Jean Doorn
“Music. Just music. Just music?
Sunday morning at the end of the Eighties – 20th century. Fresh wind coming through my open hotelwindow. Warm spring sun. Listening to easy and mellow music on tape. Watching the gardens and houses in the Mea Shearim neighborhoodin Jerusalem (planet Earth). I was not the only one with an open  window.  I heard voices of children and adults coming out of the surrounding houses.I played Marlene Dietrich’ ‘Ich bin von Kopf bis Fuß auf Liebe eingestellt‘ (1930) loud. Very loud!  I wanted to give and share. Suddenly I realised where I was. I was in the middle of the most firm and orthodox place of  Jerusalem. Fear. I had a vision of  furious Jews who wanted to lynch me. Playing German World War II music in the middle of jews. How could I! Quickly I put the ‘volume down’. For hours I was afraid someone would knock on my door and scream “Lynch him!”. Those Others. Nothing happened.That morning I lost my innocence. That morning I realised music is connected to history. The burden of history. Music is never ‘Just music’.P.S. Many years later I found out that Marlene Dietrich (1901-1992) became an American citizen in 1939 and despised the antisemitism of the Nazi’s. In WW II her music was loved by soldiers on both sides of the conflict.”

by Jean Doorn

Kirsty Wilson:
“Mustafa Sandal was and still is, a music pop star during the time I visited Turkey alone, backpacking. Every bus, taxi, cafe, restaurant and pension I was in, was playing him (and Kylie Minogue!). I just had to return with his CD, for I knew in the future, listening to it would recapture those solo backpacking days, sitting on crowded, smoke filled buses in Turkey!! You can hear & see Musafa strut his stuff here …. lol”

Jacinta Hoare WINNER OF THIS MONTH’S COMPETITION
“We love a good road trip and for a short easy break New Zealand gets our vote every time.  However a road trip around the Shakey Isles would be nothing without our carefully crafted Kiwi Music CD.  We have a great collection of NZ favorite artists including Split Enz (Clip below: Split Enz ~ Six Months in a Leaky Boat), Dave Dobbyn, Dragon, Misex, the Haka among others.  The CD is the constant sound track of our NZ road trips and when a song from the selection rotates into our every day listening we are mentally transported and we relive our adventures again.”

Linda Fairbairn:
“My main memory of Ireland (other than the Guinness) is the musical talent – The pubs are not just meeting places to socialise but are ‘the’ source for local entertainment – There always seemed to be a fiddle player, a squeeze box, an Irish Bodhran drum, and/or a penny whistle, along with people piping up with haunting solo folk songs to no accompaniment. But here, its not put on as a show! Its a bit like a ‘bring a plate dinner’, where everyone contributes – Having managed to keep my head below the radar over numerous evenings enjoying the song, music and dance of others I was finally confronted with expectant eyes (thankfully in a little pub way out in the hills). All songs immediately escaped me, and rather than inflict them with a rendition of Michael Row the Boat Ashore and totally ruin the ambiance I opted for a few verses from a GK Chesterton poem, which at least added to the variety, before the fiddles struck up again and the next jig carried away my embarrassment ;)”

And you can’t go to Ireland without seeing a short clip of some Irish dancing 😉

Phil Smyrk:
“MUSIC TALE: So many countries and so many sounds… but for me it has to be the Balinese Gamelan music. In the 70’s we raced off to the other side of the world on our big adventure out of Europe. We scrounged some cheap tickets to Singapore from Trailfinders in London, in exchange for researching travel and accommodation information for back packers as we went through Indonesia. We took a rubber cargo boat from Singapore to Sumatra and then public transport down through Java to Bali. What a magic place it was then, very little tourism and these Gamelan orchestras would set up in small court yards in the tropical evening air and have a good old bash on their unusual instruments. The air filled with the smell of their kretek (clove) scented cigarettes (no, not the dreaded weed) was transfixing. Its hard to get the atmosphere from just a video… but the smells, the moonlight, swaying palm trees, rippling surf and those magical sounds were quite an experience”