Red Music?

Following the hugely successful Great MayDay Cabaret last Monday - which saw a galaxy of stars including Mark Thomas, socialist magician Ian Saville, and Siobhan Miller & Jeana Leslie have a great night entertaining a sell-out crowd at Glasgow’s Oran Mor - Glasgow’s Friends of MayDay celebrations get underway for the final week.

Tonight at the STUC centre in Woodlands Road, Glasgow University Professor of Music, and well-known Scottish composer, Bill Sweeney gets to grips with the knotty issue of Music and the Working Class movement. While it is clear that some music is written from (or adopted for) a class or socialist perspective, how can that be identified? Especially if - being an extremely abstract art form - it has no words or history? Is it even a valid argument to claim a ‘class’ or ideological adherence for music? 

Bill Sweeney (left) shows earlier
commitment on the picket line during
1980s BBC Orchestra's strike

With Bill’s talent, experience and political background, expect an intriguing examination of the topic! This is a Morning Star, our class, our culture event starting at 7.00pm.

On Friday in the same venue, the Scottish Cuba Solidarity Campaign joins with the STUC to screen the film - Will the Real Terrorist, Please Stand Up? About the arrest and imprisonment by the USA of the Miami 5, it will be followed by a SCSC social. Again free to get in, but donations will be welcomed, this is at 7.30pm

Vladimir McTavish

And last but by no means least, the next afternoon at 4.00pm, Scottish Left Review stage their comedy and music fundraiser downstairs in the Stand Comedy Club. 101 uses for a Spare Bedroom is hosted by Elaine C Smith, and stars Vladimir McTavish, Susan Morrison, John Gillick and Andre Learmonth. Tickets are £12/£7 from the SLR website.

The musical accompaniment to the SLR gig is by Arthur Johnstone and friends, nicely providing the red musical thread that sews these series of events together.

MayDay Celebrations step up a gear in Glasgow

Things are hotting up as Glasgow delivers the most prominent MayDay celebrations for a number of years. In a major concert, Comedian and activist, Mark Thomas; marxist magician, Ian Saville, and former BBC Young Folk Musicians Siobhan Miller and Jeana Leslie join political song master Arthur Johnstone, and harmonica virtuoso, Fraser Speirs,  in a star studded line-up at the Great MayDay Cabaret that crowns this years’ Friends of MayDay activities tonight.

Mark Thomas said - “It is great that I am able to get back to Glasgow for this MayDay Cabaret. The city’s political activity is well known and it's great that they are revitalising the celebrations for International Worker's Day."The concert is in the city’s Oran Mor from 7.30pm. Tickets are £12.50 from the venue or (including a booking fee) from www.oran-mor.co.uk. The last ones are rapidly going, so get hold of them quick! It is sponsored by the Co-operative Membership.

News is also breaking of an intriguing set planned by singer/writer Dave Anderson. He has been working with the Co-Op Funeralcare Brass band to develop a ‘crossover’ set with different musical strands. Dave said “I’m really looking forward to working with a brass band of the quality of the Co-op. This is a first for me but they have a great reputation as a fine band. I’m sure we’ll deliver a new and exciting set!”

Arthur Johnstone and the Stars band warm 'em up!

This follows a hugely successful MayDay march that wound its way through the city yesterday from George Square (how important it is that the ‘people’s square’ is retained to allow us to gather and rally there) to the O2 Academy in Eglinton Street, where Alvaro Sanchez, the Political Counsellor from the Venezuelan Embassy, Neil Findlay MSP Lilian Macer. UNISON’s Scottish Convenor, Alan Wylie from the No 2 Bedroom Tax campaign, and disability campaigner, Tommy Gorman addressed a busy rally. 

These are the highlights of a range of activity in the two weeks around MayDay that ranges from walks to comedy, to films and theatre.

The successful film, The Happy Lands, returned to Glasgow yesterday afternoon. Shown again at the GFT, this great film deals with the General Strike and the subsequent lock-out in a pit village in Fife. Made by Theatre Workshop with local community volunteers and actors, this was a hit of the recent Glasgow Film Festival.

Another film is being screened by the Scottish Cuba Solidarity Campaign. Will the real Terrorist please stand up? will be shown at their social evening in the STUC on Friday 10 May at 7.30. Free but ticketed. Tickets on the door.

The highly-praised talk by Scottish composer, Bill Sweeney on Music and the Working Class Movement, has been revived by the Morning Star Campaigns Committee as part of their Our Class, Our Culture series. This year at the STUC on the evening of Wednesday May 8. At 7.00pm, Free.

Friends at the Scottish Left Review have their fundraising comedy evening next Saturday (11 May) at the Stand in

101 Uses for a
Spare Bedroom

Woodlands Road, Glasgow. 101 uses for a spare bedroom is hosted by Elaine C Smith and features Vladimir McTavish, Susan Morrison, John Gillick and Andrew Learmonth. Music from Arthur Johnstone and friends. Tickets £12/£7 from http://www.scottishleftreview.org/shop/ 

Along with all these goodies - the programme for which is being supported by the STUC as part of its There is a Better Way Campaign, and Thomsons Solicitors - the regular Tron series Mayfesto returns for another year - www.tron.co.uk/mayfesto/ and a Play, a Pie and a Pint continue their innovative programming each lunchtime at Oran Mor.

Two other exhibitions look good - the Rock against Racism archive exhibition - currently at Platform at the Bridge in Easterhouse, and the Street Level photo gallery exhibition of Willy Romer’s photographs of Weimar Germany. On until May 26.