L.A. Salami Live

Artists: L.A. Salami
Venue: The Slaughtered Lamb
Town: London
Date: 18th July
Website: http://www.myspace.com/lasalami

A Monday night is not the best night for a gig and a Monday night with foul weather in the middle of summer is even worse. But when you are first of four acts as well, it's little wonder that the audience was rattling around in this basement venue. If people had of braved the Monday blues and the rain they would have heard one of the best new folk singers around.

Lookman Adekunle (L.A.) Salami plays an acoustic guitar, blows a harp and sings his songs. Comparisons with others who have done the same of the last fifty plus years are inevitable, justifiable and something he had best get used to.

Half way through his set he played a song called 'Loosely On My Mind'. It tells the story of a man who carries a knife, why he carries a knife, who he kills and why he kills them. He carries through fear, for protection and for power. It tells of one victim, a ten year old Nigerian boy, stabbed in the leg. When social historians in ten, twenty, fifty years time try to explain, to analyse, and to theorise about inner city knife crime they will look at source documents but they should also listen to this. Sometimes it takes an artist writing a poem or a song (Chris Woods' 'Hollowpoint', for example) to fill in the gaps.

John 'The Jacket' Hawes