BIOGRAPHY
New
Zealand born, South London based, oft’ wandering, Garth Cartwright
is best recognised for his 2005 book Princes Amongst Men: Journeys With
Gypsy Musicians (Serpents Tail). Just to refresh in case you have not already
read Princes Amongst Men, it follows a journey Garth makes through four
Balkan states: Serbia, Macedonia, Romania and Bulgaria. While he chronicles
life and politics in these four post-communist nations he uses the Roma
– Gypsy is short for Egyptian, a mistake Europeans made a thousand
years ago when the Roma, originally from the Indian sub-continent, first
arrived in Constantinople – to be his guides into Balkan society,
letting a people so often demonised by politicians and the right wing press
(yet so rarely allowed to speak for themselves) talk of their history, beliefs,
experiences and hopes. As Gypsy musicians are traditionally the only Roma
who have contact with mainstream society Garth employed them as oracles,
Balkan griots of sorts. The result is a wildly exciting read as Garth travels,
summer burnt and winter blown, amongst the mahalas (Gypsy ghettoes) and
villages that dot the Balkans, hearing fabulous music and experiencing life
at its most vivid. Princes Amongst Men documents a secret European history
and much of what is revealed in this book has never been published before.
For anyone interested in adventure travel, Eastern Europe, music, film,
human rights, cultural survival, secret history, the Holocaust, the Ottomans
and, of course, those we call “Gypsies” this is an essential
book, beautifully written and illustrated with over two dozen photographs.
Garth’s been writing his entire adult life. Initially beginning with scribbles on Auckland punk and reggae bands as a teenager in the early 1980s, Garth developed into one of New Zealand’s most outspoken writers on visual arts, music, sport and all things multicultural. Winning two Qantas Journalism awards in 1989 and being awarded an Arts Council grant, he took off to the US where he brought a rusty 1976 Buick Skylark and covered 25,000 miles in search of surviving strands of blues, soul, Cajun, Tex-Mex and other American roots music. Passing across the US border into Mexico, he travelled around Central America and Cuba then returned to the US where he lived in San Francisco for several months before the Gulf War policies of Prez George Bush made him take refuge in London. Arriving in 1991 at the height of the recession meant much time spent impoverished and unemployed alongside stints doing shit jobs picking fruit, doing door and stage at the Edinburgh Festival’s largest comedy theatre, packing videos, bussing tables in Covent Garden Restaurants, temping, cold calling for market research firms and labouring on the New British Library building site. Garth used to tell fellow workers that one day he would write a book that would proudly sit on the Library’s shelves and with Princes Amongst Men he has done it. Of the years-months-weeks-days- hours-minutes-seconds spent doing McJobs Garth notes that he nearly gave up and headed back to New Zealand (a nation he loves but is damned by distance if your major passions include travelling frequently and hearing music from across the planet) yet considers the boredom and humiliation that come with said work to be important for soul building: “Writers tend to love their work so to be breathing in dust five floors underground on a labouring job or having phones slammed in your ear while attempting to reach your daily quota for market research certainly taught me to value the freedom writing for a living gives.” Garth escaped the McJob syndrome by winning the Guardian’s 1996 Award For Music Writing and has since written for all the major UK broadsheets and magazines, penned a human rights report on Romania’s Gypsy Musicians ‘A Little Bit Special’: Censorship & Romania’s Gypsy Musicians (www.freemuse.org), written a world music guide for Tower Records, an unpublished (”unpublishable” he now says) novel, worked on a screenplay and various documentary films, compiled and written notes for at least two dozen albums for Union Square (Rai: The Best Of The Original North African Groove and Country Outlaws being particular favourites), continued to roam around the world, fallen in and out of love with women from across the planet and generally enjoyed as much happiness, generosity and good will as is humanly possible. Garth lives alone in a Peckham council flat. He has no wife, no car, no pets, no children. He does have many books and CDs and a fabulous French partner, Florence, who does a great job of raising two bilingual children and running Train Wreck Records. Garth’s favourite word in the English language is compassion. He likes Cloudy Bay Sauvignon Blanc, single malt whiskies, Asian food, inspired debate, Noam Chomsky’s political analysis, friendship, laughter, South London and so many parts of the planet he’s not going to even bother trying to list them. If you are interested in his favourite films and music and books best go to the blog on this site. Garth is currently working on a follow-up to Princes Amongst Men that involves him travelling around the US South West, following up on those regional trails he first scented in 1990. So far he’s interviewed musicians and writers both legendary and unsung, experienced great nights in Texan honky tonks and Chicago South Side blues bars and noted that a slightly younger version of George Bush is still running and ruining the US and making war rather than love. A big mistake. Garth’s also publishing his first collection of poetry, 20 Songs Of Despair & A Love Poem through his own Toro Loco imprint. Some of the poems are displayed on this site. A baker’s dozen of features he has written, largely but not solely on music, are also on this site. If you ever happen to encounter Garth please introduce yourself – he believes that people, for all their failings, remain the most magical thing on this planet.