Graham Farrell

Of Things Past ~ A Little Bit Of Jazz At The Eagle Tavern

In 2000 we arrived out of eight years in Africa and into Kent, settling for several years on the banks of the River Medway in the ancient town of Rochester. Centuries as a port town and close proximity to the historic Chatham Docks and several Napoleonic forts ensured the place had plenty of old inns, including the Eagle Tavern. On Sundays, from midday to late afternoon there was live jazz in the bar, and performances from jazzworld’s rising stars. The musicians used the venue to warm up for their night-time gigs in nearby London. They charged nothing, though we usually bought their latest CDs.

Back in those days he who binds books returned briefly to his camera to take a series of black and white jazz portraits. This first shot of Renato D’Aiello is one of my favourites. And here’s another: an impromptu audience looking in; also a back-to-front gig list:

Cee’s Black & White Challenge: things musical

Vintage View ~ My Man At Great Zimbabwe

For more about the history of this ancient African city see my earlier post Abandoned: Great Zimbabwe

This Sunday over at Travel With Intent Debbie’s one word is ‘views’

Who Said Morris Dancing Couldn’t Be A Whole Lot Of Fun?

When we came home after eight years in Africa we lived for a time in Rochester, Kent, on the shores of the River Medway. It is an ancient town with cathedral, castle and cobbled streets. It’s also a place that goes in for plenty of fun activities.

For a start there’s a strong Charles Dickens connection. The writer lived in the area and in particular based some of the locations of his novel Great Expectations in and around the town. Every year, and to mark this important literary association, there is a Dickens Festival. This mostly involves people dressing up in appropriate costumes and parading about the streets. For some reason we have no photos so you’ll just have to imagine the fun of bumping into multiple versions of Miss Haversham out on the High Street.

Instead here we have the Rochester Sweeps Festival, an annual gathering that mostly involves Morris groups from across the land, but with a scattering of chimney sweeps plus a few Green Men thrown in. This particular event has been going for nearly forty years, but it harks back to centuries’ old festivities.

I attempted to unravel the history in an earlier post. So if you wish to know more about arcane English pursuits go here: Unexpected with bells, sticks and hankies at the Sweeps Festival

For now, here are a few more of Graham’s photos that did not feature in the original post. You can draw your own conclusions about the multiple cultural references, some more eccentric than others. The young women in black ‘Miss Whiplash’ ensembles hailed from the US:

Fun!

Admiration Maasai-style

This shot of one of Graham’s fellow travellers was captured long ago in Tanzania when he was on an African overland trip. I find the gentle, almost reverential way in which the young Maasai moran is holding the girl’s hair very touching. There is some irony too. Usually when a Maasai warrior turns up anywhere, it is he who is the focus of everyone’s admiration. It goes with the territory: the glowing red shuka and the fine beads. He even expects it.

Admiration

Medina of Marrakesh

Medina of Marrakesh, Morocco a UNESCO world heritage site

This is one of my favourite photographs from the Team Leader’s, aka Graham’s long ago Africa overland trip. Even the clouds are conspiring to draw the viewer’s eye to the gateway. Click the link underneath the photo to find out more about this fascinating place.

DP Photo Challenge: converge

“Photos are visual spaces where shapes and lines, objects, and people come together.”

Ailsa’s Travel Challenge: above

Unexpected with bells, sticks and hankies at the Sweeps Festival

There is much that is unexpected about Rochester’s annual Sweeps Festival, held every May Day for the last thirty four years. It is of course a re-make of a much more ancient festival – one at least 400 years old, and that in turn was probably a re-make of various spring-time rites from distant antiquity. As you scan down the photos you may notice a plethora of cultural references, some of them wholly inexplicable, but all thrown in – in the name of jolly good English fun.

But first a bit of real history, at least to explain the ‘sweeps’ bit of the proceedings. In Britain chimney sweeping was once big business. Until the Climbing Boys’ Act 1868 which made it illegal, children as young as four were employed by Master Sweeps to clean inside the nation’s chimneys. This practice was even officially sanctioned. The Master was paid by parish officials to take on climbing boys (and sometimes girls) as indentured apprentices. They then underwent a 7-year training, after which, if they survived, they could become journeymen sweeps and work for a Master of their own choosing. The children were usually workhouse orphans and paupers, and the aim was to launch as many of them into the trade and up sooty flues so as to reduce their cost to the parish. It was a filthy, dangerous and vicious business, and you can read more about it HERE.

May Day was traditionally the only day of the year that chimney sweeps had as a holiday. Here in Kent the day’s festivities traditionally began on Blue Bell Hill, at Chatham just outside Rochester (a hill also known for its Neolithic chambered tombs). At dawn the merrymakers would awaken the giant Jack-in-the-Green who would then accompany them in the parade.

And here he is, recreated anew – the ‘tree’ between two ‘sweeps’:

There are of course obvious references here to the Green Man, the Green Knight and various symbols of tricksterism and fertility. There are also similar festivals involving tree-figures in Europe, particularly Switzerland, and it is possible that some of the notions associated with these carnivals go back to Stone Age times.

Welded onto all of this is the ancient English pastime of Morris Dancing, a form of folk dancing that has many regional expressions, and dates back to at least the 15th century. It had a great revival at the start of the 20th century when folklorists such as Cecil Sharp set about documenting traditional dancing and music. Below are some ‘traditional’ looking Morris Men. They are members of one of the sixty Morris bands that take part every year at the Sweeps’ Festival.

And then there are the black face Morris dancers, the Goths, the Fabulous Fezheads who sand dance, Morris dancers from the US, all women groups, clog and longsword dancers. There are even hints of S & M and nosferatu, or was that just my take on things. In any event, please enjoy the cultural concoction.

Ailsa’s Travel Theme: unexpected

Congo Super Highway

I’ve been on the raid again for these shots for Cee’s watery challenge. They’re from the Team Leader’s photo archive of his Africa overland trip, and were taken from the deck of one of the huge Congo ferries that ply the treacherously shifting waterway between DR Congo’s capital Kinshasa and the port town of Kisangani, a thousand kilometres inland.

This vast waterway is one of Africa’s super highways. In a land with few roads or other amenities, the Congo River not only provides the main means of travelling across the country, but is also a continuous marketing opportunity for local farmers, fishermen and traders who deal in just about every imaginable commodity.

The traders tie up their pirogues alongside the ferry. They come to trade with passengers and to hitch a ride. At times the ferry looks more like a floating city than a river craft.

The river of course means far more than transport and trade to the Congolese who live beside it. It provides fish to eat for one thing. More crucially, it is the main source of drinking, cooking and washing water: in every sense a river of life.

Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Water

Last Warrior Standing?

I have written about this magnificent Welsh sculpture in more detail in an earlier post, Warrior Wind-Singer of Llyn, but I thought he/she deserved another viewing. This brave Celtic guardian surveys Cardigan Bay from the cliff top above Plas Glyn-y-Weddw, Llanbedrog, on the Llyn Peninsula. It is the work of local craftsmen Berwyn Jones and Huw Jones and replaces two earlier figureheads that met there doom there by fire and corrosion. It is known as the Iron Man of Mynydd Tir y Cwmwd, but as I say, I think it could also be a woman. After all, the Celts had fierce women like Buddug, known more widely today as Boudicca. She was the warrior queen of the Iceni, who took on the invading Romans.

I find the figure very moving, the remnant twist of sinew and ligament after bone and flesh have been weathered away. In the spaces between, the steel armature gathers the sea winds and sings. A metaphor, perhaps, for Welsh culture – the bardic verses and sea-sounds of the language that outsiders find so hard to get their tongues round. And for those of you want to hear some Welsh being spoken and see some superlative Welsh drama produced by BBC Cymru Wales, then look out for Hinterland, (Y Gwyll in Welsh), the so-called Celtic Noir detective series. It is currently showing on the UK’s BBC, but it deserves to go world-wide.