Editor ProfileShortly after the 1998 National Folk Festival, as the result of numerous discussions, Folk Odyssey - The Magazine was formed to establish a literary folk-life resource world wide web site. Construction of the site began on May 11th 1998. The inaugural editorial was published on June 30th 1998.
Hello.
I am a poet,
singer-songwriter and test pilot for full-bodied red wine. I was born in the village of
Ditton, near Widnes, in Lancashire, in the North of England. I survived there despite the
best bombing efforts of the German air force; the short-comings of the primitive health
services; the misanthropic arrogance of priests, the unmitigated brutality of despotic
nuns; the short-sighted, narrow-minded, petty thuggery of several school teachers; the
unrestrained savagery of rugby league; the mindless destruction of urban and rural
communities to build car parks and shopping cities; the weather, and the chemical smog
that came, with bland smiles and hollow assurances, from the Imperial Chemical Industries.
My part of the Red Rose County of Lancashire was handed over to the robber barons of the county of Cheshire in a political coupe inspired by the Yorkist Prime Minister of the day, Harold Bloody Wilson. "To hear him talk, through his nose, and through his hat, anyone would think that he had won the wars of the roses."
There were, however, several options open to the dissident Lancastrian: grin and bear the indignity of being a Cheshire person, resort to guerilla warfare culminating in open rebellion, or get a few quid together and travel. The latter seemed to be the prudent choice. First, to see Britain. That was relatively easy, it’s only eight hundred miles long and a hundred and thirty miles wide. Then, to visit the small islands off the coast of Britain, Western Isles, Isle o’ Man, Ireland, Iceland, Europe, and that sort of thing. Later, on to the New World, which seemed to be as troubled as the Old World, and even noisier and more polluted. Parking there was difficult too.
Parts of Africa, sometimes known as the dark continent, parts of India sometimes known as the sub-continent, and Sri Lanka, once known as Ceylon, all made indelible impressions. As did South East Asia, and Pacifica, sometimes known as Oceania. Australia in general, and greater Sydney in particular, must have made the greatest impression. This is evidenced by over thirty years of residency.
I have been an active member of the Australian Folk Community, in one way or another, since the second half of the sixties. In the early days, in the far north of West Australia, later, after a short break to exercise my civil rights in Vietnam moratorium marches, in the eastern states. I was a foundation year member of the New South Wales Folk Federation, originally the Port Jackson Folk Festival Committee, and served on several committees during the formative years.
During the early and mid seventies, with the group Darts Kelimocum, I managed the three-nights-a-week, Elizabeth Folk Club in central Sydney. As a broadcaster, spanning twenty years and three radio stations, I produced and presented several long running folkmusic series, including Burn the Candle Slowly, Looking at it Sideways, Fancy Meeting You Here, Folkwatch-West and Ryder Round Folk, all of which featured interviews, documentaries and many live-to-air concerts. I am an occasional record producer, event organiser, commentator on a broad range of folk music issues, a cottage industry publisher, and editor of the on-line magazine, Folk Odyssey.
Business Manager
Once an eastern suburbs ocean swimmer and
surfer, Margaret Ryder has been an active member of the Australian Folk Community
since the late seventies.
During the eighties and early nineties she made frequent contributions to radio broadcasting as researcher, writer and co-producer of many documentary features and live-to-air concerts on the long-running folkmusic program series, Folkwatch-West and Ryder Round Folk.
Kat Blanche,
the progeny of an arranged concordat, comes from a long line of noble ancestors.
Aristocratic, imperious, and at times downright snobbish, she holds the unique position of
music critic. However, she never actually criticises music because she believes that
Hildegard Von Bingen, Josquin Desprez, Orlando Di Lasso, John Dowland, Giovanni
Palestrina, Claudio Monteverdi and Orlando Gibbons, closely followed by Bach, Mozart,
Haydn and Albrechtsberger, have written almost everything worth listening to. Accordingly
she is unwilling to defile her delicate hearing or torture her sensitive soul with the
foppish affectations of posturing social climbers. Due to her principled stand on all
thing musical, she is obliged to earn her keep as salmon sampler, mouse menacer and guard
cat.
Albert Abercrombie, Sydney-born world
traveller, bar-keep, truck driver, construction worker, writer, and occasional busker, has
been a roving reporter for most of his life. Educated in various, often seedy,
institutions in Sydney, Boston, London, Manchester, Glasgow, Hamburg, Dublin, Pretoria,
Durban and Calcutta, he has developed a world-view often described as cynical, peculiar or
just plain bloody-minded. He is often acerbic, confrontational and unnecessarily direct.
He prefers irony to sarcasm, red wine to white, Brecht to Beethoven, Burton to Olivier,
Sinatra to Presley, Carthy to almost anyone, ice cream to death by chocolate, goat curry
to gourmet pizza, Dylan Thomas to Robert Burns, and William Shakespeare to Geoffrey
Archer. He has a profound distrust of Prime Ministers, Cardinals, Chairpersons of small
societies, talking heads of every sort, and republicans who can't make up their freaking
minds.
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