Edinburgh may be emptying but we’re still filling up…

Ah, the wonders of Edinburgh in August. The tourists and their questions, their maps, their day-glo ponchos and their sense of befuddlement at the weather. Most Americans of my acquaintance alway think it amusing the way we Brits go on about the weather all the time and then they visit and  incredulously wonder who does the weather on the local news, assuming the guy must be in a strait-jacket going “Well, at 6pm, it’s going to rain, then at about 6.02pm the sun will be coming out, shortly after that we predict sleet,  then by 6.07pm a hurricane will be coming in from the north followed by light showers and a plague of frogs.” I exaggerate, but not by much. Edinburgh’s the only city I’ve been to where you can get sun-burnt whilst being rained on. I’m one of the few indigenous Edinburgaireans that quite enjoys the once yearly doubling of the population although it does occasionally grate when you’re having flyers thrust at you by a medical student dressed as a wasp when you just want to get to work.

Anyway, our global (well, UK) invasion continues unabated as my weekly fossicking of the great and the good of the south’s music scene…

Nike Jemiyo, (right) is a London based singer/songwriter who has racked up millions (count ’em) of Youtube hits

which is as good an indication of the quality of her work as selling records used to be. She’d likely complain this doesn’t pay the bills like hard sales but it’s a good place to start. Her parents actually met in a church choir and she studied music theory, piano and singing so a normal career path (whatever that may be) was never really on the cards. Her initial popularity came about as a result of her recording of a JLS song which must count as the only time I’ve been grateful for their existence :-).

 

 

Bethan Nia  (below) is a Cardiff based harpist who does something I, as a non-musician find baffling. She sings while playing the harp. To me, playing the instrument alone looks complicated enough but having to do something else too is just showing off, but I guess that’s the nature of the beast. She has a habit of impressing in fact; having played two years running at Glastonbury (after a chance meeting with Michael Eavis on a train) and winning the coveted Danny Kyle award at Celtic Connections a few years ago – interestingly the only Welsh musician to have won this.  She also introduced me to the Welsh word Hiraeth, which has no real English translation but has been loosely defined as ” homesickness tinged with grief or sadness over the lost or departed.” Who says we Celts are sombre?


 

Few types of band/act come with a copper-bottomed guarantee to make people dance (well, apart from me, I have a bad ankle, honest) but Soul/Funk bands do and few do this better than Soul Fiesta (below). This flexible, 4 – 9 piece act are one of London’s finest and perhaps most cosmopolitan Soul bands, members hailing from all four corners of the globe. They are another of our acts which has played in front of royalty (see last few blogs for the others) and at top end corporates all over the world. They will also include a Batucada drumming ensemble and/or Brazilian showgirls and seriously, who can fault showgirls? And my musical education continues indirectly thanks to these guys. Pub quiz question: who first wrote and recorded ‘Blame it on the Boogie?’ You may think you know, and you may get the right answer but you’ll be wrong. They don’t call me the sphinx of the north for nothing. Scroll down for the solution to the riddle.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Only three acts this week, nothing to do with a lack of quality coming in but I’ve been assigned a few other things this week which will hopefully see one of our acts spreading their drumsticks a little further afield next year, watch this space.

All the best,

Chris Mackinnon

Freak chief scout

PS. The guy who wrote and recorded Blame it on the boogie first was an Englishman called, wait for it, Mick Jackson.

PPS. This has made me the happiest man in Scotland

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