BOKA HALAT

TIDES

REVIEWS

fRoots (Folk Roots – October 2003)

When I did a little “think piece” insert for Radio 3's A Place Call England night earlier this year, I started with a track from Topic's English Country Music album, to point out that such a piece of quintessential English traditional music was in fact a polka played on melodeon and hammered dulcimer, none of which originated from here – they've just been naturalised longer than other more recent immigrants.   You could say that Boka Halat's music is just a little further ahead of the same game.

Boka Halat have grown up out of Roger Watson's multicultural community arts projects across the south of England during more than a decade.   Among the things these projects do is encourage people to value their own traditions and understand the similarities as well as the differences.   So what you get on this record could, I suppose, be called a fusion, but without any of the nasty connotations of the word.   Here you have musicians from four continents united by the fact that they live in England, they like playing and singing together, and they've discovered how much they've got in common in shared rhythms, melodies, song themes, life views, politics, whatever…   All they've done is accelerated the traditional process of island music where the good immigrant elements get eventually assimilated.

I first saw them in an earlier line-up, playing for a dance where they not only fulfilled all the functions of a band for such occasions but managed to get the dancers using parts of their bodies normally unexercised in ceilidh land!   Not bad for an outfit where the expected melodeon is joined by Indian tablas, Gambian sabars, tama and djembe, Chilean charango and flutes, a bass guitarist and a jazz sax player (in this case the well-known Ray Carless).   But a groove's a groove and Cuckoo's Next, Gooseberry Blossoms, The Rose Tree and Rogue's March are proper tunes for English ceilidh dancers, so why not?

Such dance tunes, with all their intercontinental excursions, are at the heart of this nice new record, one that does the band more justice than their debut from a few years back.   For extra spice and domestic listening variety, there's charm in the English, Chilean, and Gambian songs that are interspersed – often reworkings of traditional themes – though the instrumental side does rather out-shine the song content.   Well, I imagine they'd be the first to admit that they're all better players than they are singers.

There's really nobody else around doing anything like this at grass roots level. (Ian Anderson)

THE FOLK DIARY (February/March 2004)

Roger Watson has given Traditional Arts Projects a truly multi-cultural focus and this is reflected in the style and repertoire of Boka Halat.  Roger's melodeon and the drumming of the Gambian master drummer, Musa M'Boob are at the centre of the band's sound, but they also draw on the music and rhythms of the Indian sub-continent and South America in their adventurous approach.  One of their main claims to fame would be that they have broadened the way in which tunes can be played for English dancing and the originality with which they approach the likes of "The Rose Tree", "Rogues' March" and "The Cuckoo's Nest" are one of the chief delights of this album.  Never miss a chance to dance to them.  An appearance in Hove is being mooted for next summer and they will be playing at the opening Late Night Extra at the 2004 Sidmouth Festival. (Vic Smith)

MUsician (Musicians Union Magazine - January 2004)

Enter any large record store and nowadays and you will find a section entitled “World Music”, with English traditional music in a different section entitled “folk”.  Listening to Boka Halat's Tides album one soon finds that England is part of the world too, and a very strong part of the musical world that is created by this band. 

Overall the album itself communicates an energy and enthusiasm that is infectious, capturing the spirit of the group's live sets, which often accompany traditional style Ceilidhs.  Driving rhythms from Gambian Musa Mboob on sabars combine with the distinctive Indian percussion patterning on dholak and tabla of Iqbal Khan Pathan in tracks like “Dumah Joloh” and “Gooseberry Blossoms” and soften to give a new twist to traditional songs such as “Miners Life” featuring Roger Watson on vocals.  The Latin and Andean rhythms of Mauricio Venegas on guitar and charango underpin much of the harmonic style, coming to the fore in the “Guajira Ecologica”, where Ray Carless provides saxophone solos and Rachel McLeod's double bass has its moment of melodic glory too on “Sama”. 

This is not fusion created from a group of musicians getting together for a jam, but a highly original album developed from a true understanding of what cultural collaboration can create, long may their work continue.  (Rachel Pantin)