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Michael Church with the owner of Japanese restaurant Taro, Kwang Noh |
Discovering new music: it’s not safe and sound!
Michael Church enjoys a ‘weekly treat’ when he’s not putting his life at risk recording around the world, writes Simon Wroe
FROM war-torn Chechnya to the snow-capped mountains of Georgia, Michael Church has recorded music from some of the most remote and dangerous places in the world.
The music journalist has been forced to travel with armed bodyguards, enduring scrapes with surly musicians and secret police in his quest to record and preserve the traditional music of little-known civilisations.
Now we brave the somewhat safer and better-known Finchley Road to sample the delights of Japanese restaurant Taro.
“This place is my treat of the week,” says Michael. “My Japanese girlfriend and I come here once a week and have a blowout, but you have to book early.
“When I first ate Japanese food, I didn’t like the total lack of sugar, and got bored with seaweed, but now those are the things I particularly enjoy about it. I’ve also got much better with chopsticks.”
We share starters of edamame (£2.95) – boiled green soy beans which you pop out of the shell – and gyoza, chicken and vegetable dumplings (£4.95). The beans are wonderfully fresh and the gyoza is the lightest I have ever tasted.
Michael claims he is “mad about sashimi”, so he heads straight for the sashimi platter of raw tuna, salmon and seabass (£9), and I do likewise.
We wash down the choice cuts of fish with iced green tea and miso soup and I can see why Michael visits Taro every week religiously – it is impossible to fault anything.
He fell into recording during his many trips abroad to cover classical music events for the Independent newspaper, for which he continues to write. On the advice of a friend at the BBC World Service, he began to tape the indigenous music of the obscure countries he visited.
The hobby soon turned into an obsession, and Michael found himself increasingly far from his Angel, Islington home, negotiating fees with hard-eyed Chechen farmers, a gun-for-hire bodyguard at his side.
When he was arrested by secret police in a village in the Northern Caucasus mountains, he faked illness and buried the tape of the choir he had just made in the dirt, terrified the police would take it from him.
He said: “I’m attracted by places that are a little bit dangerous, because it guarantees that the music will be special. When life is difficult, the music is better. It’s worth taking the risk.”
The most important reason for this risk, says Michael, is “conservation”.
“This music is dying, just as dozens of languages are dying every year,” he said. “I feel the music needs to be caught before it goes.”
His recordings of choirs, church hymns, folk songs and dancing troupes are largely funded out of his own pocket, right down to the CD distribution.
But when I ask about cost Michael looks incredulous. “What else am I going to do with my savings?” he asks.
A fuller interview will appear next week in the Review.
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