We'll feature plenty of examples of music that aims to do just that over the year ahead.
Duncan Chisholm's album is a wonderful evocation of 'The Black Cuillin' on the Isle of Skye.
I visited Skye numerous times from my late teens through to my thirties. I stayed in a number of different self-catering cottages from Glen Brittle to Broadford to Duntulm to Tarskavaig and elsewhere. Most of them had a view of the sea or the mountains, or both.
One of them was on a promontory overlooking the Talisker distillery looking down on the village of Carbost and the distillery itself, and then a distant view of the silhouette of the Black Cuillin.
Here's an image of me and a friend Simon before we headed up to tackle the Cioch: a classic location which will feature in a future post.
Duncan's albums are available to stream on Spotify and elsewhere.
Here's a track that you might like:
Also Martyn Bennett has captured the mountains on his album from
Martyn Bennett will certainly be featured on the blog quite a bit... he was such a wonderful musician.
Check out his interpretation here. Listen until 21".03"
A piece of music by Martyn Bennett was chosen by the cyclist Danny MacAskill.
Here's his video where he cycles along the Cuillin Ridge, including conquering the Inaccessible Pinnacle - somewhere else I've climbed in the past with my friend's Simon and Caroline (and others).
And here he is on the Dubh Slabs, accompanied by Arcade Fire's music: 'No Cars Go'.
As Danny says of this adventure:
I am a big fan of rock climbing and have been inspired by the various men and woman who set new routes and test themselves on some amazing faces around the world so I set out to find some challenging Slab Rock routes on my home Island of Skye with an aim to ride them in a continuous line and test what was possible on my bike. The remote Dubh Slabs rising out of Loch Coruisk in the heart of the Black Cuilin ridge provided some of the steepest terrain I have ever ridden as well as an amazing back drop for the film.
The Cuillin were also captured in poetry by the Gaelic poet Sorley Maclean.
Other musicians who have 'had a go' include The Tannahill Weavers (although there were the Cuillins of Rhum), Archie Fisher and Moira Kerr.
The song was specially commissioned by the Newcastle Gateshead Initiative for the Great Exhibition of the North in 2018.
Kate Rusby is a folk singer from near Barnsley who has released a number of wonderful albums, and has an instantly recognisable voice.
I have seen her playing live several times, most recently in Norfolk, with the wonderful Andy Cutting in her band.
What I like about the track is that it is told from the perspective of a tree into which a couple carve their initials when they are young... and the tree keeps their secret through their life.
It's a reminder of the different time scales of trees compared to humans.
Baile Funk. From the Favelas of Rio to the Met Life Stadium
Content advisory: may contain some content which is not for sensitive ears and eyes. In fact there's no 'may' about it...
The 2002 Brazilian film ‘City of God’has, as its narrative backdrop, the development of the Rio de Janeiro suburb of Cidade de Deus from its inception in the 1960s through its evolution into one of Rio’s most violent and drug-infused favelas.
The music in the film soundtracks this historical development; Carl Douglas’s 1974 hit ‘Kung Fu Fighting’ andJimmy Bo Horne’s disco shakedown ‘Dance Across The Floor’ and - sound tracking the film’s contemporary denouement - the Camillo Rocha and DJ Yah remix of ‘Batucada’.
Some of the brutal action goes down on the dance floor of a baile, the Portuguese phrase for a dance party.
Two decades plus on from the brutal drug fuelled violence of 'City of God' one thing has changed and another has not. The brutal drug fuelled violence continues and if anything has got worse.
However, the soundtrack of the favelas - the poor, often-informal housing, dominated by an African-Brazilian population whose marginalisation is writ large in a nation that was the last to outlaw slavery in the Americas, has moved on. Today it is ‘baile funk’ that echoes through the alleyways alongside the automatic rifle fire. And this sound is starting to make an impact worldwide with stars such as Beyoncé showcasing it.
Baile funk, is really known as funk carioca, but its popularity has seen it adopt the name of the dance parties that were an essential part of where it sprung from in Rio’s favelas with their massive sound systems, multi-cultural dance floors and a spirit of resistance against poverty, inequality, racism and police brutality.
The sound is a mash up of Brazilian rhythms, electronic music and hip hop that was cooking away in Rio’s favelas through the 80s and 90s.
Lyrically it references poverty, black pride, violence, sex and social injustice.
A good starting point to grasp the structure of the sound is Cidinho & Doca’s Rap da Felicidade, which introduced the style to a wider Brazilian public in 1995.
Or you could catch an actual baile funk gig at the YouTube site of Furacão 2000 a record label, production house, baile organiser and DJ crew from Rio de Janeiro who have been hugely influential in the popularisation of baile funk.
It was Furacão 2000 who launched the career of Anitta, a platinum-selling record artist, songwriter, actress and all-round Brazilian cultural personality.
In 2024 Anitta took her Baile Funk Experience out on a worldwide tour with a supporting video to showcase the style you could expect. I think it is fair to say that if you speak Portuguese then we are in the territory of ‘parental guidance advisory’, but you can see that from the video.
The video also makes constant references to Rio’s favelas; the street football, the chaos of the cables and scooters skittering down narrow streets.
It a production that makes Beyoncé appear chaste and it won MTV’s 2023 Best Latin music Video, all eight minutes of it.
The Baile Funk Experience visited the O2 Forum in Kentish Town in late 2024 to recreate the ‘authentic’ baile funk party.
Six years previously Anitta had sold out the Royal Albert Hall albeit with a far less raunchy and more mainstream show called ‘Welcome to Brazil.’
Beyoncé - a new music billionaire - is also a baile funk fan. She played tribute to the genre in her Cowboy Carter World Tour that edged its way through some of the world’s largest stadiums across 2025.
The song ‘Spaghettii’, which begins with the line: “Genres are a funny little concept aren’t they?,” is reworked in a baile style in the live show.
Beyoncé shimmies across the stage with her gang of dancers who throw down baille funk shapes as she raps across the sparse beat. It is certainly a long way from the scuffed streets and ascending favelas stretching up Rio’s hills, to the lavish production and gargantuan scale of Beyoncé’s World tour.
Beyoncé Spaghettii live from Met Life Stadium New Jersey, 2025
Yet it is a journey that Rio 'soundtrack to the urban poverty of the favelas is able to make.
Carl Lee is retired but was a lecturer at The University of Sheffield and Sheffield Hallam University, taught A level Geography for 20 years at Sheffield College, is the author of five books about geography and has a PhD in economic geography. He has been nuts about music since buying his first single in 1973: 10cc’s 'Rubber Bullets' if you were wondering.
OK, so what can we think of when the topic is songs about food...
This could include parody songs of course, such as "Weird Al" Yankovic's 'Eat It'.
The Lancashire Hotpots come to mind first of all....
"Eggs, sausage, chips and beans" anyone?
The Fast Food Rockers were short lived...
I used to play this at the end of lessons when I taught about food.
Everyone join in!
A Pizza Hut, a Pizza Hut Kentucky Fried Chicken and a Pizza Hut A Pizza Hut, a Pizza Hut Kentucky Fried Chicken and a Pizza Hut McDonald's, McDonald's Kentucky Fried Chicken and a Pizza Hut McDonald's, McDonald's Kentucky Fried Chicken and a Pizza Hut
The Everly Pregnant Brothers also came up with this parody song.
This track was released in 1985 and appeared on the album 'Dog eat Dog'.
The album was co-produced by Thomas Dolby. It had a very synthetic sound with Fairlight synthesiser, which provided a distinctive sheen on albums by Kate Bush and Mike Oldfield at about this time, with lots of samples, and was a long way from Joni's earlier style, although her voice was a constant.
Joni Mitchell was another artist who really came to my attention during my time at Huddersfield Polytechnic.
The lyrics are downbeat and connect the famine in Ethiopia with the unsustainable practices of people in the USA and elsewhere.
Hot winds and hunger cries
Ethiopia
Flies in your babies' eyes
Ethiopia
Walking sticks on burning plains
Betrayed by politics
Abandoned by the rains
On and on the human need
On and on the human greed profanes
Ethiopia
Ethiopia
Ethiopia
Every Sunday on TV Ethiopia You suffer with such dignity Ethiopia A TV star with a PR smile
Calls your baby "it" while strolling through your tragic trials
This Rolling Stone article placed it amongst the best songs of the year. It's certainly an 80s sound, and at odds with Joni's earlier work.
So, is this better than the much discussed lyrics of Band Aid's 'Do they know it's Christmas' - which will certainly be appearing on the blog towards the end of the year when it's more appropriate to discuss it perhaps.
And here's Joni at Wembley Arena in April 1983 - I know a few people who went to this show...
It's 1981 and I'm in Liverpool - in Toxteth to be precise...
I've come for a party with some friends. There are still bricks in the streets from the riots some months earlier. The party is in some sort of gym near a church from memory. It's a bit hazy and the situation looking back is a bit sketchy...
This song is played by someone on the record player... and then it is played again and again...
Well, it's a small milestone, but one to celebrate. Perhaps with a few small beers.
We're coming up to three months blogging on music, and I've just passed 10 000 page views - something I can get in just one day over on LivingGeography.
It doesn't tackle the theories of ridge push and slab pull, or the issues with relying on convection currents.
Instead, as this analysis suggests:
"....it metaphorically explores the dynamics of love over time, comparing romantic relationships to the slow, inevitable movement of tectonic plates. The song captures how love, like continents, gradually changes and shifts, sometimes leading to separation.
The reference to “the eastern coast met the western shore” symbolises two individuals from different backgrounds or lives uniting. The imagery of land masses fitting “like a glove” suggests a natural, perfect connection between two people.
The “glacial measured motion” metaphor suggests that while the change is slow, it is steady and unstoppable. “Fault lines” here symbolise the underlying issues or differences that cause a gradual divide."
He has recently co-authored a book called Cities in the Metaverse, which tracks how digital technology is transforming the way we think about cities. The album, Place and Space, is an accompanying piece which functions as a fun way into the timely subject matter. Heavy on synthesisers, arpeggiators and four-to-the-floor kick drum, it’s the sort of euphoric trance many would sooner associate with a festival than a lecture theatre.
One of the other co-authors of the book that inspired the album is Duncan Wilson, also of UCL. I worked with Duncan and other organisations on a project called DISTANCE some years ago. I was working with Helen Leigh and other colleagues at Explorer HQ on a project exploring the Internet of Things and how it could be taught in schools. This was back in 2013.
It's over 15 years since I went to Latitude festival with the Mission:Explore team. This followed an earlier visit to Glastonbury in the same year.
We were working in the children's area running our missions, entertaining young people amongst the festival goers with our subversive take on the festival and its surroundings. Once we'd finished our shift, we were free to enjoy the music. On the 2nd evening, I headed over to the tent where Jonsi from Sigur Ros was going to be performing that evening. I caught a set from American band Yeasayer who were excellent. I then noticed someone wandering in a familiar tasselled jacket and realised it was Jonsi, and had a brief conversation with him. It was just after the launch of his 'Go' album, which remains one of my favourites.
Later that evening he gave the most amazing performance in this tent, and I was up front as the music unfolded. It remains a musical highlight.
For a taster, catch the track on this film here...
In 2025, Jonsi released the album 'First Light'
It features a lot of natural sounds such as birdsong...
“Writing this music at a time of manmade global turmoil and unrest for a video game. I imagined First Light as a momentary fantastical, over-the-top, utopian world where everyone and everything lives together in everlasting peace and harmony. Choosing beauty over disorder, hope over fear, our universal divine angel guardians watching over us and connecting us all as one through love, melody, and music.”
There are locations which we perhaps associate with music because of particular concerts. Heaton Park will be an important place for Oasis fans for example following 2025's reform tour.
One place I spent a lot of time in the 1980s and 1990s was Wentworth Folk Club.
Wentworth is a small village between Rotherham and Barnsley.
The club was formed in September 1974 by a close-knit group of like-minded musical friends at its original home, The Rockingham Arms, Wentworth. Initially on Thursday evenings, it met every fortnight until the “Rock’ renovated its barn which became a perfect live music venue. This enabled the club to convert to a weekly Friday night club in 1977. Over time one of the founders, Rob Shaw, became the mainstay and his foresight and industry enabled the club to become one of the premier live folk music venues in the UK and in 2004 won the prestigious Radio Two Folk Club Of The Year award.
After 32 years at the ‘Rock’ the club was forced to change its location.
I saw some great bands there over the years...
Dick Gaughan
Isaac Guillory
Liam o' Flynn
Vin Garbutt
Chris While and Julie Matthews
Alias Ron Kavana
Bernard Wrigley
Does anyone else have memories of 'The Rock' or another folk club perhaps?
Image: Rockingham Arms, Wentworth - Alan Parkinson - shared on Flickr under CC license
Here's the title track of the new album from Finland's Kebu (Sebastian Teir) an electronic musician who uses analogue synths and produces engaging and melodic music.
It was released today.
I have a signed copy of the CD on its way to me - posted by the artist themselves a few days ago.
They have a major new tour coming up, but sadly the logistics of getting into the UK to perform were too great. Thanks Brexit...
If you haven't seen this yet, it's about Tony Mammoth, a PE teacher who goes on a ski-trip in the 1970s and gets caught in an avalanche. Forty years later he is found and brought back to life... and gets a job back in teaching - bringing a 1970s mentality to the present day (a reverse 'Life on Mars').
Cue Parents' evenings as speed dating, driving his car onto the football pitch while teaching, and sunbathing in the long jump pit...
And a few geography teacher jokes thrown in of course...
He no longer knows the rules of society. He can’t smoke a pipe at school. Modern women don’t like it when he chats them up at all times. He leaves the engine of his Ford Capri running to “keep it warm”. Drink-driving is no longer “fashionable”. There is no longer a woodwork department at the school, which baffles him: “What do you do with the thick kids?”
How else to give it a 1970s vibe?
How about a 1970s title sequence, and music by Mike Post!
Mike Post has written a number of classic theme tunes. They include The A-Team, the Rockford Files - a classic - and Hill Street Blues - another classic.
They are similar in tone to the work of Dave Grusin.
In early July, the Prince's Teaching Institute is organising a Geography symposium.
It's shaping up to be an excellent couple of days down at the RGS in London (or up depending on where you are based), organised by the PTI with the RGS and GA.
The programme for the event is beginning to be shared on the website. The event includes overnight accommodation and breakfast and a gala dinner with guest speakers.
Yesterday morning, I checked the updated programme and was very excited to see these two sessions side by side on the draft programme for the event. Obviously there's my session on Everyday Geographies. I've got plenty of ideas to share there, drawing on my Presidential lecture (you'll find lots of related posts on the blog).
If you're not familiar with him, he is the founder, guitarist and songwriter for the most excellent Public Service Broadcasting.
You will also know if you read the blog regularly that I have posted frequently about them, and also on my World of Music blog.
Their albums tend to focus on one theme: the Race for Space, the decline of Welsh coal or the last flight of Amelia Earhart, as well as an album celebrating Berlin.
And here's their take on Everest - a song which always closes their live shows...
I'm very much looking forward to this session, and acting as 'support act'. I'll also be talking about them in Sheffield at the GA Conference in April.
Finally here's a TED talk that he gave, suggesting that live music should go wrong...
