Radio review - Light programme

Published Tuesday 15 April 2008 at 09:55 by Derek Smith

The very notion of Chinese hip hop would surely get fans of the hard core, American version having a good laugh under their hoodies. But, to the young generations from the likes of Beijing, their take on street music provides just as valuable an outlet for creative expression as the street gangs in LA - or Peckham.

What strikes you when listening to the music of artists like the Dragon Tongue Squad during BBC Radio 4’s Hip-hop China-Style, fronted by Stephen Armstrong, is that it’s devoid of the hate-ridden lyrics contained in most US gangster rap. Instead, most sing about food, peace and love, and what’s good about their lives. Some Chinese rappers are evidently looking for a record deal and others want to stay underground, and by inference, remain a little more subversive. The latter, it’s explained, are in the minority as most artists are children from the Government’s one-child-only policy and, as one contributor says, have had mostly comfortable upbringings - hardly the catalyst then for mass, anti-Government music.

Just like the Chinese rappers, Canadian singer/songwriter Joni Mitchell states early on in Radio 2’s Icons Revisited that, contrary to popular belief, she always shied away from being overtly political. For anyone who maybe had her down as a cult hippy folk singer raging against the Vietnam war and singing about the benefits of tie-dye in the sixties, this intimate take on her career proves that assumption to be very wide of the mark. It helps that the interviewer is an acquaintance, Amanda Ghost, who is clearly able to get up close and more personal in a way others perhaps wouldn’t have. Seeing herself as a frustrated film-maker, Mitchell’s hits such as Both Sides Now still clearly have the power to conjure up strong emotional images.

“I never wanted to fall into the rat race of being a hit-maker,” she says. That she left to others, many stars being made off the back of recording Mitchell’s songs. An absorbing hour - for fans and non-fans.

Given that they’ve been friends for a fair few decades. It’s not surprising that Radio 2’s Elaine Paige on Sunday with guest Tim Rice is a bit of a love-in, compliments being paid to one another all through the hour-long retrospective of Rice’s career.

Thankfully, the lyricist’s honesty about the shows that didn’t go so well balances the programme and his personal insights make you at least feel you’re hearing something new about the making of Chess - a disaster on Broadway - Joseph, Evita and all his other projects. Often teamed, of course, with Andrew Lloyd Webber, he’s clearly proud of his successes - describing Evita as the creative highlight of his partnership with Webber - it’s also rather refreshing to hear Rice admitting to having been a failed pop star before turning to writing, and describing The Lion King, for example, as “Hamlet with fur”.

On the no-doubt sensitive subject of his working relationship with Webber, he admits to having had some spats, but also having huge admiration for the man he first met back in 1965. Neither does he condemn his long-time collaborator’s current involvement with reality TV as a judge on I’d Do Anything. But, he says, he’d like the format to be adopted for an all-new show, not just the old familiar ones, such as Oliver! “If there’s a crisis in musical theatre,” says Rice, “it’s in the lack of new writing, not with the lack of enough talented performers.” He’s very well qualified to judge that.

Listening to the schoolmarmish tone in presenter Josephine Hart’s voice is almost enough to make you sit up straight and stop chewing. Describing poetry as a trinity of sound, sense and sensibility, the first of four programmes studied the work of First World War poets including Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon. Bought hauntingly to life here by various actors - best of all Robert Hardy - who join Hart at the British Library, whose sound archive provides such a valuable resource where actors can brush up any accent they need to employ. Not that Hardy needs much help - he sounds every syllable a WWI sergeant major. The test for this new series might be when covering less well known works over coming weeks.

DETAILS

Hip-hop China-style - R4, Tuesday, April 8

Icons Revisited - Joni Mitchell - R2, Saturday, April 12

Elaine Paige on Sunday - Tim Rice - R2, Sunday, April 13

The Josephine Hart Poetry Programme - R4, Sunday, April 13