theartsdesk at Jaminaround 2024 - preview of the unique Dorset venue's second edition

We’re in deepest Dorset, on the edge of the village of Cranborne. The sun has just set. A cluster of thatched rooves, ancient looking barns and outhouses.

It could be a set for Game of Thrones, a reconstruction of pre-industrial times. Groups of people huddle together, in festive mood. At the heart of this cluster of age-old looking structures, there’s a large round house, with an earth and turf roof, covered in grass and weeds. This is one of the most weird and wonderful performance venues in the UK, as iconic in its small way as the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury.

Twice a year, the Earth House hosts Jaminaround, an evening of eclectic performance – music and spoken word – imaginatively curated by Olly Keen, a local lad, who now lives in North London, but hasn’t severed his roots with the countryside that nurtured him. There's also an annual event with London’s Beauty and the Beat, a DJ set in which surprising multicultural sounds cascade out of the speakers, to the delight of the happy revellers.

The Earth House (pictured below) is the showpiece of the Ancient Technology Centre, a visitor centre aimed at schools, and originally created in 1986, by Olly’s father Jake Keen, an inspired local teacher. The round house, about 20 metres diameter inside, was constructed in 2000-2002, and once described in fun as an “alternative Millennium Dome”, with the help from some friends of Jake’s, timber frame building specialists, who put together a magnificent support structure, made from massive oak, roughly carved. There’s something archaic about pillars and beams that still feel like trees, and yet also sophisticated, in the manner of a cathedral, designed to uplift and heal those who enter. You can’t walk in without being inspired.What distinguishes the Earth House as a venue is a space that is 360 degree, perfectly in-the-round. There is no elevated stage, which would inevitably separate performers from the audience and require a particular kind of performance style, with its clichés and tropes. This produces, or rather requires a kind of intimacy – between audience members who can see others across the circle, and also connecting musicians or story-tellers with those gathered around them.

Olly Keen, as well as promoting events, is a music teacher and a musician, a member of Electric Jalaba, an Afro-British band with roots in Gnawa trance music. He has a keen ear and eye for musicians and spoken word artists who thrive in the Earth House. “It’s something I’ve developed over 20 years," he told me, “figuring out what works here. Having been a musician myself and on the scene for so long, I know a lot of musicians whom I can persuade it will be a great gig. Jaminaround is a cool thing, and has definite pulling power.”

Since I started going a few years back, I’ve been introduced to some great acts at Jaminaround: among others, the brilliant cellist Abel Selaocoe, very early in his career, and now internationally famous, who navigates seamlessly from Bach to Zulu chants, and back; Henge, crowd-pleasing purveyors of an ironic and yet entrancing sci-fi psychedelia;  Ana Silvera and Saied Silbak (pictured below), who combine stirring Ladino songs from the Sephardi Jewish tradition with songs from Saied’s native Palestine; Howl, an acapella collective from London, whose women sing in a circle, echoing the shape of the space; and the Balimaya Project, still in their infancy and now a major force in West African-inspired big band music.All of them held the exceptional vibe of the Earth House’s magic circle with perfect presence. Olly again: “I’m looking for artists who can rise to the occasion, performers who get better in that cauldron of pressure, that intensity and intimacy, rather than shrink.” Ana Silvera and Saied Silbak got lost on a particularly stressful drive down to Cranborne from London, but as Ana says, “something about arriving into that magical circular space with its tree trunk pillars, in the midst of lush Dorset countryside, completely calmed us. Getting to play in the round, you feel the audience's engagement and presence in a very visceral and enjoyable way and we felt so welcomed by the crowd. It was a really special experience.”

This intimacy suits story-tellers, such as the incandescent Clare Murphy (pictured below) who performed at Jaminaround 2024 Part 1, last May. The space facilitates conversation and a particularly generous kind of attention. Olly Keen would be the first to say it: the space enables love to flow. “I’m after authenticity and artistic integrity,” he adds. “I don’t respond to people who are hyped. There are a lot of people, not least in London, who’ve been trained to grab attention and Dorset people don’t suffer boasters very easily.”For the last three years, Jaminaround has hosted residential weeks, with highly collaborative workshops in drums and rhythm, singing, song-writing and composing. Olly very much wants to develop the educational side of the project. The most recent was last week. “I haven’t had enough takers this year," he says, "but in terms of soul and spirit, and the drive to do it, it’s incredibly rewarding. I have five great facilitators, all of them diamonds. It’s miraculously holistic and cross-pollinating.”

The second Jaminaround of 2024 is coming up on 14 September. Once again the programme is both varied and eclectic. Olly goes for music that speaks from the heart and doesn’t fall neatly into categories or genres. The singer and activist from Somaliland, Sahra Halgan, combines traditional music from the Horn of Africa with contemporary rock. Mother Sky fluidly navigate territory between contemporary folk and anthemic guitar riffs that build on repetition and long-drawn-out climaxes. In a very different mode, Skylla is a vehicle for avant-garde vocalist Ruth Goller, with demanding off-piste music, a distant cousin of the vocal compositions of Caroline Shaw, with its own promise of enchantment. Singer-songwriter Georgia Duncan is another distinctive voice, with disarmingly self-revealing lyrics, a vulnerability that expresses, paradoxically, great emotional strength.

None of these are classic headliners and their heartfelt artistry will be enhanced by the alchemical vessel that is the Earth House, a unique performance space that offers a welcome alternative to massive DJ-driven dance nights or arenas for the display of oversized egos. This is a place that celebrates the soul, a building that produces moments of magic, all under the contagiously joyous guidance of Olly Keen, facilitator for nights off the beaten track, that are well worth seeking out.

• Details and booking for Jaminaround 2024 Part 2
• More New Music reviews on theartsdesk