Arts/Review

Older kids will like |
Diamond's latest LP &

DIAMONDS AND DRAGONS: Songs
and stories with Charlotte Diamond and
the Hug Bug Band. Charlotte Diamond
Music, 1988. On LP and cassette.

In slightly less than three years from her
Juno award-winning album 10 Carrot
Diamond, children’s _ singer-songwriter
Charlotte Diamond has put herself firmly
into centre stage among Canadian child-
ren’s performers. She’s a regular at the pres-
tigious Vancouver Children’s Festival, she’s
performed in specials with the Vancouver
Symphony Orchestra and with this, her
fourth album (including one in French),
she’s made it clear that she’s as hard at work
in the studio as she is on the concert circuit.

Sull, her young audience is the real judge
and I ran this one by my two children to test
their reaction. “It’s the best of them all,”
asserted my 10-year-old son, adding that the
album’s title cut was — in the schoolyard
superlative — EXCELLENT. My _five-
year-old daughter just told me to be quiet
because she wanted badly to listen.

Who could argue with raves like that?

Well ... I might just a bit. I found a
certain repetitiveness in some of:Diamond’s
own compositions and some of the fresh-
ness and originality that was so evident in
the first two albums seems to be lacking
here. You can’t help getting the feeling that
there was pressure to get out another album

in what is an intensely competitive
market — and it was done before there was
a varied enough body of material on which
she could draw.

That’s not to say there aren’t some good
songs on this album, up there with her best,
including her own “Stop and _ Listen;”
“Hello Winter,” a collaboration with band
member and musical producer Paul Gitlitz;
Pat Rustand’s “Fly High Unicorn;” and Si
Kahn’s delightful “Rubber Blubber Whale.”
The emphasis on this record is on new songs
and melodies, without some of the action
songs and new arrangements of familiar
standbys that distinguished the earlier
albums.

For that reason, it will probably appeal
more to older children, rather than the pre-
school set. After a half hour of studied lis-
tening, my five-year old decided that she
tended to favour the earlier records and
gave her brother the go-ahead to put it into
his own personal cassette case. He’s had it
playing a good many times since and com-
mitted much of it to memory.

The tunes do have a habit of sticking in
your head and the nicely-varied backup of
the Hug Bug Band — Paul Gitlitz, David
Jonssen, Dennis Nichol and Bob Wishinski
— make it a record you'll want to-add to
your kids’ — or your own — collection.

— Sean Griffin

May Works

When a group of trade unionists,
artists and community activists put on a
week-long series of talks, concerts and
exhibits last May, they found they had a
winner — so much so that a follow-up
was logical. The second annual Van-
couver MayWorks Festival will take
place May 1-7 this year.

Highlights of the 1989 event include
Katari Taiko Japanese-style drum group
performing at the Burrard Inlet cannery
docks on opening day and Goodtime
Cabarets at the International Wood-
workers hall May 2-6. There will also be
several musical performances, poetry
readings, creative arts workshops, photo
exhibits, video screenings and discus-
sions. ,

Details are upcoming. In the mean-
time, May Works can use volunteer help.
Phone 324-8821.

=

Canadian singer-songwriter Heather
Bishop performs at the Vancouver East

KATARI TAIKO at MayWorks.

#2 coming

Cultural Centre on April 3 at 8 p.m. A
reminder too that “blues to Brecht” folk
legend Dave Van Ronk plays at the cen-
tre, 1895 Venables St., on March 22, 8
p.m. Other upcoming concerts spon-
sored by the Vancouver Folk Music Fes-
tival include British topical singer Roy
Bailey (April 9) and Nazi death camp
survivor Esther Bejarano (April 20).
Phone 254-9578.

* ok *

We didn’t get word of this until late in
the month, so the occasion to catch the
four-part series on Chile’s new song
movement has almost passed. But not
quite: the final installment of the series,
recorded by Vancouver Folk Music Fes-
tival director Gary Cristall, is on CBC-
FM’s “Friday Night at 9:15 p.m., on
March 31.

* * *

A Canadian Festival of Music and
Dance of India takes place Easter week-
end, March 24-26, at the Robson Square
Media Centre in Vancouver. Phone

525-4082.

* * *

Vancouver’s El Salvador Refugee
Association presents the Going Home
Dance on March 31, 7 p.m., at the Mari-
time Labour Centre. Groups include
Salsa 3, Mango Dub and Natural Ele-
ments. A donation of $10 is requested.

*k * *

Couch potato report: Knowledge Net-
work presents the National Film Board
release, Zarico, an exploration of the tra-
ditional music of the black francophone
communities in Louisiana. It airs Mon-
day, March 27, 8 p.m. and again on Wed-
nesday, March 29, 10 p.m. Part 2 of the
Apartheid series, “Divisions” — on the
origins of the homelands policy — airs
Thursday, March 30, 9 p.m. and again on
Monday, April 4, 10 p.m.

10 ¢ Pacific Tribune, March 20, 1989

CHARLOTTE DIAMOND ... Juno Award winning children’s singer has fourth

album out.

Music Revolutions

Modern artists pay homage
to Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly

A VISION SHARED: A Tribute to
Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly. CBS
Records, 1988. (CD, cassette, record).

‘A compilation by some of today’s most
popular recording artists, A Vision Shared
is a welcome tribute to two American musi-
cians, Woody Guthrie and Huddie Ledbet-
ter, or Leadbelly, who epitomize what is
meant by the term “people’s artist.”

Leadbelly (1885-1949) and Guthrie
(1912-1967) put into music the struggles of
the American working class. Leadbelly
drew his inspiration from the traditions of
the black farm labourers of the U.S. south
and the new realities facing the growing
black urban population. Guthrie tapped the
conscience of white workers, beaten down,
drifting and fighting back in the face of the
depression.

Their works have left their marks today;

the injustices they sang about have not goné
away, and it’s good today’s artists are pay-
ing tribute.

A Vision Shared contains performances
from the likes of U2, Bruce Springsteen,
Sweet Honey in the Rock, and Fishbone:
The songs are diverse in style, which leads t0
a point of criticism of the package — at
least the cassette version. That is, which
songs are Leadbelly’s and which are Guth-
rie’s is not made clear. Considering that this
release will be heard by a generation not
familiar with “The Bourgeois Blues” of
“Vigilante Man,” this will be a problem.

That aside, hopefully this release will
inspire people to seek out the real thing. Thé
music of Leadbelly and Guthrie is availablé
from Folkways Records, distributed by
Birch Tree Group, 180 Alexander Sts —
Princeton, New Jersy, 08540. :

— Paul Ogresk?

Cockburn’s passion hasn’t waned

BIG CIRCUMSTANCE. Bruce Cockburn,
True North, 1989. (CD, cassette, record).

Bruce Cockburn’s new release, Big
Circumstance — his first since World of
Wonders in 1986 — shows his passion for
social justice and for the preservation of the
planet has not waned. The veteran Cana-
dian singer-songwriter’s sense of outrage
has not turned to cynicism or hopelessness,
whether he’s tackling the New Right, the
hypocrisy of the establishment church, or
deforestation and the Chernoby] disaster.

Recorded with little dubbing or polishing
up, the songs have a rough-around-the-
edges sound, and come close to capturing
the intensity of a live concert.

Cockburn’s concern about the injustices
in the developing world remain a central
theme to his work. Also, his committment

toa spirituality that can bea liberating fore®
for humanity is obviously close to his heat
In one of the album’s most poignant song
Gospel of Bondage, Cockburn lashes out 4!
fundamentalism and the philosophy of thé
New Right:

We're so afraid of disorder we make it int@_
a god/ We can only placate with state secu
ity laws/ Whose church consists of secrel |
courts and wiretaps and shocks/ Whose
priests hold smoking guns, and whose sign is
the double cross... :

While Cockburn has devoted much tim?
and energy to the Haida’s struggle in Cal”
ada, other Canadian issues seem undel—
played. It’s a small point, but hopefully
Cockburn’s moral outrage will in the futule |
be focused on poverty and injustice in Ca™
ada as well.

— Pa