Tuesday 21 November 2006

Lord Mayors and ghosts

On the Saturday before last, a group of us (mainly international studenty-people) went to see the Lord Mayor's Show. The Lord Mayor's Show's history stretches back to 1215, when King John's charter allowing the citizens of London to elect their Lord Mayor stipulated that each year the new Lord Mayor must make his way to Westminster and swear fealty to the Sovereign. These days, it is an hour-long parade with bands and all sorts of floats, including figures of the City's mythical guardians Gog and Magog (recently inflatable, but now made of wickerwork).

Last year, Amy was in the parade with a group of children from the school she was working at:

This year, however, we were all standing on the Victoria Embankment on a fairly chilly November day. When the parade finally finished, we headed to find somewhere to sit down and have some warm drinks before the fireworks in the evening. We ended up in the Front Room at the Queen Elizabeth Hall on the South Bank, and discovered that as part of the London Jazz Festival, there was a free event, so decided to wait and see it.

It was called Gathering Ghosts, and featured a saxophone, double bass and a vocalist. The three of them proceeded to make all sorts of ghostly noises, with great enthusiasm. We didn't hang around for very long, and not just because we wanted to find a good spot for the fireworks. I guess it was a work of art, but I am very hesitant to call it music. Sebastian took a short video, so you can judge for yourselves by watching it here (AVI file, 6.76MB).

3 comments:

Jonathan said...

I thought someone might have something to say about that "music", but apparently not. I'm still really annoyed that I can't leave comments anywhere else normally - I have to use the "other" option.

Crazyjedidiah said...

Is that music? It sounds like a cacophony to me, Like that ancient Chinese Piece called Tu-ning

Jonathan said...

Amy said it took her a while too realise that they weren't just tuning!