Not “who d’you fink you’re lookin’ at?” attitude, or “I’m down wit’ da ‘hood” attitude. I mean the attitude that we have to our music. All of us sing or play the music we want to because we want to make music, not because we want to be on X Factor or make £250 a gig playing interminable Hits of the Sixties for weddings and parties. To a certain extent, I think we play music because we have to play music; even other priorities like families or careers can’t stop us getting that music out there where it can be heard.

The other trait we share is knowing about our music. Where our music is in a specialised genre or niche market, we’ve done our research: we know most of what there is to know about bluegrass or cumbia or klezmer or whatever; even if we’re taking unforgivable liberties with it we still know where it came from, who played it in what context, who the leading exponents are or were, and what musical characteristics set it apart from other genres. We could probably bore for England on our chosen subject given half a chance and too much red wine. Even if we’re not into obscure subgenres we have a pretty good idea where our music comes from and where we’re going with it.

So that’s what I think makes a Melting Pot member. Oh, and mostly we work with acoustic instruments, but I don’t know how much that’s by design and how much it’s just the way things turned out.

CW