etnobofin

Is it really a small world after all?

Sometimes it feels like I’ve been living forever on a little island at the bottom of the world. Moving to Birmingham means diving headfirst into one of the most multicultural cities in the UK – the experience is confirmed in extremis by visiting the Sunday open market at the Bullring… it’s hard to believe that you are just 25 miles from Shakespeare’s birthplace when sights and smells take you straight to Baghdad, Lagos and Karachi.

Oxford was a very international city for its size, but its multiculturalism seems fairly well defined within the generally tolerant context of its educational/academic (and – let’s face it – middle class) heritage. In post-industrial Birmingham, cultures engage at all levels of city and economic life, and particularly in commerce, red in tooth and claw.

But I’m back at university. In a course that attracts students from around the world, the fascinating realities of working across cultures are making themselves apparent. In my class, there are 31 nationalities, and 95% of the students are non-native English speakers, meaning that they’re taking a masters degree taught entirely in their second/third/fourth language. (Even I’M freaked out by some of the textbook material and English is my mother tongue.)

Scary.

If UN population projections are to be believed, my class is a microcosm of what the world will look like in 2050. Working bi-culturally is something I’m fairly familiar with, but it’s a privilege to have an opportunity to work in a deeply multi-cultural environment for a change.

How does a team of Nigerians, Japanese, Colombians and a New Zealander work together to solve a given problem? It’s not clear any of us know the answer yet.

With such a diverse bunch of classmates, it’s amazing how quickly you starat to question aspects of your own culture and language that you thought were “normal” become points for discussion. For example, I had to explain the British practice of “round-buying” at the pub. In other cultures, everyone buys their own drinks.

During small group discussion exercises in class, we have to first check that everyone in the group actually fully understands the question, and clarify some of the more obscure English words: among them “Quaint”, “twine” and “sans serif”.

Perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise that, for the most part, we all get along pretty well, and that the barriers that separate us are more perceived than real. Despite our obvious differences, perhaps what we’re going to learn this year is how similar we all are.

Son of Rambow is one of those small, low-budget British films that might have disappeared without trace, had it not been for a rave reception at Sundance 2007. The film subsequently obtained significant distribution in the UK and worldwide this year.

It’s a little film, in the sense that it aims to tell a simple story well, rather than investing energy in exploring deep themes or symbolism. And it’s precisely this lack of ambition that makes Son of Rambow work. Viewers will either find this absence of guile either endearing or intensely annoying.

The basic plot is simple enough. It’s southern England in about 1983. Lee Carter (an Artful Dodger of the home counties, a bully and latchkey kid who lives in a retirement home with his older brother while his parents live in Spain) is making his own version of Rambo:First Blood. He ropes in naive, timid Will Proudfoot to act as stuntman, but Will’s imagination is soon unleashed, and once French exchange student Didier Revol and his admirers invade the project, chaos ensues.

But movie-making is not the heart of the film. In fact the only thing that prevents Son of Rambow exploding in a crayon-coloured fireball of implausibility is the unlikely friendship that develops between Will and Lee .

Will has grown up in a stern, restrictive Brethren household and Lee’s makeshift film finally offers an outlet for Will’s creativity. And Lee, a bully who is unpopular at school and deeply seeks approval from his older brother, finds Will to be the first person who doesn’t judge or manipulate him. The relationship is portrayed with sensitivity and naturalness by first-time actors Bill Milner and Will Poulter.

Sometimes the shallowness of the rest of the film lets us down. For instance, the implications of life in the Plymouth Brethren are not explored in great detail. And while Jules Sitruk plays Didier as a fantastically louche teen heartthrob, (a French Fonzie?), it is implied that Didier is much less popular back home in France – tension in his character that remains tantalisingly vague.

Despite its lightness of touch, Son of Rambo is hardly a movie for kids – it’s an adult’s recollection of what it was like to be a young in the 1980s. In this fantasy world you can perform aerial stuntwork in an abandoned power station, shoplift without sanction, and turn your 6th Form Common Room into a debauched New-Wave disco. Of course childhood was never quite like this, but for 90 minutes it’s good fun to pretend that it was.

Clive James‘ BBC Sunday morning monologue focuses on on the delinquency of Amy Winehouse via Snoop Dogg, Charles Dickens and Billie Holiday.

Text here, audio here (Realplayer)

“The duty of the greatly talented is to life itself, because what they do is the consecration of life…. perhaps a better ending would be what Philip Larkin said to the ghost of Sidney Bechet. “On me your voice falls as they say love should, like an enormous yes.”

The Mike Westbrook Concert Band – Original Peter
From Mike Westbrook’s Love Songs: Vocalion CDSML 8407 [Buy]

A few months ago I got all sweaty and excited about Mike Westbrook’s big band recordings, and even ranked Citadel/Room 315 among my personal faves of last year. So I’m slowly making my way through some of Westbrook’s large ensemble dates from the 1970s (ie. those that are available on reissue).

Love Songs was recorded in March and April 1970, and features a smaller group (11 players including Westbrook himself and Norma Winstone on vocals) than he used on many of his other recordings of the period. It’s an entirely approachable disc that leans far more towards soul-jazz and groove than one might expect for a British band from this time.

Original Peter was written by Westbrook as a musical accompaniment to an acrobat who went by the same name, “the greatest hand balancer in the world”. At live gigs by the Westbrook band, Original Peter would appear on stage and do acrobatic tricks during the performance. Groovy, baby. The extempore tenor saxophone solo on this version is by George Khan.

A hand-balancer (not Original Peter, though!)

One of the things that’s notable about this recording is that it’s an early example of Norma Winstone’s wordless vocal style, where she joins the frontline horns in the melody lines. This is a role she used on many later recordings, including Kenny Wheeler’s large ensemble work like Song for Someone (1973) and Music for Large and Small Ensembles (1990)

Non-Publishing Note

A week’s holiday beckons until the 28th of January. There will be no laptop where I’m going, so there won’t be any posts here for a little while. I’m sure the world will carry on perfectly well while I’m hiding, so take care and have fun!