn’t have the money to get to London, but they had the pictures in the French papers that week and I remember Mick released all these butterflies. It seemed like all of youth was in Hyde Park that day.” How is she going to prepare for the show? “I’d like to get there early, so I can visit the Peter Pan statue in Kensington Gardens,” she says – and then clocks my confused look. “Have you seen it? Oh, it’s so wonderful! He’s got a pipe and there are fairies about! I used to go and see it in the 70s. I still do. When I was younger, I wanted to be just like him and never grow up. So whenever I’m in London, I always go say hello to Peter Pan.” If the idea of Smith making pilgrimages to see a fictional flying boy during her punk heyday seems a little unexpected, then that is probably because Smith is on very casual terms with convention. By the time she was 20, she had already abandoned the life set out for her (she gave a child up for adoption when she became pregnant aged 16, and later quit a factory job) then moved to New York to pursue her dreams of becoming a poet. Back then, the city was gritty and dangerous – which was how Smith liked it. “Much better than I do now, because it was nearly bankrupt, cheap to live in, and there was always action. It felt like the possibilities were endless. I was 20 years old, and sleeping in graveyards and subways.” Graveyards? “Oh it was scary!” she laughs. “But no more more scary than sleeping the night in a field in south Jersey.” The city’s heady mix of danger and creativity seeped into the art scene. Smith, who found most of the poetry readings she attended “very boring for a young girl”, recruited Lenny Kaye from a local record store to play feedback behind her verses. “I wanted to get across the energy from my generation,” she says, and sure enough, people started reacting – both positively and negatively. “I didn’t have any fear in dealing with anybody,” she recalls. “I never left the stage crying, and if I was booed, I would stand my ground. Eighty per cent of the time, I could turn the situation around to my favour.” Smith often ended her sets with Piss Factory, an autobiographical tale about finding the strength to escape a dead-end job. She says the same guys heckling her at the start would find themselves relating to it and on her side by the end. Smith says she never intended to make a record, yet it was out of these performances that her debut album, Horses, was born. Even now, 41 years on from its release, it sounds like nothing else: snarling and snotty, yet transcendental and poetic, too. She asked Velvet Underground founder John Cale to produce it – not the sensible choice, given his unconventional working methods – and the pair clashed frequently. Yet it was Cale who spotted Smith’s gift for improvisation and, rather than try to rein it in, pushed her to explore it further. The results included sprawling masterpieces such as the nine-minute, stream-of-consciousness epic Birdland, although Smith was unaware quite how important the freeform music on Horses was at the time. She says she expected to return to working in a bookstore after finishing it, but instead found herself inundated with offers to travel the world: to London and Paris, Finland and Sweden. Taking what she had learned from the likes of Bob Dylan and Johnny Winters, she grew into a magnetic performer, full of energy and spontaneity. This wasn’t always to her benefit. One time, while playing with Bob Seger in Florida, Smith was lost in a performance of her song Ain’t It Strange – “spinning like a dervish” is how she puts it – and tried to bring herself to a standstill by slamming her foot on her monitor. The monitor, however, was balanced precariously on the edge of the stage and she fell 14 feet on to the concrete below. “It was a bad fall. I fractured my skull, several vertebrae in my neck, my back, my tailbone. I broke some teeth. It was serious. And I still have certain repercussions – I never got my full eyesight back. I don’t have the range of movement that I used to.” As she recounts the months of physical therapy it took for her to get back on stage, her phone rings and she checks it quickly: “Oh it’s my son!” she exclaims. “Can I just get this? Would you mind?” Of course not, go ahead, I say. “Hi, Jack!” she beams. “Where are you? I’m just doing an interview in London about our job in Hyde Park and I was just about to talk about you.” From the other end of the line I hear: “Aw mom, you don’t have to talk about me again!” The punk rock icon/embarrassing mum ends the call. “Sorry, I just love my kids. They lost their father really young, and he was a great musician, so it’s like music is a continual connective force between them and their father.” Their father was Fred “Sonic” Smith, the MC5 guitarist whom she married in 1980. They had two children – Jackson and Jesse – and she retreated from rock’n’roll for the best part of a decade to raise them. The time off had its musical benefits, too, not least because Fred taught her how to sing properly, using her stomach and lungs rather than delivering her words through her nose. It is partly for this reason that, when Smith decided she would celebrate Horses’ 40th birthday by touring the record in full, she sounded even more impassioned than she did in the 70s. Anyone who was perhaps expecting Smith to dial down the energy in her 69th year was in for a shock. “That’s just not how I work,” she shrugs. “I’m incapable of being stripped down!” Instead, she updated the album’s lyrics as call-to-arms for people to rise up against corporate interests (“We are all being fucked by corporations, by the military,” she would spit. “We are free people and we want the world and we want it NOW!”) and ensured that even the quieter moments such as Elegie – where she recites the names of people who have died, including Fred Smith, who died in 1994 – remained intense and emotional. ‘I’m going to be 70 soon,” she says. “And I know I can’t sing like Amy Winehouse or Rihanna. I can’t rely on that physical beauty or certain things that you have when you’re young. But what I can rely on is that, when I go on stage, I am only there for one reason and that’s to communicate with the people. I don’t have any wishes for myself. I don’t care about career. I already have a place, and a good name … there’s nothing that I really want, except for us all to experience something together.” When Smith first brought Horses back at Primavera, she encored with her 1978 song Rock N Roll Nigger. As a piece of art, Smith’s intentions are clear – the song is about the acceptance of outsiders – but in 2015, it seemed an uncomfortable choice of song to perform, not least because the (mainly white) crowd seemed happy to shout the N-word back at her in gleeful abandon. “I don’t play it normally,” she says when I bring it up, “out of respect for our times. Just like I don’t play Gloria in churches. I’m happy to be disrespectful, but I’m also happy to be respectful. On the other hand, when I was inducted into the rock’n’roll hall of fame I performed Rock N Roll Nigger because I promised my mother I would – it’s her favourite song, because it’s our most high-energy song – and right in front of me was Clive Davis, with Aretha Franklin and Al Sharpton. I don’t know whether they liked that or not, but that’s what I did.” Smith says that when she wrote the song she believed in our power to transform words – “Like how if you said ‘fuck’ you thought you were going to hell because it was so dirty … or how the worst word you could call an Irish kid was ‘punk’” – but she accepts that the song’s message doesn’t really fit in the current climate. “Sometimes I still play it because it’s my favourite song to do,” she says. “And it was really about myself - ‘Baby was a black sheep, baby was a whore’ - the lowest things you could call somebody, because I’d been through a lot of derision in my life. And what the crowd sing back to me is the line “outside of society” because that’s what it’s about: gay kids, poets, people of colour, all of us. It was a big community of people outside of society. The song just means: ‘Kicked out of there? Come here!’” FacebookTwitterPinterest  Live on the Pyramid stage, Glastonbury 2015. Photograph: Dylan Martinez/Reuters Being on stage, says Smith, is like a microcosm of life. “All the same wonderful and embarrassing things that can happen in life can happen on stage, and you have to face them all with equal humour. You can’t think you’re a god or a queen because you have great moments, and you can’t think you’re a failure because you have terrible moments.” At Glastonbury last year on the Pyramid stage, Smith slipped and went down on her arse. Her response says it all: she got up and screamed: “Yeah, I fell on my fucking ass at Glastonbury. But you know why? Because I’m a fucking animal, that’s why.” “I thought to myself: ‘Well, there’s 100,000 people out there … I felt like a real asshole,’” she laughs. “And then I thought ‘What the fuck? It’s rock’n’roll! And what did I want to do more than anything in that moment?” She bares her teeth: “I wanted to turn up my amp and just fucking rip the strings off my guitar … because I had so much energy. You can decide your own fate. Are you going to let it all fall apart? Or are you going to own it?” Smith might be nearly 70 but she still seems to have retained both her anger and her sense of childlike wonder. When she talks about music and art and poetry, often with her eyes closed in rapture, it is as if she is impervious to ever becoming jaded. “I always wished I could go to Hyde Park, and now I finally can,” she says, lost in dreamland at the thought. “For me, I can go all the way back to being 22.” • Patti Smith supports Massive Attack at Hyde Park, London, 1 July

Quote of the day

“There's nothing more dangerous than someone who wants to make the world a better place.” 

― Banksy

Première annonce

Le bien-heureux stade des épreuves... Nous y voilà!

Après 18 mois de bonheur à Bristol, le fruit du travail accompli est presque prêt. 

Photo : Bristol's Bearpit, février 2015, par Mélissa Chemam

Je suis 'over the moon', comme disent mes amis britanniques, et je ne saurais assez remercier Bertrand Dicale, Elisabeth Samama et Stephen Carrière pour leur confiance, leur travail, leur accompagnement et leur investissement sur ce projet!

La présentation du livre vient d'être publiée sur le site des Editions Anne Carrière.
La voici ci-dessous.

Le livre sortira en France le 6 octobre 2016.

Je retourne aux relectures! 

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En dehors de la zone de confort

Mélissa CHEMAM

De Massive Attack à Banksy, l’histoire d’un groupe d’artistes, de leur ville, Bristol, et de leurs révolutions

Qu’ont en commun le Pont suspendu d’Isambart Brunel, l’acteur Cary Grant, le groupe Massive Attack et l’artiste de rue Banksy ? Ils sont tous originaires de Bristol, une ville moyenne de l’ouest de l’Angleterre. Une ville marquée par une histoire riche et complexe, mais encore jamais racontée ! Marquée par une fortune précoce liée à l’ouverture de l’Angleterre vers l’Amérique, elle devient aussi un des points névralgiques du commerce triangulaire. C’est justement cette histoire qui va nourrir, de manière inédite et radicale, la génération d’artistes éclose à Bristol à partir de la fin des années 1970.

Tout prend forme lorsque qu’un jeune graffeur anglo-italien du nom de Robert Del Naja signe du pseudonyme « 3D » sa première œuvre de rue sur un mur de la ville en 1983. Avant de fonder le groupe Massive Attack en 1988 avec les DJs noirs Grantley Marshall et Andrew Vowles, il rencontrera les pionniers du post-punk de Londres et Bristol, les passionnées de reggae antillais du quartier de Saint Pauls, puis la chanteuse Neneh Cherry et le rappeur Tricky. Creuset inattendu mêlant hip-pop, reggae, soul et guitares rebelles, le premier album de Massive Attack, Blue Lines, sort en 1991 et provoque une révolution dans la culture populaire britannique. Massive Attack devient l’incarnation du succès d’un métissage à la britannique, et parviendra à toujours se renouveler, tenter de nouvelles révolutions et durer au-delà de nombreux mouvements musicaux des années 1990 et 2000, telles la Brit Pop, l’electronica et le drum and bass.

Dans le sillage de cette créativité débridée mêlant musique, art et implication sociale profonde, naissent aussi les groupes Portishead et Roni Size, les mouvements nommés trip-hop et dubstep, et le génial Banksy, inspiré dès son plus jeune âge par les graffitis de Robert Del Naja. Depuis, la profondeur artistique de ces artistes et leur engagement n’ont fait que se renforcer, tout comme leur lien avec leur ville. Ce lien va devenir le tremplin qui les porte jusqu’à l’autre bout du monde, de l’Amérique à Gaza. Il pousse aussi très tôt Robert Del Naja à se mobiliser – contre la guerre d’Irak, pour les droits des Palestiniens ou, plus récemment, pour l’accueil des réfugiés jetés sur les routes européennes. Rébellion, art, musique, engagement, Bristol synthétise ainsi une autre histoire du Royaume-Uni. Une histoire qui amène au sommet des charts et sur le devant de la scène de parfaits autodidactes, et la part plurielle et afro-antillaise de la culture britannique.

L'auteur

Journaliste depuis 2004, passée par Paris, Prague, Miami, Londres, Nairobi et Bangui avant d’atterrir à Bristol, Mélissa Chemam est allée à la rencontre de tous ces artistes, chez eux, et sur les routes qu’ils parcourent.

Diffusion Interforum
ISBN : 978-2-8433-7809-6
Code barre : 9782843378096
Nombre de pages : 400
Parution : 6 octobre 2016
Prix : 19 €

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Photo : The 'Mild Mild West' by Banksy, Hamilton House, sur Stokes Croft, février 2015, par Mélissa Chemam

Photo : 'Wild Dayz', livre de photographies de Beezer, couverture photographiée à Saint Pauls en février 2015 par Mélissa Chemam

Bristol M Shed Museum (photo par Mélissa Chemam), février 2015 - Exposition sur le rôle des combattants des Antilles britanniques dans la Grande Guerre

La ferme urbaine de Saint Werburgh, Bristol, 17 février 2015

"Shadow selfie" à Saint Pauls, février 2015

Graffiti au début de Stokes Croft, près de Saint Pauls, à Bristol. Photo par Mélissa Chemam. Février 2015

Le Brexit : un mauvais choix pour la musique?

Sur le Brexit, voici un point de vue intéressant venant du milieu musical.

Mon reportage sur le sujet pour la Deutsche Welle sera en ligne en fin de semaine et fera la part belle aux musiciens... En attendant cette perspective donne aussi de bon argument sur l'avenir des liens entre les cultures dans le rapport de force UK /UE.

Article du quotidien suisse 24 heures :
http://www.24heures.ch/culture/musique/brexit-deprime-promoteurs-concerts/story/29746117

Le Brexit déprime les promoteurs de concerts

Musique «Personne ne veut du Brexit», affirme Vincent Sager, patron de la société vaudoise Opus One.

Par Fabrice Gottraux15.06.2016

Muse, PJ Harvey et Deep Purple au Montreux Jazz Festival, Iron Maiden, Massive Attack, les Chemical Brothers et Muse encore à Paléo, également Radiohead à l’OpenAir Saint-Gall… A première vue, l’été des festivals fait la part belle aux têtes d’affiche britanniques. Auquel cas, il y a lieu de se demander ce qu’une éventuelle sortie du Royaume-Uni de l’Union européenne changerait au marché des concerts. Le Brexit fait-il peur aux promoteurs, aux agents, aux organisateurs de concerts? Le Brexit peut-il péjorer l’offre musicale sur sol helvétique?

«Les agents de concerts réfléchissent comme n’importe quel capitaine d’entreprise: aucun ne veut du Brexit», répond Vincent Sager. Patron de la société vaudoise Opus One, détenue en partie par Paléo, Vincent Sager résume l’allure du marché des concerts: «Les engagements d’artistes se font beaucoup en euros, un peu en livres, également en dollars». Conséquence probable du Brexit? «Si la Grande-Bretagne quitte l’Europe, la livre baissera sans doute et le franc suisse deviendra une valeur refuge d’autant plus forte.»

Artiste anglais à la baisse

Des musiciens, des chanteurs, des groupes anglo-saxons, l’histoire du rock en a bouffé depuis l’invention des Rolling Stones il y a de cela un demi-siècle. Cinquante ans après la «British Invasion» (ainsi qu’on la nommait aux Etats-Unis), force est de constater cependant que les artistes insulaires ne fournissent plus le gros des troupes. En Europe, du moins. Or, note Christian Wicky, directeur du distributeur Irascible, basé à Lausanne, le Royaume-Uni exporte beaucoup moins d’artistes qu’il y a 20 ans. «Hier, un artiste sur deux provenait d’Angleterre. Ce n’est plus le cas aujourd’hui, du moins en ce qui concerne la scène indépendante. A l’exception d’Adele, bien entendu.»

Se pose alors la question suivante: les artistes anglais, ceux qui s’exportent, vont-ils pâtir du Brexit? Tout dépend de qui vend quoi, et à qui. Concernant les grandes vedettes internationales, Muse par exemple, le marché procède de deux pôles distincts, pour ainsi dire invariables. Londres, d’une part, les Etats-Unis de l’autre. Les agents de Londres vendent des concerts pour l’Europe, l’Asie et, très souvent, l’Amérique du Sud également. Quant aux agents américains, car tout artiste international a un agent anglais et un agent américain, ils se chargent de l’Amérique du Nord, parfois de l’Amérique du Sud. «Les artistes anglais composent un domaine bien particulier, relève Sébastien Vuignier, de l’agence lausannoise Takk: certains jouent régulièrement aux Etats-Unis, tandis que d’autres, des pointures telles que Robbie Williams qui remplit des stades, n’ont pas autant de succès aux Etats-Unis.»

Le Brexit va-t-il péjorer les tractations entre Londres et le reste de l’Europe? «Sans doute pas directement, envisage Sébastien Vuignier. Si problèmes il y a, ils concernent plutôt les retombées indirectes du Brexit, l’impact sur l’économie globale qui, à son tour, pourrait affecter l’économie des concerts.»

Pas de rabais pour le public

Dans l’expectative, il règne comme un flou parmi les professionnels. Qu’on vende des disques, des concerts ou des chaussettes, on suit en fin de compte toujours les mêmes règles économiques. Sur quoi, d’aucuns ajouteront avec une pudeur tout helvétique: «Pas de raison de paniquer». La musique est une denrée comme un autre? A ceci près, toutefois, que les tournées d’artistes se «dealent» dans la marge de l’import-export. «Le marché de la musique passe sous le radar», constate Patrick David, de Two Gentlemen, promoteur lausannois. Des Suisse à Londres, ce sont, pour Two Gentlemen, les Sophie Hunger, Erik Truffaz et autre Young Gods. 

«Sans même considérer le Brexit, la baisse de l’euro et la montée du franc ont occasionné une baisse des prix en Suisse, constate Patrick David. Mais pas dans le domaine musical. Car le client reste local. Celui qui fréquente Paléo ne va pas en France voisine écouter les mêmes concerts. Conséquence: les promoteurs locaux, qui importent beaucoup, sont encore plus riches grâce à la faiblesse de l’euro. Au contraire, lorsqu’on vend des groupes suisses dans le reste de l’Europe, on perd de l’argent.» Et Patrick David de s’interroger: «L’impression générale est au repli identitaire. Les artistes allemands, comme les Français, jouent de plus en plus à domicile.» Impression similaire du côté des distributeurs de disques. Ainsi de Christian Wicky, d’Irascible: «Les marchés nationaux, français, allemands, suédois également, grappillent doucement leur part».

Un marché mondialisé

Renversement de perspective. Si les tenants du Brexit s’inspirent du modèle suisse, de son indépendance économique, avérée ou non, n’est-ce pas la situation helvétique qui mérite d’être interrogée en premier lieu? «Vu de la sorte, souligne Patrick David, c’est l’ultralibéralisme du système économique qui pose problème.» Et le cas britannique, avec ou sans Brexit, n’est pas nouveau: «La frontière existe déjà avec la Grande-Bretagne, qui ne fait pas partie de l’espace Schengen. Lorsqu’un groupe suisse se présente à Douvres, il est déjà contrôlé. Le Brexit obligera-t-il à se fournir en visas et permis de travail pour aller jouer à Londres? Tout est question de réciprocité. Prenez l’exemple des Etats-Unis: les Américains ne paient rien pour jouer en Europe, mais les Européens ont besoin d’un permis de travail pour jouer aux Etats-Unis…»

Enfin, interroger l’impact du Brexit sur le marché du rock, c’est également comprendre que ce même marché ne concerne plus uniquement l’Europe et l’Occident en général. En faisant affaire aussi bien avec l’Amérique du Sud (Argentine, Chili, Brésil) que l’Asie (la Chine en particulier et ses festivals géants), les agents londoniens ne se focalisent plus tant sur l’Europe, qui reste un marché important, mais de loin pas le seul ni le plus grand.

(24 heures)

(Créé: 15.06.2016, 10h53)

Bristol still loves his beloved... Cary Grant

Funny Cary Grant still means so much to Bristol!! I guess it's because he left...

I do feel he's not the city's "most famous son" anymore nowadays; Banksy must be, except for those who still quote him as a Londoner (what?! I know, but surely you heard that too!) or... as an American!!! (I swear I heard it on a very prestigious radio...).

That does not mean Cary or Banksy are Bristol's FAVOURITE son however.

Or mine, for that matter :)

Though he's the closest person who almost shared my birthday date (January 19 anyone?)...

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Anyway, if you're a fan, you'll be able to enjoy this festival dedicated to his film in Bristol in July:

Cary Grant Festival programme revealed

Bristol's most famous son, Cary Grant (sorry Banksy), is celebrated in the third annual Cary Grant Comes Home for the Weekend festival next month. This includes screenings at venues as diverse as Avery's Wine Cellars, the Watershed and the new Everyman Cinema. The grand finale is a gala screening of the classic 1938 screwball comedy Bringing Up Baby at the City Museum and Art Gallery.

This year's event also runs alongside the Bristol Harbour Festival, offering an ideal opportunity to highlight the role Bristol's maritime heritage played in transforming young tearaway Archibald Leach into Hollywood icon Cary Grant.

The whole thing kicks off with a curtain-raiser screening of Hitchcock's Notorious at Avery's Wine Cellars on Friday, 8 July. Naturally, this includes a tasting of wines inspired by the film.

A special Cary Grant marquee in Millennium Square during the festival weekend of July 16/17 explores the great man's relationship with the city docks and allows punters to take the inevitable selfie with his statue, as well as offering the opportunity to buy a range of official merchandise.

“In his autobiography, Grant reveals that he spent many hours watching ships come and go from the harbour, dreaming of sailing away with them," says programme co-director Charlotte Crofts. "He also talks about the excitement he felt on making his first transatlantic crossing and of discovering that the film stars Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford were fellow passengers. So it’s perfect to have a celebration of his roots, life and work happening when the harbour is so lively: a wonderful chance for locals and visitors alike to find out more about one of the city’s most famous sons and enjoy some of the glamour of his world and times.”

The Everyman cinema has two screenings: a 4K restoration of Howard Hawks's Only Angels Have Wingson Saturday and the classic romantic weepie An Affair to Remember (co-starring fellow Bristolian Deborah Kerr) on Sunday.

On Saturday, the Watershed has two fascinating talks under the banner The Man from Dream City. In Kiss Him For Me: Cary Grant and Onscreen Love, Kathrina Glitre of UWE explores Grant's snogability with reference to his many leading ladies. And in an appetite whetter for the Sunday evening gala screening, Mark Clancy explores the making of Bringing Up Baby in Liberating the Leopard.

In a separate Watershed event on the same day, The Making of Becoming Cary Grant, Bristol filmmaker Mark Kidel unveils footage from his upcoming Cary Grant documentary and discusses the challenges of creating this new first-person insight.

If all that's not enough Cary Grant for you, there are also regular guided open-top bus tours of Bristol making special mention of places associated with Cary Grant (possibly not including the girls' toilets at Fairfield School, into which he once snuck, leading to his expulsion), as well as tours of the Bristol Hippodrome, where the young Archie got his introduction to showbiz. For further information and ticket details of all events see the festival's official website.

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The Cary Grant Timeline

The Cary Grant Comes Home for the Weekend festival has produced this fascinating timeline tracing young Archie's journey from Horfield to Hollywood.

1904:  A boy is born on 18 January at 15 Hughenden Road, Horfield, Bristol, and given the name Archibald Alexander Leach (shortened to Archie). He is the second but only surviving son of Elsie Maria (nee Kingdon) and Elias James Leach, his older brother having died in infancy.  His mother suffers deep depression as a result of the death of her firstborn and is considered over-protective of her new baby. By contrast, Archie’s father, a tailors’ presser, is rumoured to be a drinker and womaniser, possibly with illegitimate off-spring

1908: Young Archie becomes a pupil at Bishop Road Primary School, Bishopston and, briefly, at North Street Wesleyan Primary School, Stokes Croft, before transferring in 1915 to Fairfield Grammar in Montpelier. At Fairfield, he meets the science class assistant who will later take him on a life-changing trip into central Bristol. [B24/7 note: by now, Archie was living with his father and grandfather at 21 Picton Street.]

c1914:  Archie, now aged nine or 10, comes home to be told that his mother has gone away for a long seaside holiday and, later, that she is dead. In fact,  Elsie has been committed to the Bristol Insane Asylum (now part of UWE’s Glenside Campus) where, unknown to her son, she will remain for the next 20-odd years. 

c1917:  Because Archie shows such an interest in electricity, a part-time teacher and electrician takes him to see the lighting system he has installed at the newly-built Bristol Hippodrome theatre. Archie is captivated and begins working at the theatre after school as a backstage ‘gofer’. Here, he meets Bob Pender who runs a travelling troupe of knockabout comedians and at 14 leaves home to join the troupe.

1920:  At 16, Archie is still with the troupe when it enters the USA via Ellis Island for what turns out to be a successful run on Broadway and tour. At the end of the two-year visit Archie opts to stay in the States and the name Archie Leach starts appearing on vaudeville bills and in the cast lists of Broadway plays and musicals. 

1931:  With several Broadway credits now on his CV, Archie decides to head for Hollywood and is signed by Paramount Pictures. The studio insists, however, on a change of name. Archie’s first suggestion is Cary Lockwood – a character he’d played on Broadway - but while the studio accepts ‘Cary’, it asks for a different surname: enter, Cary Grant.  Later, his birth-name will crop up in the dialogue of His Girl Friday. It also appears on a gravestone in Arsenic and Old Lace.

1932:  Cary Grant gets his first major screen credit as co-star to Marlene Dietrich in Blonde Venus.  His performance is liked by Mae West who casts him in her 1933 film She Done Him Wrong, which she also wrote. The film is a Box Office smash, gets nominated for an Academy Award and sets Cary Grant towards becoming a Hollywood favourite. In all, he appears in more than 70 films before retiring after Walk Don’t Run in 1966.

1935: Archie’s father Elias dies in Bristol and the lie that has held since 1914 is shattered when Archie discovers that his mother remains alive in a local hospital for the mentally ill. A reunion swiftly follows, Archie arranges for his mother’s release and when she declines to join him in the States, he buys her a house in upmarket Westbury Park, Bristol, and visits her often from then until her death in the private Chesterfield, Hospital in 1973, aged 96.

1939:  Following the outbreak of WW2, Archie tries to join the British Navy but is ruled too old.  He may, however, have become a British spy - possibly reporting on Nazi sympathisers in Hollywood and possibly recruited by his friends Noel Coward &/or Ian Fleming both of whom definitely did work for the British Intelligence service.

1942:  Archie Leach becomes a US citizen and adopts Cary Grant as his legal name.  He also marries one of the world’s richest women, Barbara Hutton, earning the couple the nickname ‘Cash & Cary’. Hutton is his second of his five eventual wives (and Grant the fourth of her eight husbands!).

1947:  King George V1 presents Cary Grant with the King’s Medal for his services to the British war effort and for his gifts to war relief funds. Grant’s donations include his entire earnings from The Philadelphia Story.

1962:  After his performance in Notorious reportedly inspires Ian Fleming to create his debonair spy James Bond, Grant is the first actor asked to portray 007 on screen. But he turns the role down, saying he is too old to commit, as required, to a series. The Bond films franchise goes on to exceed all expectations and by coincidence benefits at least three other former Bristol residents: the locally-trained actors Caroline Bliss, Samantha Bond and Naomie Harris who all appear in different Bond films as Miss Moneypenny.

1965:  Now aged 61, Cary Grant gains his fourth wife: 28-year-old Dyan Cannon (later to earn an Oscar nomination for her role in Bob & Carol, Ted & Alice).  In 1966, Cannon makes Grant a father for the first time when she gives birth to a daughter, Jennifer. Grant then announces his retirement from film to concentrate on parenthood. Ironically, fan sites claim that a photo on a desk in his farewell film Walk Don’t Run is of Grant’s own parents, Elsie and Elias Leach.

1966:  The luxury goods and cosmetics firm Faberge appoints Grant as a director and brand ambassador, with access to the company’s private jet. Grant starts using the plane to drop in on his Mum and visit favourite places in around Bristol. His Faberge work keeps him in the public eye, as does his support for various good causes and his attendances at some very high-profile funerals including that of Princess Grace of Monaco.

1970:  After decades of failing to bestow a main prize on Grant’s many nominated films and roles, the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences finally gives Grant a special Oscar for ‘his mastery of the art of screen acting’.

1974: Arriving in a British-style double decker bus, Grant unveils a plaque in New York’s Bristol Basin commemorating that the foundations of the city’s East River Drive are built from the remnants of buildings destroyed in WW2 bombing raids on Bristol - the Bristol Blitz – which was later taken to New York as ballast for ships. A duplicate plaque stands near the Bristol Harbourmaster’s office.

1986:  Cary Grant embarks on an international tour of a one-man show. Would it have come to Bristol and perhaps to the Hippodrome? No-one will ever know because just before the show’s 37th performance, in Iowa, on November 29, the 82-year-old suffers a cerebral haemorrhage (stroke) and dies.

2001: A life-sized bronze statue of Cary Grant sculpted by Graham Ibbeson is unveiled in Millennium Square by Grant’s fifth wife and widow, Barbara.

2014: The first Cary Grant Comes Home festival takes place and attracts visitors from as far afield as Australia and the USA with a programme of events which includes a gala double bill at Bristol Hippodrome, the theatre where young Archie Leach caught the acting bug as a lad.

Bristol can't be stopped!

From the Bristol 24/7 website.

Interesting news!!

Bring European Capital of Culture to Bristol

Laura Collacott, June 14, 201 

With mayor Marvin Rees committed to a bid from Bristol to become European Capital of Culture in 2023, Bristol24/7 today pins our colours firmly to the mast to support the bid. In the first of a series of articles, we look at what the accolade could mean for the city.

Can Bristol bidding to be European Capital of Culture sit alongside new mayor Marvin Rees’ ambitions for social inclusion within Bristol? There certainly won’t be all-expenses-paid fact-finding jollies for the usual suspects.

The bid – if it comes – also arrives at a time when the city council is tightening its purse strings, St Paul's Carnival looks likely to be scaled back in any future incarnation, and artists are being pushed out of areas such as St Paul’s and Montpelier and perhaps even out of Bristol itself due to gentrification.

The Capital of Culture bid became a political pawn during the recent mayoral campaign with undoubted cultural champion former mayor George Ferguson and then-challenger Rees both promising to back a bid for the initiative, designed to highlight the richness, diversity and common ground of cultures across Europe. 

True to his word, the newly elected mayor convened a meeting of the city’s leading cultural lights in his first full week in office to find out what the title could do for Bristol and what a bid could look like. 

"Bristol has a reputation as being a city with a thriving and innovative cultural heartbeat, something that is of fundamental importance to the city's economy and how Bristolians feel about where they live,” Rees told Bristol24/7 before the meeting, committed to a project which he hopes will "inspire and involve our communities in learning and celebrating our diverse and complex heritage".

Bristol mayor Marvin Rees: "I want to promote creativity and innovation in the city whilst making sure it includes all of our communities"

"I want to promote creativity and innovation in the city whilst making sure it includes all of our communities and people from a range of backgrounds," Rees added – and these last two points will be crucial for a mayor whose campaign literature said he enjoyed listening to epic film soundtracks.

It’s easy to see the appeal of being Capital of Culture: cities chosen so far have reaped bountiful rewards. A 2004 report commissioned by the EU found that the programme is “a powerful tool for cultural development” that “acts as a catalyst for change” and brings significant socio-economic benefits, not to mention a moment in the spotlight.

Participant cities report an average 12 per cent hike in tourism, and for each euro invested in Lille in 2004, it is estimated eight were generated for the local economy.

As well as cold hard cash and prestige, previous cities have reported regeneration, a measurable increase in civic pride, increased engagement with cultural attractions and the development of new cultural offers and opportunities. 

"Having a vibrant, excellent, diverse artistic and cultural life is good for urban life, good for mental health and good for economic growth," says Thangam Debbonaire, Bristol West MP, shadow culture minister and former professional cellist, who is likely to be spearheading Bristol’s proposal.

Bristol West MP Thangam Debbonaire: "Bristol’s got the talent and skills to do it and win it"

Tim Bleszynski, the Arnolfini's head of brand, marketing and culture believes that a bid "will enhance the idea of our strength as a cultural capital,” adding that in times of "huge funding challenges, the more we can do to highlight the importance of [culture] to the powers that be, the better".

For the Arnolfini, it also comes at a time when the gallery are finalists for the Art Fund Prize for Museum of the Year 2016, with their campaign #InspiredbyBristol aiming to share what makes Bristol’s wider cultural offering so special.

The exposure and boost to Bristol’s cultural profile from being Capital of Culture are major selling points for creative leaders across the city. 

"The profile that a bid - and hopefully a win - will give the city will be great for championing the artists, creatives and cultural organisations that make this city so special," says Clare Reddington, creative director at the Watershed, emphasising the inclusive, people-centric nature of the Capital of Culture initiative and its resonance with the Bristol spirit.

"A winning bid will forefront audiences rather than projects, and will celebrate the counter-cultural attitude of this city, as well as its more famous cultural landmarks.”

Watershed creative director Clare Reddington: "The profile that a bid - and hopefully a win - will give the city will be great for championing the artists, creatives and cultural organisations that make this city so special"

It's that attitude and the city’s rich cultural offering that are so attractive to tourists, luring in and sometimes trapping visitors.

"People often find their way here short-term, then end up staying for the foreseeable - our cultural offer is a large part of this attractiveness," says Emma Harvey, centre manager at Trinity. "Enhancing it should have them hammering the door down."

Even without a win, the very process of putting a bid together would be advantageous for the city, says Reddington.

"The collaboration that producing a bid like this involves is of huge benefit to any city, and will be a really exciting opportunity for organisations and individuals from all parts of Bristol to work together to reach new audiences, not just those who are already attending the larger institutions."

To Bristolians who proudly hold our prolific seam of cultural offerings to be the best, selection as Capital of Culture might seem like a no brainer, but we have to convince the outside world. So what makes us stand out? 

"I was proud to stand on a stage in central London and say that I believed Bristol to be the best place in the country to make work," says Ali Robertson, outgoing director at Tobacco Factory Theatres. "The intervening has two years has reinforced my belief.

"Artists are flooding to Bristol in ever-increasing numbers. That we're able to make such incredible work, despite a slightly dodgy level of infrastructure, is testament not only to the artists that we've been able to attract, but to the incredibly engaged and supportive audience that there is in the city."

Outgoing Tobacco Factory Theatres director Ali Robertson: "I was proud to stand on a stage in central London and say that I believed Bristol to be the best place in the country to make work"

Widely recognised as a creative city, Harvey from Trinity believes that it's the variety that stands out. "The strength of our offer is definitely our diversity; we're a melting pot of different cultures and communities. It's what gave 'The Bristol Sound' its unique identity in the 1990s and what made Situations' ambitious Sanctum spectacle work on so many levels today."

However, she does admit that some of our strengths are also our weaknesses: "the city is a hive of independent, grass-roots creativity - this is what gives Bristol its distinct character, but equally it's what makes it very hard when you're trying to mobilise people collectively.”

A divided city is also a point made by Cleo Lake, the former chair of the St Paul's Carnival and the current carnival commissioner tasked with supporting the revival and sustainability of Carnival.

Also deputy leader of the Green Party group of councillors in Bristol, Lake said: "Criticised and pushed out of the previous Capital of Culture bid for being 'a city divided' by the M32 coupled with a lack of acknowledgement for Bristol’s hand in the transatlantic slave trade, I believe the least we would need to do in the lead-up to the new bid is to symbolically rename the Colston Hall.

"As well as contributing to a community event, my agenda is to keep a keen eye on how traffic diversions play out with a desire to take a Carnival procession down a section of the M32 for Carnival’s 50th anniversary in 2018.

"If that ambition is realised and if we can reach out citywide to schools and community groups to be part of that, then surely the bid for the (European Capital of Culture) title will be ours."

St Paul's Carnival's Cleo Lake: "For me, the Capital of Culture bid will be fit for purpose if we can go beyond ourselves and twin in meaningful and positive ways with our 'transatlantic cousins." Read an opinion piece by Cleo here.

Bristol Music Trust chief executive Louise Mitchell, responsible for the Colston Hall, said: "Bristol has a strong cultural identity that is championed by long established venues like Colston Hall, Bristol Old Vic and the Bristol Hippodrome as well as more contemporary spaces like Watershed and Spike Island. Collectively, they combine to create a rich artistic offering for Bristolians and visitors.

"However, Bristol still lacks the investment in infrastructure to fully support the cultural opportunities that exist here. Going for the European Capital of Culture status will give the city the impetus to make sure that we can offer world class facilities. For our part, the transformation of Colston Hall is critical - delivering fully accessible, international standard concert hall and education facilities.

"The arts are big business for the UK, and particularly for a city like Bristol renowned for its creativity. The legacy of the 1990 Glasgow City of Culture clearly demonstrates how recognition on an international platform can have a positive impact for years to come on the success of the city. This bid for the Capital of Culture only serves to further new business opportunities and encourage more investment.

"I hope it will be an initiative that the whole city can get behind – enabling us to embrace our cultural diversity and engage people from all parts of Bristol and every community.”

MP Debbonaire remains resolute in her optimism: "Bristol’s got the talent and skills to do it and win it."

 Link to source: http://www.bristol247.com/channel/news-comment/daily/european-capital-of-culture/bring-european-capital-of-culture-to-bristol

Main photo of Carny Ville by Spencer Dixey

Read more: 'It's time to take Carnival back to basics'

Light and Dark - by Buckley

"Words are really beautiful, but they're limited.

Words are very male, very structured. 

But the voice is the netherworld, the darkness, where there's nothing to hang onto. 

The voice comes from a part of you that just knows and expresses and is". 


 -- Jeff Buckley

"What Will Become Of Us"... PJ

Sublime.
Final to the June 2016 concerts.

"River Anacostia", PJ Harvey - Porto, Juin 2016

Published on 14 Jun 2016

"River Anacostia", PJ Harvey
Nos Primavera Sound Festival, Porto - 10 Juin 2016

News from Somali refugees

Read the latest here:

UNHCR calls for investiments in Somalia

BY  MAREEG · JUNE 13, 2016

Dadaab is the world’s largest refugee camp that hosts more than 350,000 refugees, majority of them from Somalia.

The United Nations (UN) high commissioner for refugees, Filippo Grandi visited the Camp on Friday amid firm government stance that the camp will be closed before the end of the year.

Refugees like Habiba Abdulman have spent nearly their entire life in the camp. She, like many others, wants to return to Somalia one day but only when it is safe for her family.

In 2013, a tripartite agreement between UNHCR, Kenya and Somalia was signed to help Somali refugees with voluntary returns. To date, more than 14,000 have gone back.

“The best solution for Somali refugees and in fact, any refugees, is to go back in safety and dignity to their own country, on a voluntary basis according to international principles and in the context of the tripartite arrangement that exists between Kenya-Somalia and UNHCR as a facilitation agency,” said Grandi.

The high commissioner’s three-day visit includes Kenya and Somalia where he will meet with leaders of nations, refugees, as well as Somalis who have returned to their country.

He assured the refugees that UNHCR continues to stand with them and that it would work to make sure their plight is not ignored.

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http://www.mareeg.com/unhcr-calls-for-investiments-in-somalia/