Redbourn Folk Club has always provided great support for Na-Mara and its music and it is a real pleasure to perform there.  The venue - a former school room behind a pleasant pub in a small village between St Albans and Hemel Hempstead – somehow lends itself to intimacy.  The seats are closely packed together, with full bookshelves and neat little fireplace with mirror above forming the backcloth to the performance area.

Of course, another great advantage for us of Redbourn Folk Club is its proximity, being located on the same side of St Albans as we are.  This means we can leave a little later and arrive home a little earlier than any other of our gigs.

So, with rush hour fading, we set off to Redbourn and arrived with ease at the venue around 7.15pm.  Club organiser Jenny was just finishing re-arranging the room and it was very nice to catch up with all her news.  Soon afterwards fellow club organiser, old friend and MC for the night Malcolm Hobbs arrived.  As always, Jenny and Malcolm were wonderfully welcoming and, as we set up and the clock ticked towards 8.00pm, the venue filled pretty much to capacity.

Malcolm kicked the evening off with a couple of songs robustly delivered as always with his powerful voice and bouzouki playing.  Malcolm was then followed, first, by an excellent guitar-flute duo (profuse apologies for not catching the performers’ names) and, finally, for the first round of floor singing, we had two lovely songs from Linda Birmingham.

Our first set went very well and, with the help of the floor singers, the audience was well primed to sing along  - which they did with gusto.

At the first break, we had both kind words regarding our first set and, for me, two lovely surprises.  First, a man of a similar age to me approached and asked if I remembered him childhood days in Middlesbrough (my hometown).   As I attempted to roll back the years, he kindly prompted me, informing me that he was the brother of my first ever girlfriend nearly fifty (did I just type that…) years ago.  I was absolutely delighted to see him again and to find out what he and his sister were now doing and to know they were enjoying life.  Girlfriends’ brothers can be a bit prickly towards their sister’s boyfriends, but that was not my experience.  I had the fondest memories of him and, like his sister, knew him also to be an excellent musician and singer.

Then, as we talked, another man around my age approached and introduced himself in much the same way, ‘did I remember him?’ - and it was someone I had worked with around ten years earlier and, yes, I remembered him well.  We’d always had a good working relationship dealing with some common issues and it was lovely to see him again, too.

And then it was back to the music.

The second half was kicked off with a great couple of thought-provoking self-compositions about the attractions and dangers of the new online technologies from Kimpton-based singer, Steve Warner, whom I had first seen as a very good tenor guitar player at Watford Folk Club.   Steve was then encouraged to do a third song and, albeit on a lighter subject note, it proved yet another excellent toe-tapper.  The guitar-flute duo then performed a very funny song about the inhabitants of Whipsnade Zoo and, finally, to my utter delight, Malcolm Hobbs returned to the stage to perform what I consider to be the best rendition I’ve ever heard of Graham Moore’s great song, ‘Tom Paine’s Bones’.

I’m pleased to say the second set went equally well as the first for us and we finished with ‘Maid of Culmore’ as our requested encore.  I guess when someone then comes up and buys five CDs in one go, you must be doing something right.  Doubly so when you find out that the buyer had been recommended to come along by someone who’d seen us perform in September in Glossop on our little northern mini-tour.

As we packed up the gear as we chatted to club members and organisers, the club room slowly emptied.  It had been a cracking evening all ways round.  In time, we said our goodbyes to Malcolm and Jenny and, fifteen minutes later, I’m home lifting a beer out of the fridge.

Many thanks to Jenny and Malcolm for the invitation to perform again at Redbourn and we very much look forward to making our return to the club in the not too distant future.

The Invisible Folk Club is a UK based, virtual, folk club that encourages and enables authentic music, both ancient and modern, through the production of radio programmes and podcasts.  These programmes are played on community radio stations and later released as podcasts. The club is the brainchild of Jon Bickley and Stephen Yarwood and Rob and I were honoured to be invited to participate in the recording of a future podcast.

The shows have a late-night, relaxed, feel which intersperses discussion and musical performances and are usually recorded at Jon’s house in Chesham.  As such, it was an easy journey for Rob and me to make - with only the slightest hint of Christmas shopping beginning to cause chaos at the ‘magic roundabout’ in Hemel Hempstead (six mini-roundabouts around one central roundabout!) to give us any travel issues.

We arrived in Chesham at 2.00pm and, with the rain pelting down, were pleased to see Jon ready to usher us quickly into the dry of his house. We didn’t quite know what to expect but Jon soon put a cup of tea into our mits and us at our ease.  After that, the afternoon simply whizzed by.

Jon had clearly done his research and had some great questions to ask us.  These ranged from how Rob and I came to perform together, how we go about our business as a folk act (e.g. how we market ourselves and get gigs, the importance of blogging and social media, how to make the best of a website, how we put our sets together, etc), through to our connections with organisations not directly connected to folk music but are open to it as part of what they do (e.g. historical societies, political organisations, etc) and, finally, through to some wider questions about the issues facing the current folk club scene.   All of this was interspersed with us performing songs and tunes to punctuate the conversation or provide examples of what we’d just been talking about.

Our recording is now in production with Jon’s colleague, Stephen Yarwood, and the finished programme/podcast should be broadcast early in the New Year.   Many thanks to Jon for the initial invitation to join the podcast and for his hospitality and thoughtful questioning throughout our time together.  We very much look forward to hearing the finished podcast.

The Invisible Folk Club’s weekly programmes can be heard on four community radio stations between Doncaster to Cornwall, and as podcasts on Mixcloud, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Tunein and elsewhere.  (To date, the podcasts have had over 11,000 downloads.) Details can all be found on The Invisible Folk Club website,  https://invisiblefolkclub.com/ 

On our last full day in Chongqing we rose a little later and breakfasted with fellow festival performers, Netherlands gypsy blues band, Stompin’ Grounds. They were nice, bright, young men and it was a real pity that we hadn’t been able to catch any of their performances.

Our plan for the day was to perform a kind of ‘round the room’ café concert organised by Jason  in one of the campus bars at lunchtime and then move on to another college on the campus to do something similar with some music students in a session organised by Prof. Gwen Turner and her colleague Prof. Lee.

Before doing so, there was time for the three of us to take a little stroll outside in the sunshine that now established itself, before making our way up to the university.  We arrived early at the student café and had a coffee before setting up with the small p.a. available to us.  The café concert had a lovely feel to it.  We played a few songs and then audience members came up to the stage to perform or to sing along to soundtracks they plugged into the p.a.  There were some great performers amongst the audience, including the striking young man who had lent me his beautiful Tanglewood guitar, and Jason himself played a very nice song.

After a brief filmed interview with Jason on our collective experiences of visiting Chongqing, we then picked up our guitars and crossed the campus for our last music session of the visit.  In a room with excellent acoustics, Rob and I interspersed playing songs and tunes with musical contributions from Prof Lee’s students.  We heard some top quality electric guitar solos, some harmonica, some excellent songs from young singer-songwriters and, something of a highlight for Rob and I as we were sitting in the front row, we were able to watch a young woman play the ‘pipa’, a glorious pear shaped, four stringed traditional Chinese instrument that is plucked and frailed whilst the player presents graceful hand movements.  Utterly mesmeric.  A true highlight of the trip.

As with pretty much every performance we had done during our stay in Hechuan, we ended this final performance with a collective singing of Chinese pop-folk classic, Banma Banma and we were delighted to be joined, directed even, by the young woman playing the pipa.

After the performance, we held a Question and Answer session with class members, answering questions about our approach to song writing, making suggestions on how to tackle some of their songwriting issues, and discussing the relationships between folk and rock music in both China and the UK.

Before leaving, we all went outside the classroom into what was a quiet, beautiful, courtyard to take group photos with the students alongside a 500-year old tree.  The music students seemed very keen to try out their English on some native speakers and they were very impressive in this regard – certainly better than I was at interpreting and writing down students’ names when signing autographs.

And that was it.  Our last performance in Chongqing was over.

Now very hungry, we returned with Jason to deposit my two borrowed guitars in his office before setting off to find a late afternoon snack.  We didn’t want too much to eat because it wouldn’t be too long before we met up with the gang for a final evening meal.  Jason found us a little restaurant and we ate very well.

Then, it was back to the hotel to begin packing and to rest briefly before going out for evening meal.  Clive had planned something special for us and, with a nearly full complement of 12, we set off from the hotel into a warm night.  We passed the older mall where Dave had done his previous day’s souvenir shopping.  The mall was now closed but a night market had sprung up and in the car park, there were troupes of elderly folk dancing.  We walked on further until we reached a newer, bigger, mall further down the road.  If the mall itself was quiet now, its restaurants most certainly were not and, in a restaurant upstairs in the mall, we were taken to the biggest cooked buffet I have ever seen.  The range of delicacies to try was vast.  Entry was at a fixed price per head and you could eat and drink as much as you like.  Such was the variety and with descriptions in Chinese script, we were very grateful for the help given by Gwen, Clive, Dominic and our student guides in describing what many of the dishes were.

At an appropriate point in the proceedings, Dave handed out the presents we had brought from the UK to Lucy, Lennon, Lizzie, Bonnie, Samantha and Jason, and Clive took away gifts for Sue, Wang Yi Xue and others. They were small tokens of our appreciation and were most graciously received.

However, all good things must come to an end and, eventually, it was time for us all to make our way back home – us to the hotel, the academics to their apartments and the students to their dormitories.  We parted ways at a crossroads close to the hotel and there were many heartfelt hugs and a few tears as we waved goodbye.  For us, it was back to the hotel, finish the packing and get ready to be picked up very early the next morning for our transfer to the airport.  A late morning and an early start had already reduced the amount of time for sleeping but even this was further interrupted by a dramatic thunderstorm that broke that night.

Still, the alarm clock rang faithfully the next morning at 5:30am and, as we made our way down to the empty hotel lobby, the university transit was already there waiting for us.  And, so it was, with dawn breaking on a misty China morning, we made our return to Chongqing airport.

The return flight to Beijing was mercifully free of turbulence and we were again afforded a great view over the astonishing cityscape of China’s capital city.  The transfer through Beijing airport seemed more leisurely this time around and the flight home to London and the subsequent taxi ride around the M25 and back to our front doors were both timely and comfortable.

It feels a bit like a dream now but it is true.  Na-Mara have now played in China and, along with their music, were warmly received there and welcomed wherever we went.  Unsurprisingly, there is a monumental list of thank yous to be made and that list begins with the very loudest thanks to Clive Lebozer for promoting Na-Mara to the festival organisers, securing our involvement in the festival and looking after us so wonderfully well whilst in Hechuan.

Thanks also go to Robert and Jason for arranging so much of our successful visit to Chongqing University of Posts and Telecommunications (CQUPT) and again to Jason for also lending me his lovely guitar and for securing me the services of another.

Many thanks to Wang Yi Xue for joining us and singing Banma Banma so beautifully on the Bingo City Theatre stage.

Further thanks must go to CQUPT staff Gwen, Dominic and Jocelyn for making us feel so at home and welcome in Hechuan and, finally, we would all like to give an enormous round of thanks to our wonderful young friends Bonnie, Lucy, Sue, Lizzie, Lennon and Samantha for their friendship and for giving up so much of their free time to accompany us and educate us about so many things on our first visit to Chongqing.  We would love to make a return to Chongqing in the future and, hopefully, pick up on our new formed friendships once more.

After the exertions of the previous day, it shouldn’t be a surprise that we took a late breakfast.  Given Clive was teaching and our young guides were also at class, we set off on our own for a stroll for probably the first time since we’d arrived in Hechuan.  With the end of our visit beginning to loom, there were some thoughts about securing take home souvenirs.  As such, given we were passing, we ducked into a local shopping centre.  Laid out on three floors, with a first floor operating as a kind of indoor, informal, market, we later discovered that this particular mall had now been supplanted by a number of brand new malls further down the road.  Anyway, it was interesting to stroll around and Dave found a couple of things to take home.

With time to spare, we were all very happy just to keep strolling and, passing a different parade of small shops, who should we bump into but Clive on his electric scooter.  His class had now finished and he was out doing a little bit of shopping for himself.   Clive parked up and, via the hotel to pick up some gear, we made our way up to the university.  We were meeting a young female singer, Wang Yi Xue, to rehearse a version of Chinese folk-pop hit, Banma Banma (Zebra Zebra) for our big concert in the Bingo City Theatre later that Monday evening.  Wang Yi Xue is a very talented young vocalist and, together, we soon settled on an arrangement of the song which we knew was going to be a hit with the audience.

I’d been having some problems with the guitar that had been hired for me for the festival.  So, it was great news to hear from Jason that he had secured for me a top of the range Tanglewood guitar for our performance that evening and on the following day.

After our rehearsals finished, we decided to go for a late lunch at a different student canteen on campus.  On the way we met another of Clive’s delightful young students, Wu Jing (Samantha), and she very kindly agreed to join us.

After lunch, we then joined Clive’s Monday afternoon spoken English class and repeated what we’d done with his previous class a few days earlier, namely, play a few songs in the second half of the class and teach them The Wild Rover.  We were again welcomed with excitement and we agreed to take part in Clive’s class exercise for the day – seeing if you can find a fib in three statements told to you by a partner.  The students really enjoyed both the exercise and the music, and we were again delighted to be involved in a lengthy sesion of photo taking afterwards.  It was very nice to be with such charming young people having fun while they learn.

Then, it was back to the hotel to rest up a little ahead of the evening concert and, for me, to better familiarise myself with my new guitar (which was a joy to play) and to rehearse the additional material we were performing in what was a longer concert set this time around.  

We had heard through the day that the theatre for the evening concert, the Bingo City Theatre, was actually being used through the day for a Sino-German conference event.  As such, given the need to dismantle the conference stage (screen, hoardings, etc.), there was going to need to be a change to the timing of the evening concert.  Rather than it being 19:00 – 21:00, it was now going to be an hour later.  In the end, for a variety of reasons, we agreed with Malaysian band, Loko, who were again sharing the stage with us, that we would swap the performance order, leaving them to finish the night.  This had the benefit to us of maintaining the same time slot 20:00 to 21:00 as before.  So, those who were specifically coming to see us would do so at the time set out in the dfestival programme. Both bands would do be doing a 50 minute set this time.

Given the convention that those who end the night sound check first, this meant that we would sound checking last.  Naturally, the dismantling of the conference material wasn’t easy and was still going on when the Loko sound check began at 19:00.  I guess the need to match all instruments with each other means that the complexity of a sound check probably grows geometrically as band numbers grow arithmetically.  As such, it was always going to be a challenge for Loko to do their soundcheck in the 30 minutes available, with burly guys behind them dismantling a stage screen.  However, with the help of Loko’s friendly manager EeJay on the sound desk, they did manage to finish the check with enough time to allow Rob and me to sound check before most of the audience arrived. EeJay had also offered to manage our sound for us through our performance and we were happy for him to do so. He did a great job.

With the theatre beginning to fill up, it wasn’t long before we were back out on the stage for our set.  The concert went really well and, the dynamics of singing Banma Banma with Wang Yi Xue - walking up to the microphone as we played an introduction - couldn’t have gone better.  This is a crowd pleaser of a song and the crowd was definitely pleased by it.  We played well and the audience loved the set.

Then, there was a scramble for us to clear the stage in good order so that Loko could begin promptly on the hour.  This we managed to do with only a few Keystone Kop moments – like me silencing the lead guitarist by tripping over his lead in the darkness.

As Loko started up, we retreated to the theatre lobby where we set out CDs and postcards and am pleased to report there was a somewhat frenzied period of CD sales and signing and photo-taking once Loko had finished and the audience was exiting.  Rob, I and Dave must be on a few hundred camera rolls now.

With Loko finishing at 22:00 and with local restaurants tending to close earlier than we might be used to, we were fortunate that our new friend, Jason, had contacted his favourite restaurant, serving food from his northern home city of Harbin, and asked them to hold off closing until we get there.   The restaurant very kindly stayed open for us eight hungry diners and we had a splendid meal with a very different style of food that evening.  Many thanks to Jason.  After the meal we strolled back the short distance to the hotel.

Opening the curtains on Sunday morning revealed a still overcast sky but the weather had definitely lightened and the rain had finally stopped.

We all met down in the hotel restaurant for breakfast before going downstairs to meet Clive, Bonnie and Lucy for a trip to the restored old village of An Ju, a thirty minute taxi ride outside Hechuan.  This was our chance to see something of both rural and ancient China and we were all excited to make the journey.

Two taxis were hailed and off we set.  Urban motorways soon gave way to more rural roads but, generally, at this time on a Sunday morning, the traffic was light.  As we raced down country roads, it was fascinating to see a countryside where every square inch of available land seemed to have been put to good use for the growing of vegetables.  Many farms seemed also to have their own fishponds.  There were very few larger animals on view in the fields but we spotted a profusion of chickens, geese and ducks on many farms.

An Ju was a total delight, with many restored streets, temples, pagodas and courtyards to explore.  The village is currently more on domestic than international tourist itineraries, but this could well change in the future and the shops currently present a mixture of tourist goods and goods for everyday living.  This is a restored old town; it is not a ‘monument’ or a ‘fossil’; it is a living, working, town and home to its inhabitants.  As can be the case in tourist strollings, we seemed to fall in lockstep with a foursome of Chinese tourists tourists, with much nodding and smiling as we wandered through An Ju’s quiet streets.  I observed that the two women in the group were desperately keen to have a photo with Dave but seemed too polite to ask directly.  However, it isn’t only Canadian Mounties who get their man.  One of the women group eventually plucked up the courage to ask Dave if they could have a photograph with him and he was, as we all were throughout the trip, very happy to oblige.

After an hour or so strolling through the ancient streets, it was time for lunch and we found a small, street café for a simple lunch of pork, rice and, you guessed it, chillies.    The restauranteur was a lively lady and, with the help of Clive’s Mandarin and Bonnie’s expertise in the local dialect, Chongqingois, we had a lot of laughs.  Not only was Dave complimented on his height this time but also the apparent softness of his skin.

After lunch, we continued to promenade through the part of the village we hadn’t yet seen, ending up climbing to the top of a stunning pagoda to gain a panoramic view over the whole village and out to countryside and the river running through it.  The weather remained cloudy but was mercifully dry.

Then it was back to Hechuan to attend the main Festival Gala taking place that evening.  The centre point of the music festival each year is a gala show comprising performances by a range of university societies and concluded by the appearance of two nationally known Chinese stars.  Tickets were not easy to obtain even for guest artists at the festival, so everyone in our entourage was pleased when we found out we had tickets and ‘would go to the ball’.  At the appointed time we made our way from the hotel to the venue - which was on another sports field on the campus.  We arrived nice and early but, as time passed by, the audience grew to at least a couple of thousand.

The main stage for the Gala is truly vast.  For this amazing show, the volume is cranked up for the show with the bass felt more through the ribcage than the ears.  A dozen or so college groups performed one musical number each.  They were without exception big production numbers – ranging from a version of Dolly Parton’s 9 to 5, through to Chinese traditional theatre and song, acrobatic displays and Chinese rap music.  All the performances were superbly choregraphed, utilising the whole of the space afforded to them by the vast stage.  The grand finale, two sets from nationally known Chinese pop stars performing their greatest hits, were rapturously received.

Naturally, it took some time for the venue to clear at the end of the show but we were eventually able to make our way off campus and search for an evening meal near the hotel.   We found a simple but nice restaurant, had some excellent food and beers and, once back in the hotel, the three travellers sat up late talking.

If anything, the weather had deteriorated further over Friday night and the clouds seemed lower again on Saturday morning.  However, given we had a day at leisure available to us before the concert, we were not going to be deterred from exploring Hechaun.  So, after breakfast we bundled into a taxi with Clive and drove across town to a Buddhist monastery situated alongside the Jialiang River.

We took our time exploring this fully working and fascinating monastery before crossing the road to admire a monumental golden hand of Buddha and then walking back into Hechuan to have lunch in a restored and reconstructed ‘old town’ area by the river.

Lunch was in an extremely colourful, vibrant, noisy, restaurant and we were made to feel extremely welcome by the raucous (I dare venture slight tipsy) table of diners next to us.  Clive’s expert language skills ensured we had a great selection of food and the lunch was one of the best we had during our stay.

As with most cities, finding a taxi in the rain isn't easy and , eventually, we decided to walk back to the hotel, taking in the experience of a major shopping area in the process.  This was handy.  My fancy boots might have looked nice on but were obviously not made with the concept of rain in mind, especially not in these amounts.  So, begging the permission of others, I sought out a cheap pair of trainers to get me through the rest of the trip.  Retailing in China seems to be a noisy affair, guys at the front of the shop, with p.a. systems, shouting out the latest offers to the background of loud pop music.  Eventually, I found what I needed and, with characteristic Chinese efficiency, was in and out in a matter of minutes.

Then it was home to the hotel to dry off, set the hairdryer on my drowned boots and get ready for the evening’s concert.  As we walked, we talked with sympathy about the poor bands that had had to perform at the festival that afternoon in the pouring rain and, naturally, since we were finishing the show that evening, we were worried if the rain might drive our own audience away and leave us playing to an empty field.

We were scheduled to take to the covered stage at 20.00. So, an hour before, we met our full ‘crew’ of Bonnie, Lucy, Sue, Lizzie, Lennon plus Clive and Jason in the hotel lobby and set off to the concert stage, picking up other friends on route.  The rain had eased slightly but was still falling.  As we approached the sports filed where the concert stage was, we were anxious to see what size the audience might be.  We needn’t have worried.  As we watched Loko start their performance, there were probably between 200 and 300 people in the audience, sheltering under umbrellas to watch them.

Loko are a full-on, experimental, rock band and they were accompanied by a powerful light show on stage and I am happy to confess that I was apprehensive about how the audience might respond to the change in volume levels to our quieter, more melody oriented, music when we took the stage.  Again, I needn’t have worried.  The audience remained very much in place and it was a real pleasure to see them sway and hear them sing along and cheer our music, and it turned out to be a great gig.

Given that it wouldn’t be easy for some audience members to understand the nuance of our songs, we had decided to focus on a lively, melody rich, largely Irish/Scots, traditional set, with a couple of muineiras and some US folk thrown in.  Rob had also transcribed a beautiful folk melody called Indian Azalea, performed by Chinese star Han Hong, and melded it into a Scots and Irish tune.  This went down very well indeed and, as we played it on stage, we could hear members of the audience singing along.  A beautiful moment , a beautiful melody.

However, neither Rob nor I were prepared for what happened at the end of the performance as crowds of people reached up to stage to shake our hands, calling for photographs together.  Naturally, we obliged and took the traditional selfie - with band in the foreground and audience members waving in the background. This was a new experience for us.  Then substantial numbers of audience members came onto the stage for further photographs and (the first time ever for either of us) there were requests for our picks.  So many lovely things were said and we were happy to be interviewed by Lennon for her campus news programme.

Given we were the last act, it soon became evident that the sound guys were keen to get themselves into the dry and warmth and to get their gear under cover.  So, they gently and courteously encouraged everyone to leave the stage to allow them to safeguard their kit.

So, beaming and elated, we all drifted back across campus to the hotel with our gear and then went in search of an evening meal and beers nearby.  Sadly, Jocelyn, Gwen and Sue couldn’t join us but the rest of us found a restaurant near the hotel and enjoyed a kind of spicy hotpot there.  We had great fun telling funny stories and playing tongue twisters in English and Chinese. Then for Rob, Dave and I it was back to the hotel and, guess what, we bought some more beers and wound down properly after a truly splendid evening.

Chongqing is growing as a domestic tourist destination but, as yet, it isn’t seeing an abundance of international tourists.  As such, the buffet breakfast in the hotel was very Chinese and very different to what businessmen and tourists might find in the international hotels of Beijing and Shanghai. It should also be noted that Chongqing has a reputation for having the spiciest food in the whole of China; lots of chillies.

So, our first entry into the hotel breakfast room was a bit of a surprise.  However, we enjoyed and embraced it and tucked into a hearty breakfast of Lotus Root (and chillies), braised cauliflower (and chillies) and sliced green beans (and chillies).  Oh, and a boiled egg and a rice dumpling.  This was good, hot, food; very different and very enjoyable.  We later discovered that that the energetic staff running the restaurant would also, on request, provide a bowl of noodles and minced pork, and their take on a fried egg.  We were certainly going to eat well here.  For drinks, there was hot water and cold water. Clearly, tea could be made with the former and, discovering our keenness for it, a few days into our stay, the chef tracked down some coffee for us.  As in every aspect of our stay, it was a lovely gesture that she made in this regard to make us feel more at home.

The weather that morning was a little damp as it had been since our arrival.  However, it eased off slightly as Clive collected us and we made our way to his classroom on the CQUPT campus for his 10.00am class.   We took our instruments and I picked up my rented guitar from Clive’s office along the way.

Dotted around the spacious and pleasant CQUPT campus were the gaily coloured banners listing the international and domestic bands performing at the music festival and it was fun to see ourselves set against a pink background, fluttering in the breeze.

Of course, the other attraction, over and above Na-Mara was our friend Dave.  Dave is 6 feet 5 inches tall – not a common sight in Chongqing - and many of the students we passed as we walked onto the campus were amazed to see him striding past.

Clive’s classes are two hours with a break in the middle.  The plan was for Clive to do a ‘normal’ first half for his class – on what good and bad things had happened to them over the previous week - and then Rob and I would perform for and with them for the second period.  Clive is a superb teacher. His manifest energy and enthusiasm for his students and his subject pour out of him.  The class is educative and fun at the same time – and the students love him for it.  Before we even reached the classroom, it seemed like nearly every gaggle of students we passed on their way to classes would greet him with a smile and a few words of English.  We all thoroughly enjoyed watching him at work for that first period.  He made the students learn and smile, and he did the same for us too.

Rob and I played a couple of songs and tunes from our strongly Irish/Scots traditional performance set to the class, and the students loved them.  There must be thirty films of those early songs on student cameras in Chongqing, as we played to a veritable wall of mobile phone cameras. Then it was time for some interactive playing.

Before setting off, Rob and I had decided that, albeit never and never likely to ever be part of our regular repertoire, a great traditional song to gain maximum participation from students unfamiliar with British folk music would be The Wild Rover.  It has the simplest of choruses and that percussive end to its first line.  The choice proved a good one; the students absolutely loved it.  Not only did it permit a musical interaction, but it also allowed us to explain the song and for the students to learn some new words.

Finally, we were able to tempt two of Clive’s young students to join us in singing Chinese folk-pop classic, Banma Banma (Zebra Zebra).  This is a beautiful, indeed I’m tempted to say, a consummate, pop song; possibly the most powerful and finest earworm tune I have ever encountered. (Precitably, it is playing in my head again as I type now.)  Melody and one of her friends joined us at the front of the class and everyone sang along.

We then engaged in our first post-performance clamour for selfies with audience members and it was an honour and a delight to be asked.  There were whole group photos, photos in trios, pairs and with individuals.  It was glorious fun to be washed along in the enthusiasm for something new – both them for us and us for them.

Eventually, the hubbub died down and the students left to go for lunch at the student canteen.  We followed on not far behind.  

The CQUPT canteens provide a range of good food at decent prices and we tucked into a fine meal.  Whilst eating we discovered that the sound check we were expecting to happen on Saturday afternoon for our concert later that day, had been brought forward to Friday afternoon.  So, after lunch, we had a quick look at Clive’s apartment on campus before drifting back to the hotel to rest a while.  We gathered up our remaining instruments and ‘stage’ gear, like leads etc and met Clive, Jason, and Bonnie, Lucy and Sue, and our ranks were swollen further by the arrival of Lennon and Lizzie, two more excellent young English speakers.  Together, we managed to transport the requisite gear across campus over to our covered outside stage situated on the artificial turf of a sports pitch.

As is convention, since we were finishing the Saturday evening concert we were sound checking first.  Not long into the process we had chance to meet the talented Malaysian four piece rock band, Loko, who were performing with us that evening.  Nice young men and, like us, excited about the chance to perform at the festival

Working through interpreters, the sound check took a little longer than usual but with Clive and Jason’s help we got there smoothly enough.

Once checked, we returned to the hotel to get ready for going out that evening for dinner.  The Chinese seem to eat early and, as such, around 6.30pm we again assembled in the hotel lobby and went off for what was to be the first of a string of excellent evening meals during our stay. Bonnie, Lennon and Lizzie joined us, as did Clive and Jason and three of Clive’s academic friends, Gwen, Dominic and Jocelyn.

We bundled into three taxis and drove the ten minutes to the restaurant.  Eschewing the somewhat sterile upstairs side room offered to us by the proprietors, we gathered around a large table downstairs in this busy restaurant (with its Union Jack seat covers).  The company was exceptionally good fun and Clive and others helped us navigate the complexities of the meal.  Into a sunken bowl of boiling water in the middle of the table, diners would cook a variety of vegetables, noodles and meat, with the resultant pockets of food then being rolled in an individually prepared melange of condiments.  This method of cooking also results eventually in a delicious meat and vegetable broth which can be enjoyed as a soup towards the end of the evening.  All of this was washed down with a cold, light, beer.

We finished the meal just after 9.00pm and, with the hand of friendship being extended by the proprietor, we exited the restaurant into the still continuing drizzle.  However, keen to continue talking, we all decided to walk the 30 or so minutes back to the hotel. This took us alongside one of the major rivers that dissects this part of Herchaun, the Jialiang River.  In ones and twos, our dining companions said their goodbyes and, by the time we entered the hotel lobby, our group had reduced to just us three and Clive.  Naturally, it was time for a last couple of beers before bed.

After extensive planning, getting the necessary visas and careful preparing some appropriate set lists, the day had finally arrived for us to set off for China where Na-Mara were playing two concerts and engaging in a range of student related activities at the Diao YuCheng International Music Festival hosted by the Chongqing University of Posts and Telecommunications (CQUPT) in the Hechuan District of Chongqing in China.  On this trip, Rob and I were going to be joined by Dave, acting as our manager and fixer for the duration.

As with most of our gigs, notwithstanding the length of the journey ahead, our first test for the journey was, as always, the M25 at rush hour.  Thankfully, our taxi arrived bang on time and navigated a busy but moving motorway well enough for us to arrive at Heathrow Terminal 2 with plenty of time for check in.

Musicians travelling overseas by air will readily testify to the feeling that arises in the pit of their stomachs as their treasured instruments disappear through the rubberised curtain of the oversized luggage bag drop and into the void.  Given we were, first, flying to an entry airport (Beijing) and then transferring onto a domestic flight, the feeling was doubled.  Would the instrument safely navigate not only the byways of Heathrow airport but then do the same across the vastness of Beijing airport to pop out, intact, at Chongqing airport.  (Of course they did, but one sees and hears such horror stories about airports and instruments….)

At 22.30, in one of the last two planes to leave Heathrow Terminal 2 that Wednesday evening, we set off for China.  With the time difference, it was already 6.30 on Thursday 24th October in China.

The flight to Beijing was very comfortable and we loved watching the Mongolian hills and steppe lands below us as we passed south of Ulan Bator on a cloudless afternoon.  We were then further amazed to then see the serried ranks of high rise apartments and offices stretching out to the horizon in every direction as we came in to land at Beijing; an unforgettable sight.

It will come as no surprise to be told that Beijing airport is a very big, busy, place.  By the time we’d disembarked, bussed to the terminal, passed through border control and then gone through the busy domestic flight security check, we were beginning to cut it fine for boarding our 18.00 flight for Chongqing.  Indeed, the plane was already boarding by the time we reached the gate.

The flight to Chongqing started very well.  Again, clear skies allowed us to watch as night fell over the Chinese landscape; neat settlements, some large, others small, well marshalled and planned with their evening lights coming on.  However, about halfway into the flight, as darkness was complete, we must have crossed a weather front at a point where the wind was being pushed up over local mountain terrain.  This meant that the second half of the two-and-a-half-hour flight was badly affected by violent, juddering, turbulence – without doubt, the worst I’ve ever experienced.  Eventually, as the plane began its descent into Chongqing, the turbulence eased and we landed at around 20.45.

With super efficiency the luggage arrived on the carousel and Rob’s Irish Bouzouki was found at the oversized luggage desk.  Given, Rob had taken his mandolin with him onto the plane and I was to be provided with both a borrowed and a second, rented, guitar for the festival, we now had all we needed in order to perform and we could relax.

As we exited through the customs area, we met for the first time part of the team that was going to be looking after us for the duration of our stay in Chongqing.  Our good friend and main contact in Chongqing teaches English as a foreign language, and he felt his students would very much benefit from the task of accompanying some native English speakers for a week.  It was a real relief and a delight to see Bonnie, Lucy and Sue waving their neat Na-Mara placard to catch our attention and we shook hands for the first time.  As will be evident from what follows, it was to prove a real pleasure to spend time with these intelligent and lively young women over the following days.

Bonnie, Lucy and Sue guided us through Chongqing airport to where a college minibus was waiting to take us the final leg to our hotel.

It is important at this point to say a few words about Chongqing.  Perhaps to us a less well known Chinese city compared to the global metropolises of Beijing and Shanghai, by dint of its history and political definition, Chongqing is not only the biggest municipality in China but, if fact, the biggest municipality in the world. It has an overall population of over 30 million people and covers an area the size of Austria.  Even the specific district we were heading for, Hechuan (pronounced Herchwan), has the population size of Birmingham in the UK.

Not surprisingly then, it took over an hour on motorway roads to drive from the airport to our hotel.  Fortunately, the journey time was greatly lightened by getting to know our new guides and they us. Our introductory chatter not only demonstrated just how solid a grasp they had of the English language but, more importantly, it also revealed them to be funny, lovely, interested and caring young people.  Great company.

Eventually, we reached the hotel and were greeted there by our friend and the main architect of our visit, Clive, and his academic colleague, Jason.  It was Jason’s guitar that I was borrowing for the duration of our stay in China.

Having delivered us safely to our hotel accommodation, Jason and our young guides said their goodbyes and, with Clive, we retired to a bedroom for a beer (or two), sitting up until around midnight discussing the plans for the following day.  These included joining his spoken English class in the second half of the morning and then a familiarisation walk around the nearby university campus and neighbourhood.

The hotel proved both convenient and comfortable for the duration of our stay and, once unpacked, I, for one, did not need much rocking to get off to sleep.

Na-Mara had been recommended to Rosslyn Court organiser, Morag Butler, by Mike and Maureen who run the Anchor Folk Club in Byfleet, and we were delighted to accept an invitation to perform for the first time in Margate.  Given that Rosslyn Court also runs a wide array of folk-related and other workshops, we were similarly delighted when Morag agreed to let us run a workshop on ‘Songs and Tunes from the Celtic World’ on the afternoon ahead of our performance.

Buoyed from our excellent gig in Northampton a few days earlier, we were raring to go on Saturday morning as we set off.  The journey worked out fine and, after a quick pit stop for coffee, we arrived at Rosslyn Court just after 1.00pm, in good time to set up for our 2- 4.00pm workshop.

In what we now recognise as her characteristic high energy, Morag was standing outside Rosslyn Court when we arrived, talking to a passing group of poets on a writing tour of Margate about the evening gig.  As the poets went on their way, Rob and I were shown to where the workshop and later concert would be happening; a delightful, bright, warm and very well-equipped space.  Minutes later, once the gear was in, we were able to sit and have a cup of tea with Morag and her journalist friend, Jodie, and were able to tell them about the Basque children’s colonia that had existed in Margate, at Laleham School, during the 1930s.

The subsequent workshop proved to be great fun with a good range of singers and musicians attending with fiddles, penny whistle and recorder, guitar and ukulele.  The atmosphere was relaxed throughout and everyone showed great humour and commitment to learning the tunes and songs. The two hours flew by and everyone was buzzing by the end of the session.

Mid-way through the workshop, our good friend from Gigfilm, Brian Hasledean, arrived. With Morag’s agreement, Brian had come along to film the concert that evening.  We hadn’t seen Brian since he did some excellent filming of a Na-Mara gig in the Isle of Sheppey Folk and Blues Club some years previous and it was great to see him again.

After the workshop finished, Brian was able to move into setting up mode with his cameras and lights, while Rob and I helped Morag set the room up for the evening concert.  Morag explained that before she’d bought the Rosslyn Court property, which is a corner house and is now a very well equipped and highly rated Bed & Breakfast establishment, the room on the corner had been a bar of some kind.  Separated as it was from next door neighbours, she had the vision to see that it would make a fine performance venue and, over the past few years, has put together a striking programme of excellent gigs and workshops.

Luxury of luxuries, Morag and Chris, then treated Brian, Jodie, Rob and me all to a fish and chip supper which we ate in Rosslyn Court’s pretty breakfast room, overlooking the garden.

Given there was still a little time before the concert, Rob and I than took a brief walk along to the path overlooking the nearby beach at Margate.  Albeit a little grey and overcast that October evening, it is always a pleasure to see the sea and it perked us up nicely for the evening concert.

With doors open at 7.30pm, audience members began to arrive for the 8.00pm start.  Quite quickly, the concert room filled up and, by the time Morag kicked the evening off with a beautiful rendition of ‘The Recruiting Collier’, the room was full.  Morag then followed her opener with The Herring’s Head,  a classic song from her hometown of Newcastle. Two other excellent floor singers then followed, including Una who’d come along to the workshop, before we took to the stage area.

One immediately feels relaxed performing in the intimate atmosphere of Rosslyn Court.  The audience proved welcoming, warm, and engaged throughout both of our sets, joining in with choruses and there was some great banter throughout the event.  It was a joy to play there.

In recent times, we have taken to finishing the first set with what probably remains our best-known song, Only for Three Months - the story of the evacuation of the Basque children to the UK at the height of the Spanish Civil War.  This allowed us to tell the audience about the role that Margate had played in that historical humanitarian initiative and both Rob and I talked to audience members at half-time about the broader experiences of the Basque children in the UK.

We finished the evening with one of the songs we had been teaching in the workshop earlier that afternoon, The Maid of Culmore.

The feedback we received at the end of the concert and through Facebook later that evening and the following day, confirmed what we thought, the concert had been a success.  As audience members departed, all that was left was for us to pack up our gear, say our thanks and goodbyes and head off home.

We’d like to thank Morag, Chris, Jodie and all at Rosslyn Court for giving us the warmest of welcomes.  Imbued throughout with Morag’s boundless energy and wit, Rosslyn Court is a wonderful venue to play.  It was a delight to perform there, and we very hope to do so again at some time in the future.

Thanks also to Gigfilmer, Brian Hasledean, for all his hard work (yet again!) on our behalf.  We all feel pretty confident that he has captured some good footage of Na-Mara in action at Rosslyn Court and we look forward to working with him to create materials for both our website and to send to folk club and festival organisers to help them see and understand what Na-Mara do, and how audiences respond to it.

When we checked our diaries as we left the door, it turned out to have been over five years since we’d last performed at the Great kNight Folk Club in Northampton.  So, we were really pleased to be returning there with lots of new material.

The journey from St Albans to Northampton is relatively short.  However, when it is raining hard enough for Noah to be getting a shift on, combined with local road closures, it took us over 35 minutes to get out of our hometown.  Amazingly, through the drenching curtains of rain that swept over the car, the M1 kept flowing and our early fears of arriving after the support had started, steadily dissipated and, in the end, we arrived at the club with half an hour to spare before opening.

The Great kNight Folk Club usually meets in a large room on the first floor of the pub. However, when that room is otherwise booked, the club has access to a pleasant room on the ground floor, with lots of armchairs and sofas.  The room is very cosy and heavy curtains over the entrance manage to contain most of any sound overspill from the bar.

We were delighted to meet up with MC for the night, Kevin Ward, again.  Kevin has been a good friend of Na-Mara for many years and given us much helpful feedback over that time.  He was on excellent form, as was the support for the evening, the very talented Craig Sunderland.

A Newcastle United fan called Sunderland, Craig has family in the north-east but is well established in Coventry where he is, rightly, well known around the regional folk clubs. After many years playing heavy metal rock music, Craig has returned to his folk roots.  He is an excellent guitarist and vocalist and will, I’m sure, blaze quite a trail through the folk scene in the coming years.  We really enjoyed listening to his 30-minute set.

Sadly for Craig and for us, the torrential rain meant that numbers were a little lower than the Great kNight typically averages.  However, the atmosphere was intimate and very pleasant, and we performed well.  The audience joined in heartily with choruses and seemed to enjoy the evening very much indeed.  Many were keen to tell those that hadn’t made it along, what a good night they’d missed.

Surprisingly, the M1 also behaved itself on the way home.  So, we were home for midnight.

Many thanks to Andrew Wintersgill for the original invitation to perform again at the Great kNight Folk Club, to Kevin Ward for his masterful MC-ing, to Craig Sunderland for getting the evening off to such an excellent start, and to all those club members that braved the elements on a shocking evening of weather to come along and support and encourage us. We very much hope it won’t be another five years before we make our return back to the Great kNight.