Born Jean-Marie Maurice Scherer, his debut is that of a writer, when in 1946 he published Elisabeth, a novel – characterised by subtle prose – that let us forsee the style of the scripts of his future movies. The book came out with the pseudonym Gilbert Cordier. A pseudonym is often associated with shame and resentment (see Stendhal), and in this regard Monsieur Rohmer, with his double nom de plume, probably had something to reveal.

Following the first feature films, the artist begins to see his path. His adventure in the world of art-house cinema has begun. Director on the one hand and, on the other, theorist. In fact, Rohmer was Editor of the Cahiers du cinéma for some years. Those were the years of Godard, Chabrol, Rivette, Eustache, Truffaut. Years of unforgettable movies (the legend of À bout de souffle, the poetic story of Jules et Jim) when Rohmer chose his position (on the sidelines) to play an independent game. He conceives an ambitious project: cycles of movies (stories at different stages, on multiple levels) in which he intends to recount the endless facets of the human soul, the worthlessness and the complexity, the splendour and the fragility, with all the comic aspects (or tragicomic).

The first cycle is that of the Moral Tales. Six astonishing movies, of great depth, each profoundly different from the other and yet all linked in a closed circle. La boulangère de Monceau (1962), La carriére de Suzanne (1963), La collectionneuse (1967), Ma nuit chez Maud (1969), Le genou de Claire (1970)  and L’amour l’aprés-midi (1972). Each of these stories involves a moral choice, a dilemma that puzzles the protagonist, a fork in the road. It’s the serried dialogues between Jean-Louis Trintignat and Françoise Fabian (unforgettable Maud), it’s the obsession focused on the knee of the young attractive (and arrogant) Claire, it’s the thoughts of the three characters of La collectionneuse (a sort of Jules et Jim with colours borrowed from Matisse and Bonnard).

This meditation in six acts is followed by an historical pause, during which Rohmer directs La marquise von (1976, inspired by a novella by Heinrich von Kleist, a beautiful period movie characterised by masterful lighting) and Perceval le Gallois (1978, a heavy adaptation from Chretiens de Troys). These are historical and literary digressions, recaptured by Rohmer toward the end of his career in L’anglaise et le duc (2001).

Once again absorbed in everyday life, Rohmer initiates a second cycle, that of Comedies and Proverbs. If the objective is always the same (a man, a woman, their psychology), the tactic has changed: a folkloristic adage is quoted and presented in the context of a beach in Brittany or in 1980s Paris. The films in this cycle are: La femme de l’aviateur (1981), Le beau mariage (1982), Pauline à la plage (1982), Les nuits de plein de lune (1984), Le rayon vert (1986),  Reinette et Mirabelle (1987) and L’ami de mon amie (1987). All these movies enjoyed the success of critic and public, all were characterised by the Rohmer-trademark: the dialogues chasing each other and interweaving, the simple settings (often beaches, equally often the countryside, an unexpected Paris), the accomplished actors (cleverly directed but also free to improvise in order to convey more spontaneity to the memorable fast-paced dialogues).

Another cycle follows, that of the Four Seasons: Conte de printemps (1989), Conte d’hiver (1991), Conte d’été (1996) and Conte d’automne (1998). The seasons are identified with their colours – the light-blue of the skies of Normandy for Summer, the red green and brown of the vineyards for Autumn. The sensitivity is, by now, familiar: the meditations of a young man caught in his dreams and in his incertitude, two friends in their middle age enjoying themselves in a comedy of misunderstandings (serious, but with a smile). Juggling and balancing.

There are also films outside the cycles. Those Rendez-vous à Paris, in which the structure is still typical of Rohmer. The recent L’anglaise et le duc (2001) from the memoires of Lady Grace Dalrymple Elliot, lover of the Duke of Orléans interpreted by the excellent Lucy Russell. And here Monsieur Rohmer finds one of his strengths: the unequalled taste in choosing the actors. Actors who give an astonishing performance and then disappear (from the screen, not in the memory of the public), such as Haydée Politoff, protagonist of La collectionneuse. But also legends of French cinema: Françoise Fabian (the seductive Maud) and Jean-Louis Trintignat. André Dussolier and Barbet Schroeder, Arielle Dombasle and Pascal Greggory. Some of the actors and actresses are a fetish, especially Béatrice Romand (young in Le genou de Claire, then in Le beau mariage, for which she was awarded the Coppa Volpi in Venice) and Marie Riviére (seen in La femme de l’aviateur and Le rayon vert) both united in the Autumn Tale in a memorable double interpretation. Or young promising actors, such as Melvil Poupaud in the Summer Tale.

Overall the strength of Rohmer’s cinema lays in its delicacy. The ability of recounting the fragility of a relationship, the intensity of an impulse, the complexity of a doubt. Often intertwined with the movements of the body (very observant the director, very refined the actors), the feelings are the real protagonists of the moral debates, of the comedies and the proverbs, of the seasons of life (a passionate summer, a melancholic autumn ending with a smile). A film by Rohmer can be ironic, humoristic, subtly sad, patently intimate – always, however, profoundly human.

The repetition of the themes (lastly disguised in the classical setting of the Astrée by Honoré d’Urfé) was a demonstration of clarity. Awarded in numerous editions of the most prestigious festivals (the lifetime achievement Leone d’Oro dating to 2001), Rohmer never lost his freshness, sometimes joyfully baroque sometimes astoundingly simple.

One day, in an unexpected place, we will find ourselves engaged in a discussion or sharing doubts with archetypal symbolic characters (Frivolous, Gullible, Strong, Ambiguous, Constant) and we will recognise ourselves as characters in one of his movies.

Born into a well-to-do family in the Lot region, Françoise Quoirez took by storm the cultural establishment of France in 1954 with the acclaimed and controversial novel Bonjour Tristesse, published under the pseudonym Sagan (inspired by one of the characters in Marcel Proust’s Recherche, the Princesse de Sagan). International bestseller and shortly after made into a movie interpreted by David Niven, Jean Seberg and Deborah Kerr, the story is set in the nonchalant atmosphere of the French Riviera where hedonism and frivolity meet with darker thoughts in the mind of spoilt teenage Cécile. Those were the initial years of the Nouvelle Vague.

The movie Sagan, directed by Diane Kuris, covers the time span of half a century, from the stardom year 1954 until 2004, when an old, fragile and impoverished Françoise Sagan died of a lung embolism. Her life has all the elements of tragedy and romance: immediate success, the first triumph turning almost into a curse, marriages, lovers, an estranged son, drugs, alcohol, luxury, beauty, solitude. The movie opens in Honefleur, in 2004, with a reporter trying to sneak a photograph trough the wooden gate of Sagan’s mansion, le manoir du Breuil near Équemauville. An enthusiastic young girl, she was known by the nickname of charmant petit monstre (charming little monster). Androgynous in her looks, with short hair and slender figure, she lived the success of Bonjour Tristesse with a cheerful attitude, at the same time conscious and blasé. Her places (Deauville, Paris, Saint-Tropez, Honfleur), her sportcars. Following a car accident at the wheel of her Aston Martin, she was in a coma for some days. Once she recovered, she quickly married publisher Guy Schoeller. The marriage lasted only three years and two years after her divorce she married the American sculptor Robert Westhoff, with whom she had her only child, Denis. Like Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicholson or Paul and Jane Bowles, Françoise and Robert also had same sex relationships outside their marriage and following their separation. In fact, Sagan’s most faithful companion was Peggy Roche, ex model for Givenchy and later herself a stylist.

We follow Sagan into her descent in drug and alcohol abuse, her difficult (almost inexistent) relationship with her son, her financial problems, her respiratory accident while on a state visit to Colombia with President François Mitterand. Later Peggy Roche dies. In the last years of her life, Sagan was practically ruined and was involved in the financial scandal known as Affair Elf . It was only the support from her wealthy companion Ingrid Mechoulam (Astrid, in the movie) that allowed her to keep her mansion, where she died in 2004. A few years earlier she was asked to write her own epitaph: “Sagan, Françoise. Fit son apparition en 1954, avec un mince roman, “Bonjour tristesse”, qui fut un scandale mondial. Sa disparition, après une vie et une œuvre également agréables et bâclées, ne fut un scandale que pour elle-même” (Sagan, Francoise. Appeared in 1954 with a slender novel, “Bonjour Tristesse”, which was a worldwide scandal. Her death, after a life and a literary production both pleasant and botched, was a scandal only for herself).

Sagan is brilliantly interpreted by Sylvie Testud (also a theatre actress and a writer). A long preparation in the study of the character is evident: the voice, the gestures, the gait, the whole attitude. Instead of playing Sagan, Sylvie Testud had opted for becoming Sagan, conscious that the author and her myth are still alive in the public, especially in France, leaving little space for improvisation. Alongside Testud, the eclectic Jeanne Balibar (Ne touchez pas la hache, 17 fois Cécile Cassard, Va savoir) plays Peggy Roche, with her striking outfits and mellifluous voice.

Another character in the movie is the action of writing. The physical act of writing, the reason behind it, the urgency, its commercial aspect, the years of Existentialism. “Écrire est la seule vérification que j’ai de moi-même” (Writing is the only verification I have of myself). We see Sagan writing: in bed, surrounded by half-smoked cigarettes and half-drunk bottles of whisky; in the garden of her mansion; sitting with the typewriter on her lap. She writes. In fifty years of excesses she has also managed to publish almost fifty literary works, including novels, theatre plays, scripts, autobiographical writings.

The movie also provides an overview of fifty years of French history: the Nouvelle Vague; May 1968; the Manifesto of the 343 in which 343 women admitted of having had an abortion in 1971 including Simone de Beauvoir, Marguerite Duras, Catherine Deneuve, Jeanne Moreau and Françoise Sagan; Mitterand’s presidency. Interestingly during the movie, while Sagan, her second husband and her entourage are watching on TV the revolution in the streets of the Latin Quarter, one of the spectators comments: “This is the revolution” looking at their new way of living, just there, in that room. Less boundaries, socially and sexually.

The movie is not judgmental: neither compassionate for the suffering and the weaknesses of the writer, nor exalting her excesses. It portrays the lights and shadows of a complex character, of a woman that already at the age of 18, in the opening lines of the novel that made her Sagan, wrote: “A strange melancholy pervades me to which I hesitate to give the grave and beautiful name of sorrow. The idea of sorrow has always appealed to me, but now I am almost ashamed of its complete egoism. I have known boredom, regret, and occasionally remorse, but never sorrow. Today it envelops me like a silken web, enervating and soft, and sets me apart from everybody else”.

The Wizard of the Crow, the latest novel by the Kenyan author Ngugi wa Thiongo, is a literary adventure like no other. Based in the fictitious country of Aburiria, this cutting social critique of post-colonial African corruption and greed spares no punches, taking inspiration from an array of different real-life power-hungry leaders and their kenieving sycophantic followers.

The novel is crammed with colour and detail transporting the reader into a vivid imaginary African landscape. Amongst its characters we find a deranged African dictator, ministers who have surgically enhanced their eyes or ears, a sorcerer who sometimes appears as female and sometimes as male, a half-white half-black man, a storytelling policeman and four motorbike-riding horsemen of the apocalypse.

Written in the Kenyan language Kikuyu and then translated into English by the author himself, in The Wizard of the Crow, Ngugi masterfully intertwines each and every character’s lives, their hopes, inner thoughts and the expectations they nurture for what their country should be and do for them. The reader is left guessing until the very end which of these will eventually come out on top…

The Wizard of the Crow by Ngugi wa Thiongo, Harvill Secker, 2006

The story is based on the 1999 novel by Sheila Kohler, but it also brings to memory the unforgettable Miss Jean Brodie and her temperament, as described by Muriel Spark in her early successful novel The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961). The central theme is not only the complex dynamics occurring in a group of adolescents (both novels addressing a “team” of young girls) but also how each member of the group interacts with the charismatic role-model, the teacher that nobody will ever forget. Not a teacher, but the teacher, in a wider meaning of the term: a source of inspiration. Some details of Miss Brodie are memorable: taking the liberty of discussing Fascism and Cimabue instead of mathematics during class, reproaching a girl for opening a window more than fifteen centimetres because it is “vulgar”, her ambition of transforming her team of girls into “la crème de la crème”. The impact of such an alluring character on the mind of an adolescent sparks strong reactions. Imitation, jealousy, eroticism. Obsession.

In the film, Miss G is a stain of colour in the gray rigorous atmosphere of the school and its surroundings. Dressed with great taste, a cigarette often between the red lips, assured in her attitude, compelling when recounting stories set against exotic backgrounds, she is almost magnetic. Her special group of girls, the diving team, feels privileged and intimidated, each girl responding differently to such a strong personality, with attraction easily disguised as admiration. Miss G possesses an allure of mystery, which of course adds to her erotic charge. She passionately tries to inspire her girls, challenging them, instructing them against social obligations, telling them that “the most important thing in life is desire”. The movie then takes a darker turn, with Miss G revealing another side, under the armour of emancipated and glamorous young woman. The character thus gains more complexity, ultimately possessing an explosive mix of fragility, illusions, ambitions and sensuality.

In the role of Miss G, Eva Green delivers an accomplished performance. Known to the greater public as the Bond girl of Casino royale, she was the unforgettable Isabelle in Bernardo Bertolucci’s The dreamers. Daughter of French actress Marlène Jobert and a theatre actress, she also has previously worked with Ridley Scott, producer of Cracks, for the movie Kingdom of heaven. In her latest role, she incarnates with confidence the charismatic Miss G, shifting between her passionate side and her dark side. Beautiful and stylish, she flaunts elegant 1930s outfits in the improbable setting of the boarding school, playing the gramophone on the shore of the sea while encouraging the diving team to aim higher. Her most striking feature are probably the piercing blue eyes and her gaze, so rich in emotions, is reminiscent of Charlotte Rampling’s. As some of Rampling’s most popular interpretations, this character is oscillating between fragility and an almost arrogant, fascinating confidence, not intentionally provocative but naturally sensual. All this summarised in the complex gaze. While presenting the movie at the Toronto International Film Festival, Eva Green said that she also found inspiration for her character by listening to songs performed by Marlene Dietrich, adding the final touch to her interpretation.  

The movie, directed with talent by Jordan Scott and with beautiful photography curated by John Mathieson, will be released in the UK in December 2009.

View from my window

Beginning of week three in the new flat in the lost land of East London’s Hackney Downs.

It’s a bit of a retail desert out here, sovaldi sale with little of the trendy haunts I had so gotten used to down in the southern reaches of the hood.

There is, buy viagra however an interesting gastro-pub just across the road, cheap which has so far made it’s way onto my list of local eateries.

The Pembury Tavern seems not to be frequented by the postcode plonkers[1] that generally grace the eateries around Broadway Market but by more nerdy, thick-rimmed spectacle wearing types. This might not of course be entirely true, as I have only actually eaten there once and so cannot really be a good judge of what kind of types frequent the establishment. Yet I couldn’t help but notice an entirely wholesome vibe when I lunched there with Jelly last Sunday.

While on the subject of postcode plonkers, it must be said that there is nothing more satisfying than having a blinding hangover and going to Broadway market on a Saturday morning to despise and insult the people and their ridiculous getups.  Why anyone would choose a market (however hip and overpriced) as their main fashion moment of the week is beyond me. I generally stumble over in little more than my pajamas and Marc Jacobs sunglasses, which I wear not as a fashion statement but as an ingenious contraption behind which to hide my bleary, bloodshot eyes.

Oliver Twist wannabe

The vitriol brought on by this nauseated state is unparalleled. I seethe at the sight of grown men trying to look like Oliver Twist and women in their burlesque makeupand wannabe fifties outfits.

I have in fact tried going to Broadway Market when not hung-over (which occasionally, believe it or not, does happen) and it isn’t nearly as fun. All the wannabes just seem bland and desperate and try as I might, I cannot muster any healthy hatred for them.

Back here in the cappuccino-less Downs however, it’s all afro hair salons (maybe I should get myself that weave I’ve always wanted), greasy spoons, social care centres, Turkish food shops (there seem to be four in the immediate vicinity of our block) and late -night shoot-outs. Oh and then there’s Michael’s flower shop under the bridge, which I suspect has a roaring trade, due to the afore mentioned late-night shoot-outs.

Give this square mile three years and I’m sure it will have succumbed to the inevitable gentrification of pre-Olympic Games east London. But for the time being it’s just me and Little Miss Scrumpet (henceforth LMS), living in this soon-to-be glamorous converted Victorian schoolhouse flat.

Oh the trials and tribulations of refurbishing! I can’t wait to tell you all about it…

Tom Ford not only produced and directed A single man, but he was also involved in the writing process, adapting to the screen the homonymous book by Christopher Isherwood. The novel was originally published in 1964 and was dedicated to Gore Vidal, one of Isherwood’s literary friends (including WH Auden and Aldous Huxley). Recounting the story of a single day of life seen through the eyes of an ageing professor, the book is thus analogous in its setting to other illustrious examples, from Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway to Ian McEwan’s Saturday. A whole life in one day, with its tragedies and simple most unbelievable events, with breathtaking details (that dress, that book, that specific word in a sentence) and ordinary actions. Tom Ford said: “I first read the book [...] in the early 1980s and was moved by the honesty and simplicity of the story. At that time, I was in my early twenties. Three years ago, after searching for the right project to develop as my first film, it occurred to me that I often thought of this novel and its protagonist, George. I picked it up and read it again. Now in my late forties, the book resonated with me in an entirely different way. It is a deeply spiritual story”.

The movie has a fast pace, paused with moments of contemplation. The death of a lifetime lover and companion is haunting the day, with memories and reality alternating; an encounter with a stranger; a depressed friend shares pain and lost hopes while a young student (portrayed as a pure symbol of Youth, yet sensual and himself troubled) appears on the scene. And the simple actions and objects: the bread in the freezer, a cup of coffee in the morning, a pencil-sharpener, the neighbours, dinner. Simple everyday life. Adding to the pace are the music and the rich, accomplished performances. Colin Firth is Professor Falconer, caged in his suit and his glasses, caged in the pain of a loss. It is his voice that accompanies those daily prosaic actions, like shaving – and again, Virginia Woolf – or drinking coffee, making his thoughts resonate. The catalyst, the accident, the memory of it. His partner, Jim, is played by Matthew Goode (Match point, Brideshead revisited). And then is the friend, Charlotte, as troubled and depressed: not long after her applauded performance in Savage grace, Julianne Moore again plunges into the Sixties in style, this time putting on a British accent.

Above all, the movie is visually stunning. Tom Ford clearly resorted to all his sense of composition and taste for colour and light, creating a very well crafted film. The attention for the detail: a certain way of putting on make up, a sweater, a shade of colour. Tom Ford has rather designed the movie. He offers his own version of the Sixties: usually depicted as colourful, Los Angeles in 1962 is now sleek, sexy, brown, black, beige, gray, very modern. The atmosphere is at the same time austere and sensual. And then the attention for the human body: a sweaty tennis match, eyes framed in eyeliner and close-ups, the intricate hairstyle that Julianne Moore manages to pull off. Bodies, eyes, hair that are somehow reminiscent of a TV commercial or of a poster seen on the side of a bus. Needless to remember where Tom Ford trained his eye, his taste creates a movie that is aesthetically ravishing but at the expense of spontaneity. Great performances by Colin Firth and Julianne Moore are certainly not diluted by a glossy picture in which even a bank clerk looks like Jacqueline Kennedy, but, albeit it is tragedy that pervades a single day in a man’s life, the movie is too glossy to be dramatic.

Spices were anything but cheap, so cost is no explanation for their abundance. Rather, spices became so popular because they offered a taste from an enchanted and far-away world and like all other Arabic or Asian luxury goods, they were a privilege of the upper classes only. The higher the rank of a household, the larger its use of spices, with historians often surprised by the percentage of the noble budget that was spent on spices. Spices like pepper, cinnamon or nutmeg were a kind of status symbol, commonly used instead of currency in financial deals. Rent and taxes could be paid in peppercorns and wealthy people were described as… ’sacks of pepper’. Spices were considered gifts fit for the royalty and were kept under lock, like silver, gold and precious textiles.

Most spices of the middle ages are still in use nowadays: pepper, cinnamon, cassia, cloves, saffron, nutmeg, mace, ginger, cardamom (known back then also as amomum), coriander, cumin, sumac, turmeric, anise, mastic, caraway and mustard, created a dazzling symphony of flavours. The popularity of such spices might have changed over the years-for example saffron was a huge favourite back then, nutmeg was… put into everything, cumin was popular among the wealthy… alcoholics because it gave them a pale complexion and the absence of at least a few cloves from a household was considered a huge embarrassment for the host-but they remain essentially the same. Some other favourite medieval spices however, have today fallen into obscurity and are rare in the western world.

Grains of Paradise (otherwise known as Guinea pepper, Malaguetta pepper or alligator pepper) resemble black pepper in taste, but they are less pungent and more aromatic, like a zesty blend of ginger, cardamom and pepper. The seeds, which are brown and triangular, were brought from the Gulf of Guinea to north Africa and from there were taken to Sicily and Italy. The name of the spice is a clever advertising trick, with traders claiming that the seeds grew only in Eden and were collected from the rivers flowing out of Paradise. They were very popular in the 13^th century and were used as a more affordable substitute for black peppercorns. Today, grains of Paradise are mostly unknown outside west and north Africa, although their popularity has been somewhat revived due to their use in raw food diets and by famous chefs.

Zedoary belongs to the same family as ginger and is native to India and Indonesia. Its rhizome has a smell similar to turmeric, mango and ginger. Although it was popular during the Middle Ages, these days it is extremely rare in the western world, having been replaced almost totally by ginger.

Long pepper is a type of pepper with a stronger flavour than black pepper-hot, but with sweet and earthly tones. Dark brown, about 3-4 cm long, it looks like an elongated miniature-pinecone, consisting of a cluster of tiny berries that are embedded in the surface of a flower spike. It was introduced to the Mediterranean from the south and south-east Asia and, as we learn from Antonio Pigafetta in his Magellan’s Voyage, the natives of Indonesia (where long pepper is indigenous) used to call it luli. It was very popular in the classical era and Medieval Europe, but was pushed aside by the New World chilli pepper and has since fallen into obscurity.

Cubeb seeds (tailed pepper) have a warm woody smell, with a flavour that reminds us of allspice and pepper and look like tiny berries with attached stems. It was imported to Europe from Indonesia by-who else?-the Venetians. Cubeb features in a 14^th century moral tale by the Catalan monk Francesc Eiximenis (in Com Usar bé de Beure e Menjar), in which he illustrates gluttony by mocking the habits of a worldly and wealthy member of the clergy who lives a life of luxury abundant with spices. Cubeb is hardly ever found in European markets today.

Galangal is a plant indigenous to China and Java and belongs to the ginger family as well. Its rhizome is not dissimilar to ginger in taste, with a sweet and highly aromatic citrus character. It is widely mentioned in the literature of the Middle Ages for its medicinal properties. For example, the German abbess and polymath Hildegard of Bingen called it ‘the spice of life’ and wrote that it had been sent by God to protect against illness. As a spice it became popular in England from the time of the Crusades, brought back home from the Middle East. It also appears abundantly in The Forme of Cury, a recipe book written by the cooks of Richard II. It is rarely encountered in Europe today, but is still very popular in Thai cuisine. It remains one of the ingredients of Ras al-hanout, the famous Moroccan spice mix, together with grains of Paradise, long pepper and cubeb, interestingly enough.

Spikenard belongs to the Valerian family and has an aromatic rhizome. It is indigenous to the Himalayas. It was used in the Medieval times mostly in recipes for hippocras (spiced wine), featuring both in The Forme of Cury and Le Ménagier de Paris, a medieval guidebook on a woman’s proper behaviour as a wife and housewife.

Was it more the status of spices as luxury products of mysterious origin or their important medicinal properties that made them so desirable in the Middle Ages? Whatever the reason, the combination of limited supply and high demand shot their price up to unprecedented heights. As the first globally traded product, spices were one of the earliest motivations for globalisation. Who knows how different the world as we know it today would be if the quest for new routes to the Far East, to conquer the countries that produced spices, had not led Christopher Columbus, Ferdinand Magellan and Vasco Da Gama to embark on their epic journeys?

There are two primary varieties of the Camellia Sinensis plant, the Sinensis variety, indigenous to the Yunnan province of south-western China, and the Assamica variety, indigenous, quite explicitly, to Assam in north-eastern India. From these two varieties over a thousand sub-varieties originated throughout the years, either naturally or through human intervention.

From the tea bush to the market, the main stages in tea production are: picking, sorting, cleaning, primary drying/wilting, manufacturing, final firing/drying, sorting and packing. There are many ways of categorising the final product; one is to classify the processed tea leaves as green, yellow, white, oolong, black and pu-erh teas based on differences in their production chain, and especially on the amount of oxidation and fermentation they underwent during the manufacturing phase. Oxidation refers to the enzymatic processes occurring naturally on the fresh tea leaves as they absorb oxygen, turning progressively darker. Fermentation refers to microbial processes engaging several bacteria and occurring in the absence of oxygen. Green and yellow teas are not oxidised, white tea is slightly oxidised, oolong tea is partly oxidised to different degrees, black tea is fully oxidised and pu-erh tea is fermented and sometimes oxidised. Further numerous differences, for example in the way the leaves are dried, their place of origin or the season they were collected, lead to literally thousands of sub-types of tea. The fact that you can also have custom-made tea blends and scented teas like jasmine tea or Earl Grey, leads to so many possibilities that if you think you do not like tea, I am sorry to say, you have probably just not tried enough!

This is however a good point to pause and start recounting the fascinating story of tea from the beginning…

The trail of tea drinking started in China in the early part of the third millennium BC, according to folklore. One of the legends says that Emperor Shen Nung, the Divine Farmer, discovered tea by chance, when a soft breeze sent leaves from some nearby camellia bushes into his cauldron of boiling water. As centuries went by, tea as a beverage gradually changed character from a herbal medicine, to a bitter stimulating tonic and by the end of the Tang dynasty (618-907 AD) it was highly regarded as a sweet drink consumed for leisure and for bringing serenity and harmony to the body.  During the Tang era the publication by the scholar Lu Yu of The Classics of Tea, the first tea monograph in the world on the necessary rituals for proper cultivation, brewing and drinking, and the commissioning of aesthetic tea utensils to hold the refined tea brews, as well as the emergence of the first tea houses during the Song dynasty (960-1279), all promoted tea drinking as a pleasurable and highly ceremonious social activity. Tea as a drink was further refined in China during the Ming dynasty (1368-1644), with the development of the skill of scenting tea with flower petals. Throughout their history, the Chinese showed a preference for types of tea other than black, which they considered suitable only for ‘barbarian foreigners’, and never developed a taste for milk in their tea.

Tea drinking reached Tibet in the seventh century, introduced by a Tang princess who married a Tibetan King. Contrary to the Chinese tea drinking habit though, the Tibetans enriched their brew with yak butter, yak milk and salt, essentially ending up with a rich ‘tea-soup’. At about the same time, Mongols and Tartars also welcomed tea as an addition to their plain diet and adopted the habit of drinking it with fermented mare’s milk. Tea was brought to these populations from China by horse and yak caravans in the form of compressed bricks of dark, coarse, leftover tea-leaf scraps and twigs, which were easy for transportation.

The tea drinking trail continued its spread into Japan through diplomatic missions returning from China. The first tea seeds and the concept of tea drinking were probably introduced at the beginning of the ninth century. The infusion of the Chinese tea drinking rituals and culture with Japanese splendour and formal etiquette led, by the end of the sixteenth century, to the outstandingly artistic Japanese tea ceremony that is known as chanoyu and is performed with whipped, powdered green tea. Buddhist monks returning from study in China most likely introduced Korea to tea drinking at the same time as Japan, but Korean tea culture never reached the sophistication of the Chinese or Japanese.

It was much later, in the sixteenth century, that tea drinking was brought to Russia, via the Cossack soldiers who probably encountered tea in Siberia or Mongolia. Russia grew to a major tea-consuming country after the Silk Road was established at the end of the seventeenth century, an overland camel caravan route allowing for the round trip between China and Russia to be completed in sixteen months. ‘Caravan tea’ was black or oolong. During the reign of Catherine the Great, tea drinking had been established in the Russian court as a habit of the nobility. Unique to Russian tea culture is the samovar, which was first introduced at the end of the eighteenth century. It consisted of an elaborately designed metallic urn filled with water and heated with pine cones via a central conduit. The water was kept at the proper temperature for tea brewing and could be dispensed from an ornate tap at the base of the urn. Strong concentrated tea was made in a teapot that was kept warm on top of the samovar. Tea was served in cups from the pot and diluted to taste with water from the samovar. Turkey, Iran and Georgia were introduced to the tea culture probably in the same ways as Russia or between themselves.

The tea drinking trail was spread in Europe by the sea-faring Dutch during the seventeenth century. The Dutch showed great enthusiasm for this new beverage and they drank it laced with milk. For the purpose of providing them with a type of tea that would not rot or get spoilt by the dampness aboard, the Chinese refined the process of making black tea, which was less sensitive than green tea. The tea drinking habit soon expanded in northern Europe and was fervently adopted by the British as a temperance drink served with milk and sugar lumps. In 1662, when King Charles II married Catherine of Braganza, a Portuguese Princess and tea drinker, the habit of tea drinking became popular among English ladies. Portuguese traders had brought tea to Portugal from the Far East before the Dutch, but although the habit of drinking tea had been embraced by the Portuguese nobility, it did not expand from there to the rest of Europe.

The Dutch were also the first to transport tea across the Atlantic at around 1670, in order to supply the needs of their colonial province of Nieuw Nederland (part of the Mid-Atlantic States today).

Another tea drinking trail, independent of the Chinese one, has its roots in Northern India. A second variety of the tea bush was growing wild in the tropical jungles of the Assam valley and there are travelers’ reports from the late sixteenth century describing local tribes consuming its leaves as a vegetable with garlic and oil and drinking its brew. But because of differences in the appearance of the two bushes, the Assam bush was not recognized as a new variety of tea bush until the beginning of the nineteenth century. In their determined efforts to become non-dependent on tea imports from China, the British heavily commissioned tea growing in India and, after decades of trial and error and experimentation, they managed by the beginning of the twentieth century to successfully turn India into their major tea supplier and nowadays the biggest producer of tea in the world.

Also known for their tea consumption, which stemmed from the presence of wild tea bushes in their territory, are Thailand, Vietnam, Laos and Myanmar, but their tea culture is rather modest. Tea production in Taiwan, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and many African countries was initiated when they were colonized by the English, the Dutch and the Portuguese but, although famous for their tea production, they are not renowned for their tea culture.

All the rest is… history! Tea drinking has been so enthusiastically embraced all around the world since the first grains of the habit were sown, that nowadays tea is second only to water in terms of global beverage consumption.

It didn’t take long for Intiman, who specialises in composing a unique brand of dancefloor ragga sung in a mixture of English, Spanish and Italian, to realise that promoting one’s own material is hard and time consuming. He soon began to search for new ways of getting distributed that would still allow him to maintain the rights over his creative output.

Two and a half years ago, Intiman came across the then nascent netlabel BeatPick.com and decided he was interested in what they were proposing. He submitted his first record to them and, after a couple of weeks, was notified that they had decided to sign him on.

BeatPick was launched in February 2006 as a bedroom start-up. The project developed from an idea conceived by Davide d’Atri, a young Italian entrepreneur. With the help of his friend Francesco Danieli, the two decided to create a music label that would provide an alternative to the superfluous institution that major record labels have become in the Internet age.

D’Atri’s aim was to provide a music distribution platform that promoted artists’ music and ensured that for each track or album sold, the musician got a 50% cut of the profits. The idea was to use an innovative copyright system called Creative Commons that gives greater flexibility to its users, allowing them more power to decide what can and cannot be done with the fruit of their work. D’Atri felt that the traditional copyright system was simply too rigid to be applied to the reality of the Internet today and that the fact that people share music between each other is something to be embraced not squashed.

Three years later and BeatPick is up and running with an office and a new website to show for itself. Davide says that the new site has shifted the focus from promoting individual artists’ music and instead concentrates more on what has become the core of the company’s business model: licensing.

“We felt focussing on a business to business model was the only way to increase revenues for our single artists,” says d’Atri, “when it comes to direct album sales the competition is fierce out there and we don’t stand a chance”

The idea is that anyone who needs some music whether it be for a film, documentary, ad, fashion shoot or whatever, fills in a brief form in which they specify things like their budget and distribution targets. Once they have inserted all the relevant info, they are given a quote that caters to their specific needs. Not-for-profit and student projects get a chance to use the music for free.

Another one of BeatPick’s recruits is the electronic musician Autobam. Based in the Italian coastal city of Livorno, Autobam says he found the website through Digicult, an online digital arts magazine. After doing some research, he decided that he found their approach to music licensing very appealing and decided to go for it. Since joining BeatPick, Autobam has had the opportunity to meet video artists with whom he has subsequently gone on to collaborate on different projects. He says however that none of his music has ever been licensed.

Intiman, whose pounding Drum&Bass beats and rough vocals appeal to a rather niche market, also admits he’s never made any sales. He sees that the move towards making the label more licensing oriented isn’t good news for him. “It’s true” he says, “I don’t make music that works for licensing and so the fact that they are no longer focussed on selling albums to individual users probably means I’ll lose out. In BeatPick’s new incarnation the service is less relevant to me and is instead better suited to people who specialise in making production music.”

Both Intiman and Autobam have taken advantage of BeatPick’s non-exclusive contracts to sign up with other labels and distribution outlets. Intiman sells his music through a website called Juno and is signed up to a couple of other labels through different Indie collaborations he is involved in. Both artists have used iTunes as a distributor for their different projects.

Even by diversifying however, neither musician can depend on the money they get from selling their music online. “Most of the work I currently undertake has to do with sound design which is undoubtedly my largest form of income.” says Autobam.

Intiman agrees: “About 1% of my music revenue comes from direct sales. That said, I need all the exposure I can get so I’m not considering pulling out.”

Obviously, there are artists that have succeeded in bagging the odd lucrative contract through BeatPick. The website proudly boasts high-profile clients such as Ralph Lauren and Mercedes Benz. So far however, it would be madness for an artist to depend exclusively on the label as a solid form of income.

BeatPick’s aim to pave the way for a revolution in the way we buy and listen to music may have fallen slightly short. In the mean time however, it seems to have evolved into a stable and popular avenue for professionals to find music that suits their projects.

“So much of what I do is related to promoting my image,” concludes Intiman, “from that perspective BeatPick does little to promote me as a musician. If I’m going to make it I just need to keep on trying new things. I’m sure that eventually us musicians will find a way to make the Internet really work for us.”