Playing for Ben

Last night the strikingly asymmetrical gymnasium of Edinburgh’s Rudolf Steiner School was set aglow  by the ethnic music of Kim Tebble and two fellow members of the Bluebell Cajun Dance Band, who are in growing demand around Scotland.  

Kim, a specialist in the creole music of Louisiana, New Orleans, and the southern Mississippi, plays a small, specially crafted cajun accordion with a single row of buttons. It’s mesmerising in its effect when heard in conjunction with Simon McPherson’s bass guitar and the neat, light drum-kit employed by Jennifer Ewan who, like Kim, sings the French-American songs that are fundamental to their repertoire. 

Though dancing, as the group’s name implies, is encouraged, people on this occasion seemed content to sit and listen, and to eat the vast supper supplied by my son-in-law, Ian Wilson, who created Susie’s Wholefood Diner near the McEwanHall, and who now serves stand-up wholefood dishes from his mobile trailer which visits the George Square end of the Meadows three or more times a week. Shiny cooked aubergines, spread through a variety of dishes, were the evening’s pieces de resistance. 

For me it was a family occasion, because 250 of us were there to celebrate the success of a campaign on behalf of my sixteen-year-old grandson, Ben, who for some years has suffered frequent epileptic seizures for which treament - of a sort not yet employed in Britain - is available in a Swiss clinic in the town of Solothurn, near Basel. Because the treatment is inevitably costly, Ian and Susie, my eldest daughter, set up a website to raise funds. The money flowed in and Ben will receive his treatment in the autumn.

So Saturday was a celebration of the fact that this is to happen, and a thank-you from Ian and Susie to all those who have contributed to making the impossible possible.  I am happy to say that the ethnic strains of the Bluebell Cajun Dance Band formed a special exhilarating contribution to the event, which in addition included an auction of artwork by Quentin Blake, Nick Sharrat and Ben himself, plus a bench designed by a local German craftsman, Berndt, of Wild Wood, 43 Comiston Road.

24 May 2014