Ken Hunt Email & Phone Number

San Francisco Bay Area

Author of CD booklet notes for the US string quartet's albums Kevin Volans: Hunting:Gathering (1991), Five Tango Sensations (1991), Pieces of Africa (1992) and Caravan (2000). Instrumental in conceiving and realising their Grammy-nominated You've Stolen My Heart (2005) project of Bollywood and Bengali film composer R.D. Burman's work with the renowned vocalist Asha Bhosle.

• Clients from 1975 to 2024 include All-Music Guides, AMMP (Ali Akbar Khan and Asha Bhosle's Grammy-nominated Legacy (1996)), [Alan Lomax's] Association for Cultural Equity, Bear Family Records, The Beat, Blue Horizon, City Limits, Classic CD, Dark Star, EMI Hemisphere, Folkscene, Gramophone, Glastonbury Festival, History of Rock, India Connections, Indies Scope, Irregular Records, Keyboard (El Cerrito, CA), Mojo, New Humanist, Nonesuch Records, Old Time Music, Omaha Rainbow, Donald Clarke's Penguin Encyclopedia of Popular Music, PROFOLK, Pulse! (West Sacramento, CA), Q, Record Collector, Resource Records (Sweden), Rolling Stone (Deutschland), Root And Branch (EFDSS), the Rough Guides to Rock, India and South India, Relix, Royal Mail ('Sounds of Britain' commemorative stamp presentation pack, 2006), Saregama, Sense World Music, The Strad, Storyville (Denmark), Sydney Morning Herald, the Times Literary Supplement, Topic Records and The Wire.• Single biggest contributor to The Rough Guide to World Music (Europe, Asia & Pacific) (2009) with nine chapters on Bangladesh, Germany and India; and sidebox essays for Jiři Plocek's Czech and Slovak Republics chapter.

Interviewer-moderator at festivals, pre- and post-concert talks and launches before the public. A taste of subjects might be the Kronos Quartet (various places and years), Christy Moore (London launch of his One Voice autobiography, 2000), Laurie Anderson (Tanz&FolkFest Rudolstadt, 2007), Wasifuddin Dagar (Darbar Festival, 2009), 9Bach and Emilíana Torrini (Colours of Ostrava, 2014), Anoushka Shankar (Rudolstadt Festival, 2016) and Shivkumar & Rahul Sharma (Rudolstadt Festival 2018), Peggy Seeger (MOTH Club, 2023 and Islington Folk Club, 2024)Speaker/talking head at the Centre for Performance Research and the Welsh College of Music & Drama's Giving Voice 3 'A Geography of the Voice' (Cardiff, 1995) and Khamoro 2003: World Roma Festival (Prague).

Debut article about the Rudolstadt Festival in issue 137.

Greater Edmonton Metropolitan Area

Penguin Eggs is, as of 2020, the only folk, roots and world music magazine still in print in North America. So very proud to write for this quarterly magazine. Since Penguin Eggs shut up shop in 2020, a contributor to each year’s annual Penguin Eggs/Roots Music Canada Critics’ Album of the Year

Http://Jazzwisemagazine.Com/

• Reviewer and article writer for the UK-based jazz magazine, contributing writings between improvisation-based world music and non-western classical music, jazz (including Indo-jazz), rock and psychedelic and psychotropic-inspired rock music.• Jazzwise's credentials: Best Jazz Media - Jazz FM Awards 2013 / Jazz Publication of the Year at Parliamentary Jazz Awards 2010 / Parliamentary Jazz Awards 2007 / Ronnie Scott's Jazz Awards 2007

Various

Obituary writer for a range of figures in music, the arts, literature, language and politics. • A tiny sample from The Guardian might include Egon Bondy, Dorris Henderson, 'Peerie' Willie Johnson, Vilayat Khan, Jacques Levy, Johnny Martyn (of the Vipers Skiffle Group), Babatunde Olatunji, Ivan Rebroff, Merl Saunders, John B. Spencer, Henrietta Yurchenco and Hukwe Zawose.• A likewise tiny sample from The Independent might include Barbara Brecht-Schall, Ate Doornbosch, Howard Evans, Ray Fisher, Bert Jansch, Bhimsen Joshi, Ali Akbar Khan, Lou Killen, the humanist campaigner Vashti McCollum, Jean Ritchie, the Native American anthropologist and lexicographer Emory Sekaquaptewa, Mike Seeger, Wannes van de Velde, Mike Waterson, Hedy West and Heidi Zink.• In the case of The Scotsman few obituaries retain any online byline that the newspaper edition carried. Searchable exceptions are Ronnie Drew of the Dubliners and Cliff Hall of the Spinners. Obituaries in The Times carry no byline, of course.• Further obituaries in three magazines of record: Germany's Folker , Sing Out! in the USA and Canada's Penguin Eggs.

Various

• ‘Talking head’ for radio and television on Bayrischer Rundfunk, BBC2 TV, BBC Radio 2, 3 and 4 (also as 'Archive Hour'​ scriptwriter/presenter), BBC Radio 6Music, BBC Radio Scotland, Bulgarian National Radio, CBC/Radio Canada, Česká televise, Deutschland Radio, MDR Figaro, NPR, PBS West (LA), Radio Brandenburg, Resonance 104.4FM and Sky Arts.• From Wally Whyton's folk show on British Forces Network (or was it British Forces Broadcasting Service?) to Cerys Matthews' Cerys on 6 on BBC Radio 6Music - www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00llg30 • Scriptwriter and presenter for BBC Radio 4's Archive Hour Sing Christmas - produced by Jolyon Jenkins and broadcast Sat, 25 December 2004 - about the BBC Home Service's live Christmas Day 1957 broadcast Sing Christmas and The Turn of the Year (having written the CD booklet notes for Rounder's Alan Lomax archival release in 2000). Rebroadcast as Archive on Four: The Archive Hour on 24 December 2016 on BBC Radio 4 Extra.

Luton, United Kingdom

Contributor to each issue since Autumn 2009, starting with a tribute to Ali Akbar Khan. These were followed by historical essays such as ‘Rabindra Sangeet – gift to Bengal and the World'; Kamalesh Maitra; Pannalal Ghosh; and Vilayat Khan (Spring 2014). Major interviews include Shivkumar Sharma, Kala Ramnath (2010); Asha Bhosle & Shujaat Khan, Aruna Sairam (2011); Sudha Ragunathan, Arun Ghosh (2013); Arundhati Roy, Shivkumar Sharma, Zakir Hussain (2015), and Sunil Khilnani (2016).A partial list of live reviews includes The Music of A.R. Rahman; Darbar Festival – Soumik Datta and Shivkumar Sharma; Shradddhanjali – with Zakir Hussain, Ranjit Barot and Sabir Khan, Debashish Bhattacharya; Kala Ramnath at Tanz&FolkFest Rudolstadt (2010); Alam Khan’s ‘A Tribute to Ustad Ali Akbar Khan’; Kala Ramnath’s ‘The Singing Violin’; Aruna Sairam – BBC Proms, Prom 17; Ravi Shankar ‘Celebrating his 10th Decade’ (2011); Dr M Balamuralikrishna; Jyotsna Srikanth Project; Chitravina Ravikiran; Shujaat Khan & Swapan Chaudhuri (2012); Martin Simpson & Arieb Azhar; Manickam Yogeswaran; (2013); Kiran Ahluwalia, Prabha Atre (2014); Carnatic Beatbox, Journée Inde – Fête de Holi (Paris) and Mita Nag and Bahauddin Dagar (2015), Zakir Hussain's Peshkar (2016), and Ravi Shankar's opera Sukanya and Peter Oswald's play Untouchable (2017), Illuminating India at London's Science Museum...A partial list of CD reviews would be Ravi Shankar’s Nine Decades Vol. 1 (1967-68) (Summer 2010); Swamy Haridhos & Party’s Classical Bhajans (Autumn 2010); Ravi Shankar George Harrison’s Collaborations (Winter 2010) ; Shivkumar Sharma’s My Music – The Saregama Years; Asha Bhosle & Shujaat Khan’s Naina Lagaike (Spring 2011); Zoe Rahman’s Kindred Spirits (Spring 2012); Soumik Datta & Bernhard Schimpelsberger’s Circle of Sound (Summer 2012); Abdulkarim Raas & Kuljit Bhamra present Somali Party Southall (Winter 2012); the various artists’ Indus Raag; and Trilok Gurtu’s Spellbound (Summer 2013).You get the picture...

Http://Www.Rock-N-Reel.Co.Uk/

Contributor to every issue of RNR (the once-R2 and Rock'n'Reel) since its rebirth in January 2007 (Volume 2, issue 1). In-depth interview-based features with Richard Thompson, Fairport Convention, Shirley Collins, Dave Swarbrick, Christy Moore, Martin Carthy, The Home Service, Bert Jansch (his last major interview), June Tabor & Oysterband, Nørn, The Ex, The Copper Family, Trembling Bells, Nora and Arlo Guthrie, Little Feat's Bill Payne, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Peggy Seeger, Scottish Travellers, Dick Gaughan, Bonnie Dobson, The Kronos Quartet, Jackson Browne and Sam Lee. And then there was the exclusive interview with David Attenborough on the occasion of his 90th birthday talking about folk and world music.A range of historical essays based on in-depth research and fresh and hitherto unpublished original interviews have included Ewan MacColl (2007); The Radio Ballads (2007); Folk Rock in the Theatre (2007); Anne Briggs (2008); A.L. Lloyd (2008); Peter Bellamy (2008); The Grateful Dead (2009); The Incredible String Band (2010); Ravi Shankar (2010); Davey Graham (2012); Cyril Tawney (2012); Seán Ó Riada (2012); Woody Guthrie (2012); Séamus Ennis (2013); Rory McEwen (2013); Lou Killen (2013); Watersons (2013); Sydney Carter (2014), Shirley & Dolly Collins (and Dorothy) (2015) and Ian Campbell (2016).Author of R2's RPM political song column with a multi-cultural and polyglot slant assured. They include Plastic People of the Universe’s ‘Mír’, Lupe Fiasco’s ‘American Terrorist’, George Butterworth’s ‘The Lads In Their Hundreds’, Tom Robinson’s ‘We Didn’t Know What Was Going On’, Arundhati Roy on ‘Lal Salaam Kaamraid’, standards such as ‘Big Rock Candy Mountain’ and ‘Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead’, The Ex’s take on ‘Hidegen Fújnak A Szelek’, Joni Mitchell’s ‘The Magdalene Laundries’, Martin Simpson's 'Toy Soldiers', Peggy Seeger's 'Gonna Be An Engineer' and Rhiannon Giddens' ‘At The Purchaser’s Option’.

More Or Less Anywhere Plus Http://Www.Bittova.Com/

Commercially released collaborations appear on Eviyan's Live (Les Disques VICTO cd 126, 2013, Canada) and Eviyan's Nayive (Animal Music ANI 048-2, 2015, CZ); and the title track of Iva Bittová's solo album Entwine/Proplétám (Pavian PM0079-2, 2014, CZ). 'Paper Cone' appears both Eviyan albums and Iva Bittová & Čikori's At Home (Pavian, PM0100-2, 2016, CZ).Joint collaborations irrigate her solo performances, her duo work with Tony Fajt, Bang On A Can, Krakauer alias Checkpoint KBK (her trio with clarinettist David Krakauer and accordionist Merima Ključo), Čikori and Eviyan (her trio with Gyan Riley and Evan Ziporyn).Hunt's potted history of his relationship with the violin-vocal virtuosa (in Czech) appeared in the 16 September 2014 issue of the magazine Divadelní noviny ('Theatre News'​) http://www.divadelni-noviny.cz/An English-language reworking is at http://kenhunt.doruzka.com/index.php/iva-bittova-our-first-decade/

Prague And London

• Co-host of probably the world's best Czech and English World Music website with the eminent Czech critic and broadcaster Petr Dorůžka.

• Essayist and ‘adviser’ (consultant) for OUP's Oxford Dictionary of National Biography for music-related entries.• With effect from 2016, his editor Dr Alex May confirmed, I am the most published essayist on British folk music- and Scottish Traveller-related subjects in the DNB's entire history.• As of 2024, currently available entries include Roy Bailey, Peter Bellamy, Traffic’s Jim Capaldi, Ian Campbell, Sydney Carter, Dolly Collins, Spencer Davis, Ray Fisher, Vin Garbutt, oDavy Graham, Bert Jansch, 'Peerie' Willy Johnson, Lou Killen, Alan Lomax, Rory & Alex McEwen, John Pearse, Jeannie Robertson, John Renbourn, Sheila Stewart, Cyril Tawney, Hedy West, Duncan Williamson and Traffic’s Chris Wood.• Further published non-folk music-related entries include the Indo-jazz composer John Mayer and Kevin Ayers.• One essay in pipeline for 2024 publication.

An example of German-language writing from late 1999 about Alim Qasimov http://www.folker.de/9906/quasimov.htm Obituaries include Bruce Rowland, Dave Swarbrick and Phil Stanton.

Rudolstadt Festival, Rudolstadt, Thuringia, Https://Rudolstadt-Festival.De/En/

• Editor, writer and translator for the Rudolstadt-Festival and its festival programme's English-language content. This festival (previously called Tanz&FolkFest Rudolstadt), held the first full weekend of July each year is Central Europe's most prestigious celebration of world music and folk music and dance - https://rudolstadt-festival.de/en/• English-language content writer for CD/DVD releases .• Consultant for programming acts. (Covid prevented a programme taking place n 2020 and 2021.)• Arts programmer for Tanz&FolkFest Rudolstadt's South Asia (1997) and England (2000) programming for music, dance and film, plus art exhibitions.• Major festival interviews with Laurie Anderson, Anoushka Shankar and Shivkumar & Rahul Sharma.• A presence on the triple-LP TFF Rudolstadt (2015), proud to have programmed FunMental in 1997. For some, they were »zu laut, zu roh, einfach unpassend für ein braves Folkfest« (too loud, too raw, simply unsuitable for a decent folk festival). What came afterwards kept breaking new ground year-in, year-out.•Attended the first post-Reunification TFF Rudolstadt festival in July 1991. It all rolled out from that.

San Francisco, California Http://Www.Kronosquartet.Org/

• CD booklet writer for the Kronos' Nonesuch Records albums, Kevin Volans' Hunting:Gathering (1991); Astor Piazzolla's Five Tango Sensations (1991); Pieces of Africa (1992); Caravan (2000); You've Stolen My Heart (2005); and Kronos Explorer Series (2014).• Originating consultant on the Asha Bhosle and Kronos Quartet project of compositions by R.D. Burman, You've Stolen My Heart (2005), a 2006 Grammy Award nominee for Best Contemporary World Music Album.• First published journalistic writings about the Kronos Quartet published in 1981 in Swing 51. Many concert programmes, festival and concert features and articles would follow.• Pieces of Africa issued as double vinyl LP on 23 September 2016. Time described it as a "potent new brew of folk influences, Minimalism, and European forms by eight black, brown, and white African composers." The first album to top both the classical and world music Billboard charts.

Www.Frootsmag.Com

Local Music from Out There: fRoots is the foremost world roots music magazine, covering a unique mix of music from Anglo-trad to Zanzibar pop, from the latest fusions to the very ethnic. • Feature articles from Zakir Hussain, Harry Smith and Ravi Shankar to Ali Akbar Khan, Mickey Hart and Babatunde Olatunji. Recent articles have included ones about Aruna Sairam, Jenny Sturgeon, Parissa and Happy Traum. Too many articles to remember, let alone list. Article about Ethno Port Poznań in Summer 2018 issue..• Contributor to the annual fRoots Critics Poll since before time began till its end. Established in 1986, from 2001-2007 the fRoots Poll formed part of the BBC Radio 3 Awards For World Music, and it still remains one of the biggest international voting panels for roots-related music in the print or broadcasting media anywhere in the world..• Plus too many recorded music (CD and DVD), concert and book reviews to list or recall.

London, United Kingdom

• Single biggest contributor overall to the third edition of The Rough Guide to World Music (Europe, Asia & Pacific) (Vol. 2, 2009) with seven chapters on India and single chapters on Bangladesh and Germany. Plus sidebox essays for Jiři Plocek's Czech and Slovak Republics chapter.• Previously contributor to both volumes of the second edition of The Rough Guide to World Music - the chapter on Germany (in Africa, Europe and the Middle East, 1999); and seven chapters, one with Robert Maycock and one with Simon Broughton in the volume on Latin and North America, Caribbean, India, Asia and Pacific (2000).• Previously contributor to numerous entries in The Rough Guide to Rock - second edition, 1999; and third edition, 2009 and other travel Rough Guide volumes.

London And Liebenhof

Occasional lyricist with Jürgen Ehle, the Berlin-based musician-composer of the fabled East German rock band Pankow and film music composer - www.juergen-ehle.de - for Scarlett O’ - www.scarlett-o.deSong collaborations on their From The Spree To The Roe (2002) and Gans Ohne Tannenbaum (2005). But as of 2016 evolving...

San Francisco Bay Area

• Single biggest contributor to the All Music Guide (1997) on the music of the South Asian subcontinent, now online at www.allmusic.com

Sutton, Surrey, Uk

An occasional, highly respected music periodical that walked the tightrope between breaking even and losing money in an era when alternative bookshops, record shops and folk clubs existed.Measures of its influence are it published in-depth interviews with Grateful Dead inner core subjects John Barlow, Tom Constanten, Jerry Garcia and Mickey Hart. From the British folk and roots scene it covered Anne Briggs, Martin Carthy, Shirley Collins, Ray Fisher, Bob Hall & Dave Peabody, June Tabor and Robin Williamson. It ran longform interviews with Terry Allen, John Hiatt, Rockin' Jimmy & The Brothers of the Night, Flaco Jimenez, David Lindley, Peter Rowan, Jody Stecher and Happy Traum. Plus it cavalierly branched out with in-depth interviews with author Alan Garner and illustrator Ralph Steadman.It also provided an (unpaid) outlet for new writers and photographers.