The death of Dolly Parton has been a shock that reverberated worldwide. Not the fact that it happened: she was 80 and in ill health and passed after a life well lived. Rather it's been the aftermath – and specifically the outpouring of love – that has been unprecedented. From the moment the news broke you only had to glance at any social media to see everything dominated not by sadness but by that love, and from across multiple generations too. It felt, strangely, more celebratory than elegaic.

So the tune we'll discuss today in the imaginary seminar that occupies a certain part of my brain is….

"When Jah Come" by Devon Irons (pictured below © Carl Finlay by kind permission of Reggaeville) - look it up everybody - a 7 inch on Lee Perry's Upsetter label. Recorded, I would think, around 1976 and released in '77. Why? Because a little dive into some of the aspects of this tune illustrates nicely so much of the vital and enduring appeal of, as Bob Marley said it, Roots Rock Reggae.

Squint and you could be in 1968 - although this lot are rather better dressed and healthier than most hippies. I did see a bumper sticker “The Hippies Were Right”. But though it seems retro, actually many here see this festival as a catalyst of an idealistic loved up eco friendly future.

There is a story hidden inside my trumpet.

Not the kind of story people usually associate with innovation today. No laboratory. No startup. No investors. No software. No algorithm.

Just a poor Lebanese peasant’s son, born in 1941 in the mountains above Beirut, listening to village brass bands trying – and failing – to play Arabic music.

The Fez Festival of World Sacred Music has been peerless over the years in presenting world/global music acts in one magical place. Only WOMAD is a serious rival as a long-established global music fest.

“Guys, don’t grow old gracefully… it wouldn’t suit you,” The Who’s Pete Townshend told the Rolling Stones at their induction to the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame in 1989. They listened. 

Fast-forward some four decades to 2026, and the surviving Stones have eschewed any state of grace for a raucous, almost confrontational new album in Foreign Tongues that bubbles over with energy and purpose. It picks up where their studio comeback Hackney Diamonds left off and turns it all up a few notches.

Sweating in my lair, there’s no trip to the mecca this year. If the festival was on, I'd be there right now, but it’s a fallow year and Glastonbury Festival is keeping its head down. The Glastophilic chat rooms bubble with antsy longing. My house is prowled by ghosts of yesteryear. Finetime’s camera is dormant. The cows on the farm chew their cud in peace.

To celebrate Miles Davis’s 100^th anniversary this week, Fontana have released a “ Deluxe Re-issue” of one of the jazz giant’s best-known recordings, the soundtrack for Louis Malle’s first film Lift to the Scaffold (Ascenseur pour l’échafaud) 1958. This ranks as some of the most emblematic specially recorded film music: a classic that in its own way characterises Miles’s unique capacity for constant re-invention throughout a long and adventurous career.

I’ve never thought of myself as a political artist. I write about love. The tender bits, the messy bits, the heartbreak that rearranges a life. That’s where songwriting usually finds me. “TIEF”, from my forthcoming album Sunshine Music, arrived differently. It’s built around an interpolation of “Slave” by the legendary calypsonian singer Mighty Sparrow. Calypso, a music that has lived in my bones for as long as I can remember. “Slave” proposed a question I sought to answer.

I was born Tamara Lee Neilson. I had an Uncle Kenny and an Aunt Dolly (who played guitar and banjo, respectively). I mean, did I really have a choice to become anything but a Country singer?