Kim Sanders' High Five

Historical article recovered from a Wayback capture dated 2018-02-24.

World Music pioneer Kim Sanders has performed/recorded with Gypsy wedding bands in Macedonia, with the Libidorr Jazz Band in Gambia, as a soloist on National Radio in Bulgaria and at the Jintai Museum in Beijing, with the Istanbul State Modern Folk Music Ensemble in Turkey, with Phanari tis Anatolis in Greece and in Indonesia with singers Oppie Andaresta and Setiawan Jodi. He has also worked with Bulgarian singers The Bisserov Sisters, Zimbabwean mbira-player Stella Chiweshe, Iranian singer Bahar and Turkish singer/saz-player Zülfü Livaneli. In Australia he has performed with Silvia Entcheva (Bulgarian), Brassov (Gypsy jazz), GengGong (Indonesian), Trio Dingo (multicultural), Chichitote (Latin American), Aziz N’Diaye (African), Nakisa (multicultural), Far Seas (Persian), Descendance (Aboriginal/Islander) and Flamenco Dreaming (Spanish/Aboriginal).

Kim also works with his own small ensembles, known collectively as Kim Sanders & Friends. See the review of Kims Sander’s latest release Trance’n’Dancin on

our website.

“There have been many other memorable gigs: Frank Zappa (tight!), Ray Charles (Ray was great, the band was great, the Raelettes were great!) and Jethro Tull (“feeling like a dead duck, spitting out pieces of his broken luck”) all at the Hordern Pavilion in the 70’s (why can’t I remember the dates?) Also many Bernie McGann gigs at Jenny’s Wine Bar and Morgan’s Feedwell in the 70’s and early 80’s, Nadka Karadzhova bringing tears to the eyes at a concert in Sofia in 85 (Bulgarians know how to do a slow tear-jerker), Okay Temiz and his Magnet Band kicking ass in Istanbul in 93, Archie Shepp in Istanbul in 94 (sweet, heart-wrenching ballads), Miles at the Entertainment Centre (was it 91? editors note 27th & 28th April 1988) - he only played eleven notes all night, but bejasus they were nice ones - and the Salvos round the corner from my house in December 05, a cameo from a bygone era before real estate values had become more important than basic human rights

Read our May 2007 review of

Kim Sanders and Friends live at the Sound Lounge

1. ROLAND KIRK at The Basement, Sydney (73?)

He had played a great gig at the Town Hall: manzello, stritch, three horns at once and all. Word was that he would be sitting in at the Basement later, so I went down and waited. After an hour or so The Great Man arrived, Galapagos Duck had the decency to give the stand over to his band, and for over an hour non-stop Rahsaan Roland Kirk played tenor sax like a banshee. People were screaming.

2. THE LAST STRAW their last gig at The Pinball Whizz, Sydney (74?)

A feature of The Last Straw’s residency at the Whizz was McCoy Tyner’s tune “Atlantis”, but this was only the starting-point. John Clare improvising crazed thought-dreams about derelict civilizations and underwater themes, rhythm-section (John Pochee, Jack Thorncraft, Tony Esterman) firing, Bernie McGann and Ken James going further and further out and all the musicians bouncing off each other like molecules in a gas on a flame, the punters totally tranced out

3. IVO PAPAZOV, somewhere near Sofia, Bulgaria, 84

Officially there were no ghettos in Bulgaria in 84, but someone took us to a wedding at the Gypsy ghetto that didn’t exist, because “the best clarinet-player in all of Bulgaria” was playing there, a guy called Ibryam Hapazov (even Gypsies and Turks had to have proper Bulgarian names at that time). Even though the combination of crappy PA, volume and reverb both up to 11 and tin shed acoustics, you could hear him wail! Definitely not Milesesque. He later became familiar in the West as Ivo Papazov.

4. UNKNOWN GROUP IN DACCA, Senegal, June 1985

I was tired. I’d been on the road for 15 months, living out of a rucksack and dealing with Ramadan in Turkey in summer (long, hot days), arrested in Jugoslavia for alleged spying and in Greece for busking in the subway, battling the beastly Bulgarian bureaucracy (had to leave the country five times), practising gaida in a tent in sub-zero temperatures, learning several foreign languages and suddenly there I was in Africa, 35 degrees, someone put a big spliff in my hand and I had to smoke it (so as not to cause offence), then it was off to the local big tin shed, where the band asked me to sit in and it felt so sweet that was a nice gig and I was in it!

5. DULWICH HILL PRIMARY SCHOOL BAND, Nov 98

But the one that moved me most was at my daughter’s primary school concert. A group of little kids (it was their first gig) played one note (Miles Davis eat your heart out): “D”, all within a semitone, it made me cry ”