By The Landlord
Here, under the awning of cotton,
Tomatoes are heaped in a flare
Of glossy red beauty, and rotten
Sick-sweet smells of fruit fill the air,
Of the apple, the fat yellow pear.
What a sense of a glory forgotten
Of olden time market and fair!
Here, wedged in the crowds, and the vendors,
Damp faces, and bonnets awry;
Here are bulwarks of kettles and fenders,
And lemons and oranges gleaming on high,
Sour to the sucking, but fair to the eye.
In a world full of wonders and splendours
It is sweet to shop under the sky!
So come, buy your hat for a penny
Here are marvellous bargains for you;
For this is the mart of the many
And not of the few.
Here are dainties both pickled and bottled,
And carcasses hung in the street,
And dreadful things clammy and mottled,
Slabs, slices, and bundles of meat.
Great mackerel, spotted and spangled,
Grey codfish, and horrible peeps
Of crab-claws, and lobsters all tangled
With shellfish, in pyramid heaps.
All strange things that live in the deeps
Are here for your will at a penny,
All chilly and briny and blue;
For this is the mart of the many
And not of the few.
There’s an organ that grinds in the gutter
A ditty as old as the hills;
There are mountains of fine yellow butter,
There are boas and buttons and frills.
For folk who are out for a flutter
Lo! this is the market that thrills.
There’s a gilder who works for a penny,
Gilds images newer than new;
For this is the mart of the many
And not of the few…
– Street Market by Jean Guthrie-Smith (1922, from Adventure)
Local and global, a mass of messy randomness and tidy organisation, a symphony of the senses with all sorts of people singing out, of cultured competition and presentation, a place of perusal and passing through, of close inspection and inspiration, barter and banter. Markets and fairs are very much like this Bar, where we set out weekly thematic stalls. Fancy a taste, try before you buy, or simply enjoy?
And so, starting with a vibrantly descriptive poem by Glasgow’s Jean Guthrie-Smith, in the age of easy-click Amazon, it’s time to capture a sense of truer transaction, to sample the sights, sounds and smells, energy and interaction of physical gatherings as markets and fairs, all through the prism of song, ideally sourcing all sorts of musical goods across the world, capturing the culture and colour of those places where people gather to buy and sell, eat and drink, and socialise, through lyrics and sometimes also field recordings and sound effects.
Markets express a fundamental pattern human behaviour. We’ve been gathering like this thousands of years. If you travel to another city or country visiting a food market or general bazaar is always a great place to start. They’ve been captured in paintings from the Middle Ages in many forms.
One of the most vibrant, but also unusual, is Pieter Bruegel the Elder's 1559 The Fight Between Carnival and Lent. It shows hustle-and-bustle of Netherlands life in a market square scene filled with activity, and contains more that 200 characters, but is also an allegorical one capturing a tension between commerce and Christianity, perhaps indirectly referring to biblical story of rage by Jesus at traders and money exchangers in the temple.
Market mayhem: Pieter Bruegel the Elder's The Fight Between Carnival and Lent (1559)
Yet here, among all the transactions, in the foreground appears the indulgent figure of Carnival is a fat butcher, with his pouch of knives, straddling a beer barrel on a blue sled, armed with a rotisserie carrying the head of a suckling pig, poultry and sausages, and heads a procession of figures wearing masks, bizarre headgear and household objects as props or improvised musical instruments. Markets are often filled with music, not only from instruments or singers, but also the hue and cry of market traders. Meanwhile Lent is a thin person, possibly a woman, seated on a hard three-legged chair, and armed with a baker's spatula called a peel, on which lie two herrings. She is surrounded by pretzels, fish, fasting breads, mussels, and onions, the more restrained foodstuff of lent. Who will win? Either way, it seems lots of food and drink will be consumed.
This week’s theme will hopefully attract all kinds of music, from gentle folk numbers about local country fairs to vibrantly upbeat Bollywood songs, many of which have been inspired by Delhi’s famous Sarojini Market, a mad morass of bartering from everything from beads to bags. Or in the same city, Janpath Market is a gothic gangways of handicrafts, handlooms, bags and souvenirs, clothing and accessories, and is filled with materials from all over the continent, from Gujarat to Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh to West Bengal.
Also in India there’s Jaipur’s extraordinary Baapu bazaar, a source of millions of jutti shoes, salwar suits, cushions, home decor artefacts, jewellery and bangles. Or in Mumbai of course, where locals and tourists intermingle at Colaba Causeway, where you might experience a truly mad and manic experience of bartering and currying for favour around literally everything from clothing to food.
Other songs and pieces might capture different countries' pungent flavours, such as the music, sights and sounds of Marrakesh’s Jemaa el-Fna (see above top), a surreal and sweaty slithering network of snake charmers, poets soothsayers and musicians, carpets and slippers, grilled meats, sausages, goats’ heads and fried fish.
How about getting lost in the music of the truly vast Mercado de la Merced in Mexico City, a place particularly for chilies, cactus fruit, chapulines (grasshoppers) and other spicy delights?
Or perhaps we’ll visit Turkeys’ famous Spice Bazaar in Istanbul, also known as the Egyptian Bazaar, one off the world’s oldest, where every exotic spice imaginable is available, as well as all sorts of teas and and sweets, from lemony sumac and spicy Urfa biber, to Turkish delight.
Special spice price: Spice Bazaar in Istanbul
Fancy something more tropical with a syncopated beat? Then perhaps songs set in somewhere like Castries Market in Castries, St. Lucia, a colourful Caribbean market of exotic fruits and vegetables, including breadfruit, jambu, and soursop, as well as island-grown spices, and of course, coconut.
What about more unusual settings? Bangkok’s amazing Amphawa Floating Market is set on water, where vendors glide across the river, precariously grilling fresh seafood for customers.
Thailand’s Or Tor Kor floating market
Venice is a floating city, but one of it’s famous markets is set next to the water by the famous Rialto Bridge, and has been trading since the 11th century.
From shore to mountain, high up with an elevation fo nearly 2000 metres above sea level, Guatemala’s a rural Mayan town of Chichicastenango is all about the bright and colourful local fabric clothing, bags, blankets, purses, and shawls.
Masks in Chichicastenango’s market, Guatemala
Egypt’s Khan Al-Khalili is among the world’d oldest and most ornate, dating back to the Mamluk period of the 14th-15th century where beside everything else, you’ll barter for brassware, spices, perfume, coloured glass lamps.
Many other markets are set in beautiful, grand buildings, such as Valencia’s wonderfully tiled Mercado Centrale (I visited just a few weeks ago), or Budapest’s Nagyvásárcsarnok Central Hall market, it’s high decorative tall ceilings the home among much else of sausages, Tokaj wine, and paprika.
Nagyvásárcsarnok in Budapest
Östermalms Saluhall in Stockholm
Unusual, highly specific purchases? The Skuon or Skun Spider market in Cambodia is well is the deep-fried insects, crickets, scorpions, and beetles, as well several species of spiders, perhaps a slightly scary but fascinating roadside stop between Phnom Penh and Siem Reap.
Or if authentic Russian Matryoshka dolls are your thing, Moscow’s Izmailovsky Market has every size and shape imaginable, as well as lots of ceramics and teapots, where the place is also set out like a theme park, including a beautiful painted bridge, rustic Russian timber towers, log houses and a lake. The dolls perhaps capture the confusing nature of that vast country, described by more than one person as “an enigma wrapped in a mystery”.
Hidden goods: Russian dolls at Moscow’s Izmailovsky Market
The magical mystery musical world tour of markets is your oyster. Talking of which, tathat might then include the many fish markets from Pike Place in Seattle, or Östermalms Saluhall in Stockholm for a steaming cup of fisksoppa, Tokyo’s massive seafood Tsukiji market where the specialism is sushi, the Old Market Hall and Kauppatori Market Square in Helsinki where as well a fish there’s many a smoked meat pastry, or Kreta Ayer Wet Market, in Singapore's Chinatown to the bustling Wangfujing Snack Street in Beijing.
Wangfujing Snack Street in Beijing
And there’s so many more great markets, too many to mention, whether that might be Melbourne’s Queen Victoria, to Toronto’s St Lawrence, San Francisco’s Ferry Building or Munich’s Viktualienmarkt. But we might also operatically cross the many Mercati Centrali or locale of Italy, from Florence, to Rome or Turin, or in Spain, Madrid’s Mercado de San Miguel, a real focus for fans of tapas and wine, or Barcelona’s La Boqueria.
Peppers and more in Barcelona’s La Boqueria
Not forgetting of course the tasty musical cuisine of chanson, from Nice’s Marché de la Libération to Lyon’s famous Les Halles and Marché des Enfants Rouges is Paris, running since 1628.
The Vegetable Market (1878) by Victor Gabriel Gilbert, the Parisian painter best known capturing outdoor social scenes
But this week’s theme could peruse more than food or conventional markets. You might touch upon different kinds, from the cut-and-thrust of the stock market where traders shout at each other, or even the black market?
And what about songs set in, or about car boot sales, or other kinds buy-and-sell fairs?
Much of my teenage after-school hours and Saturdays were spent in Manchester’s Afflecks Palace, the legendary city-centre warehouse building hive of cheap records, books, clothes and accessories. So as well as fruit and veg, some songs might be about digging through market and stall crates for those rare vinyls, perhaps juicy old brown bag containing the strangely priceless and rare 7-inch of Peaches from the The Stranglers’ Rattus Norvegicus, of or that rare and tasty Kate Bush 7-inch of Eat The Music. Rare finds occur, but generally not by me, though I once bought a second-hand copy of the Jam’s All Mod Cons for a basic £4, only to find when I got home that all three of the band had signed the inside sleeve.
But I never found, or really perused the record fairs for that rare, now super pricey copy of that northern soul classic by Darrell Banks, Open The Door To Your Heart, or Joy Division’s 1978 EP An Ideal For Living, nor did I even bother digging for The Quarrymen’s 1958 10-inch acetate of That’ll Be The Day/In Spite of All The Danger. But that’s not the point. Markets and fairs are all about the perusal, the experience, who you might meet there, and whatever else you might find.
Classic car boot sale, King’s Cross in London
So then, it’s time to finish up this world whistle-stop tour, and see what gems you might find. This week’s expert market manager, who will help keep all the stalls in line, and no doubt encourage variety of choice, high quality and fair play, is the superb Suzi! Place your suggestions in comments below, in time for market bell to ring at 11pm on Monday UK time, for playlists published next week. The market is now officially open!
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