I Thought Only Foreigners Knew That

from The Surrender Of Time by Steve Lawson

	/

Digital Track
Streaming + Download

Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

Purchasable with gift card

£1 GBP or more

You own this
Buy the Full Digital Album View the Full Digital Album
Steve Lawson: Complete Works - 32 albums on USB Stick (new design!)
USB Flash Drive + Digital Album
BRAND NEW LIMITED EDITION "TINY VINYL" DESIGN - complete with turntable arm! ;)

In MP3 format, you get the following albums:

My Solo Albums:

1 :: And Nothing But The Bass: Live At The Troubadour (2000)
2 :: Not Dancing For Chicken (2002)
3 :: Grace And Gratitude (2004)
4 :: Behind Every Word (2006)
5 :: Ten Years On: Live In London (2010)
6 :: 11 Reasons Why 3 Is Greater Than Everything (2011)
7 :: Believe In Peace (2012)
8 :: What The Mind Thinks, The Heart Transmits (2014)
9 :: A Crack Where The Light Gets In (2015)
10 :: The Way Home (2015)
11 :: The Surrender Of Time (2016)
12 :: Towards A Better Question (2017)
13 :: PS, You Are Brilliant (2017)

Steve and Lobelia Albums:

14 :: Live In Nebraska (2008)
15 :: Live So Far (2010)

Other Collaborations:

16 :: Conversations (Steve Lawson and Jez Carr) 2002
17 :: For The Love Of Open Spaces (Steve Lawson and Theo Travis) 2003
18 :: Numbers (Lawson/Dodds/Wood) 2008
19 :: Slow Food (Steve Lawson and Trip Wamsley) 2010
20 :: Infrablab (Trip Wamsley and Steve Lawson) 2010
21 :: Hidden Windows(Steve Lawson and Neil Alexander) 2012
22 :: Invenzioni (Steve Lawson and Mike Outram 2012
23 :: Nothing Can Prepare (Steve Lawson and Andy Williamson) 2012
24 :: The FingerPainting Sessions Vol 1 (Steve Lawson and Daniel Berkman) 2013
25 :: The FingerPainting Sessions Vol 2 (Steve Lawson and Daniel Berkman) 2013
26 :: Diversion (Steve Lawson and Jon Thorne) 2014
27 :: Marinate (Steve Lawson and Julie Slick) 2014
38 :: Ley Lines (Phi Yaan-Zek, Steve Lawson, Andy Edwards) 2015
29 :: Language Is A Music (Steve Lawson & Michael Manring) 2016
30 :: Ley Lines II (Phi Yaan-Zek, Steve Lawson, Andy Edwards) 2017
31 :: Over Time (Steve Lawson & Andy Edwards) 2017
32 :: Intersect (Steve Lawson & Pete Fraser) 2017

Video:

:: Steve Live in Belgium (45 minutes - MP4)

PDF/EPUB

:: "Rock And Roll Is Dead" = Steve's novel.

Includes unlimited streaming of The Surrender Of Time via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more. ... more

Sold Out
Subscription

Subscribe now to receive all the new music Steve Lawson creates, including 33 back-catalog releases, delivered instantly to you via the Bandcamp app for iOS and Android. You’ll also get access to subscriber-only exclusives. Learn more.

Subscribe Now £30 GBP/year or more
Full Digital Discography Full Digital Discography

51

releases

Get all 51 Steve Lawson releases available on Bandcamp and save 70%.

Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of Here. Now., The Root Of It All, Hindsight, (dis)order, Half Life, the aesthetics of care, Better Living Through Technology, The Best Of Steve Lawson Pt 1 (Solo, 2000-2013), and 43 more. , and , .
Excludes subscriber-only releases.

Purchasable with gift card

£26.85 GBP or more (70% OFF)

You own this

lyrics

I Thought Only Foreigners Knew That

This was inspired by a fascinating encounter. I have a couple of friends from Bulgaria, and was talking with one of them about the EU vote, about the tendency of British people, specifically English people, to revise our history, and imagine that there was some idyllic time in the past before immigration, globalisation and whatnot came along and ruined everything… It’s an a-historicaal perspective, one that ignores the brutal racism, misogyny and homophobia of the 40s and 50s, one that overlooks the kinds of medical and technological advances that we benefit from thanks to globalisation, and also one that ignores the simple fact that the power that we had at that time came about through the conquest and killing of the British Empire. We spent a few hundred years going round the planet, stealing resources, enslaving people, killing anyone who disagreed and propping up our own quality of life with the spoils of those incursions. After WWII, and the devastation it wrought on the UK economy and infrastructure, we were utterly reliant on immigration, on the generosity of those who came to work here and help rebuild the country. Often, the attraction of being here was amplified by the degree to which British intervention in their home nations had made life for the poor far far worse there… But with that immigration came culture, knowledge, cuisine, music, technology, and a scope for a much broader perspective on things if only we’d listen for a while.

So I was recounting some of these ideas to my Bulgarian friend who commented ‘I thought only foreigners knew that’ - the notion that the UK’s strength lies in its rapacious history is common knowledge outside of these ridiculous islands, and our inability to listen to anyone else’s perspective leaves us deaf to this much need perspective on our global responsibilities.

So for the music here, I looked into the scales used in Bulgarian music, and Roma music in particular, and found this rather evocative ‘hungarian minor scale’ - it’s like a natural minor scale but with the 4th and 7th intervals raised by a semitone. That gives a whole load of really interesting harmonic and melodic possibilities. For more on Bulgarian music, put ‘Bulgarian Wedding Music’ into YouTube. It’s pretty amazing stuff!

credits

from The Surrender Of Time, released September 5, 2016

license

some rights reserved

about

Steve Lawson UK

The UK's most celebrated and prolific solo bassist - alternating between solo and collaborative releases - have a rummage around and see what you find. The subscription is by FAR the best way to keep track of the many musical goings on!

Recommendations