intersections: words, music, and Robert Burns

Intersections, it seems to me, is one really good word to describe how words and music come together in song. Writing lyrics, writing songs, is not usually setting poetry to music, or fitting music to poetry, though written poetry and sung word do have much in common. One person who worked across, around, and through those intersections was the Scottish poet and song collector Robert Burns. It’s been two hundred and fifty years since Burns was born, and through the year, Scotland especially is marking his work and his lasting influence with a range of musical, literary, and other sorts of celebrations. Burns understood that the rhythms and emotions of word and those of music, may connect and illuminate each other, and that it’s also possible for them to stand separately.

If you're asking yourself just who is Robert Burns anyway? you’ve very likely heard his songs even if you don’t know his name -- think Auld Lang Syne, My Love is Like a Red Red Rose, My Heart’s in the Highlands, Comin’ Through the Rye. The photograph there at the left is a statue of the man in George Square in Glasgow. I happened to be there on Burns night this past January, and it seemed only right to take his picture.

Another sort of intersection occurs when you take songs that are usually sung in clubs and pubs and around the kitchen table and put them in context with an orchestra. That’s a subject I’ve had the chance to think about a bit in print for the folk music magazine Dirty Linen and the classical music magazine Symphony, and I’ll have ideas on that to share here along the music road as well. For the moment, though, here’s a video that brings all these ideas together. Eddi Reader sings one of my favorite Robert Burns songs, John Anderson My Jo, with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra




The Muslim poet Rumi was another who understood the intersection of music and words. Here is a conversation about his work, from Speaking of Faith


you may also want to see
eddi reader: peacetime
Music Road: Eddi Reader sings more of the songs of Robert Burns
patrick season: far from home

Through the month of April, I’ve been considering the intersections of poetry and music, lyrics and melody, as it is national poetry month in the United States. You may see some of these thoughts here, and here, and here.

Bodega: Under the Counter

Under The Counter



Quebec, Glasgow, and Shetland -- and that’s just the first set of tunes on Bodega’s
latest album, Under the Counter. They make that all work for a fiercely energetic opener which evokes the wild sea and wilder lands of the northern islands along with the bustling cities of Glasgow and Montreal. Later in the set, Norrie McIver adds his voice to a varied trio of songs, Runrig’s Stamping Ground, the Tim O'Brien Robin and Linda Williams emigration ballad Lost Little Children, and Balaich an Iasgaich [The Fishery Boys] from Donald Morrison. You might gather from the tile of that last song that the group is from Scotland, and that is so: the five members, who met while studying music, come from Fraserburgh, Lewis, Shetland, Skye, and Oban. Through the ten tracks they mix up traditional music, covers of more recently composed music, and their own work, and while a good bit of it is high energy, these winner of the BBC2 Young Folk Award show they can handle the emotions of slower music as well. You mighn’t usually think of bagpipes and fiddle and clarsach and accordion and guitar going together to make Scottish music, but these five put all those together with fire and energy which will appeal to those who like the trad with a twist music of Lau and the blazin’ trad of Blazin’ Fiddles. Gillian Chalmers plays pipes. whistles, and fiddle with the group, Tia Files adds guitar, bass guitar and djembe, Ross Couper plays fiddle, June Naylor is the clarsach player, and Norrie McIver is the singer, in addition to playing accordion, guitar, fiddle, and djembe.

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Cape Breton Radio Live take 02

The McDades: Bloom

Liz Carroll & John Doyle: Double Play

Green Fields of America

The Green Fields of America

A kitchen session with five very talented friends is the the feeling you get from this recording, but it was in fact getting such sessions out of the kitchen and onto the concert stage that was the beginning of Green Fields of America more than thirty years ago. Musician and musicologist Mick Moloney had the idea, and today with Irish music groups appearing on almost very stage in America, it might not seem so unusual, but in 1978 it was new and refreshing and let wider audiences in on what Irish musicians and their friends have long known: the best music is made among friends and is never quite played the same way twice.

There are fourteen sets on this recording, comprising reels, slides, jigs, slip jigs, barn dances, and songs. Over the years, the line up of Green Fields has seen many a superstar of Celtic music come and go: the group assembled for this recording and for recent tours is no less outstanding than those who’ve come before. Moloney is on hand, lending his voice to songs and playing banjo, mandolin, and guitar; Billy McComiskey plays accordion, Robbie O’Connell sings and plays guitar, Athena Tergis is the fiddle player, and John Doyle sings and plays guitar and bouzouki. Among them, they’ve lists of awards, band credits, and projects that stretch from American fields to Ireland and back, including nationally syndicated series on American television, work on Ireland’s Irish language network, TG 4, All Ireland championships, playing with the Clancy Brothers, Joan Baez, Sharon Shannon, Cathie Ryan, Liz Carroll, Riverdance, Lord of the Dance, and the Clancy Legacy.

To listen to them play here, though, you wouldn’t know they’d ever done anything else but play music together. It’s a varied program, some lively sparkling new stuff, some takes on tradition, all done in the spirit of sharing and sharing ‘round. Even if you've heard some of the music before, you’ll want to hear it this way, and, if the chance arises, go see these players, together and in their separate careers as well. Outstanding tracks include the songs Across the Western Ocean and The Bonny Irish Boy, and the Jackie Riordan’s/Money in Both Pockets/The Dungannon Reel set.


--> note: Green Fields of America have been announced as a headline act at the National Folk Festival in Nashville, Tennessee, USA, 2-4 September 2011.

you may also wish to see

Billy McComiskey: Outside the Box
Athena Tergis: Letter Home
Irish music, Irish landscape
John Doyle: Wayward Son

music for a spring road trip: six albums

One from Scotland, three from Texas, a duo from Massachusetts, and a vintage collection from top Irish American musicians. Love songs, songs about children, travels, journeys, questions, mountains, rivers, markets, birds, trains, fish, grits and fancy pears, and many other things....all fine companions for where your late spring roads are taking you now.

Tish Hinojosa’s own roads have taken her from the west side of San Antonio to the mountains of northern New Mexico, to Nashville’s Music Row, through a time in Austin’s lively music scene, and a current base in Germany. All these experiences play into the music she’s made for Our Little Planet. Sparked in part by her rediscovery of some old work tapes from her time in Nashville, it is in many ways a more country sort of record than Hinojosa has made in a long time. It’s not mainstream country, but it is country of the country, and of Texas and the southwest. There’s a knockout duet with Carrie Rodriguez called Mi Pueblo, and Mountain Lullabye, a song which sounds like a western sunset, and ten more.

Jeff Talmadge comes from Texas too, though he’s been living in Georgia for a while. One of the ways he looks back on At Least That Much Was True is through the evocative Austin When it Rains. Talmadge does not shy from life’s harder questions, as with the songs White Cross and Let Her Go. There’s always a perspective, though, however indirect, of hope and change for the better. The anthem for that, on this record, might be the understated, quietly sung story in Wrong Train.


Jim Malcolm does a good bit of quiet reflection on his album The First Cold Day,
including a tribute to Robert Burns and the gentle pleasures of fishing, in a song called An Hour in the Gloaming. There’s a taste of highland legend in Schiehallion, and a hilarious road trip of his own through the American south in Down in Alabama. That's where the grits and fancy pears come in.

If Hinojosa didn’t get you dancing with her title track for Our Little Planet, then her fellow Texan Terri Hendrix will with Posey Road Stomp, or Wallet, or Bottom of the Hill, or one of the ten other songs on Left Over Alls. One of the great things about Hendrix is that she knows how to be serious through being funny, and also when it’s the right moment o focus on one or the other side of that equation.

Massachusetts based husband and wife duo Matt and Shannon Heaton know how to look at a subject from many aspects, too. They base their work in Irish tradition, and for Lovers' Well they’ve sought out your not so usual love songs. A chance encounter is the hinge for the story in Where Moorcocks Crow, waiting and wondering about a lover for Bay of Biscay, love turned to jealousy tells the tale in Lily of the West, love found in taking chances begins the story of Golden Glove. These they interweave gracefully and naturally with traditional and newly composed tunes meant for dancing together, Shannon playing flute and Matt guitar and bouzouki.

Cherish the Ladies is now a a well known Irish American band, but they started before Riverdance, before Celtic Women, and before the work of women in Irish music had received much recognition or respect. They'd been at constant touring for several years before they made their first record as a group, and through changing line ups, they’ve made many since. That first one, The Back Door, catches the group of seventeen years ago in fine form, tunes and songs alike reflecting Irish and American style and connections. It’s worth a look and a listen, once again.

If you’d like to dance -- alone or together -- to sing along, to laugh, to reflect, or just to listen, all of these will serve you well on your late spring travels. What would you add?


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Terri Allard: Live from Charlottesville

season of change: music for autumn 2008

hanneke cassel

words, music, and poetry

What relationship do song lyrics have to poetry? Many people, writers in particular, I find, think that you write a poem, set it to music, and then there you have a song. I don’t quite agree with that, and as it’s national poetry month all through April, I’ve been sharing a few thoughts on this.


About the idea above, that phrase set it to music is most often spoken by those who are not themselves very acquainted with music. For one thing, it is a process that is at once more complex and altogether more mysterious than it might at first seem. Given that, there are indeed times when musicians do set poems to music, so to speak. When doing so, however they get there, they give thought to the relationships among words, music, sound, and listeners, and what the ideas to be shared by all these are.

For example, Scottish musician Jim Malcolm has made a song of the Robert Frost poem The Road Not Taken. When the poem came to his attention -- being a Scot, he did not grow up with it, as many in America do -- he found he couldn’t get ot out of his head, and the spare arrangement on his album The First Cold Day is the result.

Irish American songwriter Cathie Ryan was wanting to give her mother something to ease the grieving when she saw her mother's sadness when she returned from Ireland after her own mother's death. While that thought was in her mind, Ryan came across the nineteenth century piece Rock Me to Sleep Mother in collection of poetry. The music in the words called forth music in Ryan and she made a song, which is recorded on an album by Ryan, Susan McKeown, and Robin Spielberg, called Mother


American songwriter Carrie Newcomer heard music in the words of Quaker educator Parker J. Palmer, and made them into a folk Americana sort of song that, in common with the work of Malcolm and Ryan, adds musical ideas to the words and interweaves with them. It is called Two Toasts and is on Newcomer’s album The Geography of Light

Songs come in all sorts of different ways. Sometimes there’s music behind the words, sometimes there are words which are inside the music. Sometimes the two arise together. I do not myself think the idea of setting poetry to music is a particularly useful description of the song writing process, but where and how ever it begins, I do think songs and their makers deserve consideration during a month marked for the consideration of poetry. Those who are looking to read more poetry during this month, and encourage others to do so, may also want to listen for it.

you may also want to see

Carrie Newcomer on songwriting

season of change: music for autumn 2008

Music Road: Irish music, Irish landscape

words and music, continued

Dermot Henry was looking through a book in Kenny’s Bookstore, in Galway City one day [the old Kenny’s in city center for those of you who are picturing the scene]. The pages fell open to a poem by seventeenth century poet by Francis Higgins, a poem speaking in the voice of a woman who was growing older, but by no means fading away. As he was reading it, Henry heard music in his mind. Being a musician, and paying attention to such things, he made it into a song. It’s called As the Evening Declines, and has been recorded by Cathie Ryan.

Songs and tunes come in many different ways. Because it is National Poetry Month just now, I’ve been thinking about words, music, and how all that relates to the understanding and definition of poetry. Poetry, these days, often seems set off and aside of daily life (not if you ask Billy Collins or Wendell Berry though), while songs could seem to be closer. The processes and the tools are often very much the same. There’s also the thought that you have to stop and read a poem, while a song or a tune may be a companion as you move through your day. Used to be, in oral tradition, songs and poetry were more closely seen to be intertwined -- putting rhythm and meter and rhyme to words, and weaving them in melody, helped with remembering and passing on the stories.

I started, or perhaps continued, the conversation on the question of song lyrics and poetry here: poetry month: a view from the music road. There’s more to say on all these ideas. I’ll do some of that in future posts during poetry month -- we do have to talk about Robart Burns -- and in a new series on teaching and learning music that’s planned for later on in this summer. As always, I'd invite you to join in the conversation by adding your thoughts in the comment field below.

Meanwhile, Dermot Henry is a fine songwriter and singer originally from Sligo, whose early work from the 1970s someone should really issue again on CD. He’s written songs such as What Ireland Means to Me, The Girl from Asdee, and a good number of others. One of his best, Slan Abhaile, you may find on recordings by Kate Purcell and by Cathie Ryan. You may sometimes catch the man himself on tour these days as part of an Irish Home Coming show with Cherish the Ladies and Maura O’Connell, or at gigs of his own in the northeastern US.

you may also want to see


Voices: Cherish the Ladies

four ideas: songwriting

creative practice: the spaces between

poetry month: a view from the music road

Is song writing poetry? What about writing music? I ask because, during April, the Academy of American Poets encourages the celebration of National Poetry Month. One of the goals, they point out, is “to bring poets and poetry to the public in new and innovative ways.” Yet they do not seem to include musicians in their plan.

I think they are missing something. It’s quite true that there’s always been the edgy distinction between lyric and poems-- if you’ve ever read sappy “set your poem to music” ads, or encountered a shark like scammer offering to do that, you’ll understand why that's so. If you’ve written a song or a tune, you likely will too. Then there are the related disciplines of listening to the melody of a song without hearing the words in your mind, and reading song lyrics without hearing the music. Do that last and you’ll quite quickly understand that when words and music are written to go together, that’s most often the way the artist intended them. The whole is not more than the sum of its parts, necessarily, but it is different.

But then we get into the whole thing of traveling melodies, and traveling verses, and the folk process of changing songs and stories and places and the way words are heard in other languages and other times...all quite common things in a good bit of the music we explore here along the music road. Because most poetry, these days, is a written rather than an aural art, that sort of thing doesn’t happen much there. It still happens in folk music though, both by design, as in musicians adding verses or changing words from the tradition to make them more direct for twenty first century hearers, and in things heard differently in different circumstances. I’ve had occasion in recent months to hear two songs I’ve known almost all my life, Plane Wreck at Los Gatos (Deportee) and Shenandoah, sung in Ireland and in Scotland, respectively, with differing words and emphasis than those set in my Irish American DNA, but still the same song.

Whole books have been written on all of those ideas and processes, of course. My point is that all that connects to the role of the poet, the role of the artist, in the world -- creating, challenging, reflecting, questioning, wondering, and asking us to ask our own questions. Leaving aside the sentimentalists and song sharks, songwriters today, those who write music of substance such as we look at here along the music road, are the poets of these times -- and with a nod to the tradition, I’d add, those of other times too, those whose names we know, and those whose names we do not.

A subject with many, many points of view. Care to share yours in the comments below?

As for the usual links under You may also want to see--

You might choose any post along the Music Road and find something which relates to this theme, really. If you’ve favorites, I’d like to hear of them. Here are several of mine for you explore:


listening through the changes

Carrie Newcomer: The Geography of Light

Dual: Julie Fowlis & Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh

Favorite Love Songs: Tuning Up for Valentine's Day

Cathie Ryan: Irish and American

Matt & Shannon Heaton: Fine Winter's Night concert

first sunday in advent, 2008

Song for an Easter Monday

Sad that the power of music to bring people together is so often drawn out most strongly when they oppose each other in bloodshed and oppression. This song was written by Peadar Kearney at the time of the 1916 rising in Ireland, and is sung here by Frances Black with Arcady.

you may also want to see

listening through the changes

eist: songs in their native language

frances black: the foggy dew

Songs for an Easter weekend

A season of change, this time of year, no matter in what part of the world you find yourself. Also a season on holy days marking this, and calling for contemplation. Here's a song from Kathleen MacInnes, who sings in Scots Gaelic. Along with it are photographs of South Uist in Scotland's Outer Hebrides. MacInnes' song is called Oran Dhomnaill Phadraig and is a tribute to her father. Take a look at the music in the other links, below, too -- good companions all for a reflective weekend.











you may also want to see

Cathie Ryan: The Farthest Wave
Dual: Julie Fowlis & Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh
Eddi Reader sings more of the songs of Robert Burns
Voices: Carrie Newcomer: faith and laughter

and you may also want to check out the current episode of Speaking of Faith, called Life, Gardening, and an Orthodox Easter. Gardening and your garden as theology, cosmology, mysticism, and all sorts of other thoughts as host Krista Tippett converses with Armenian Orthodox theologian Vigen Guorian.

winter turning to spring

Winter into spring.
Karine Polwart has written a song about this called Follow the Heron, which has become a major favorite in Scotland. Thanks to Cathie Ryan's recording and concerts, it's getting well known in America too.
Carrie Newcomer has written an essay
about looking for signs of spring
Shannon Heaton has been sharing thoughts about winter and spring at her blog, Leap Little Frog

Eddi Reader brings images of spring into thoughtful poetry on her new album

Love Is the Way
with songs such as Dandelions, and Dragonfiles, and Roses. Alison Brown has written a fine instrumental piece called Promise of Spring, which you may find on her album Replay.

and of course, there's always
Vivaldi

Spring does not always come gently -- tornados and floods are but two examples of that -- but it comes. I’m more of a fall and winter person myself, a bit reluctant to let winter go. But every season has its grace, and its music.



you may also want to see
Matt & Shannon Heaton: Blue Skies Above
cathie ryan: the farthest wave
creative practice: winter into spring

Tony McManus: The Maker's Mark

The Maker's Mark: the Dream Guitar Sessions

It’s about voice, the relationship of a musician with his or her instrument. With a singer, that’s easy to see and hear. Without the human voice in the equation, though, listening takes on a different aspect. Tony McManus, gives an eloquent journey into that sort of listening experience as he plays fifteen different instruments through this album. The opportunity to do that resulted from a collaboration between Paul Heumiller, founder of the guitar dealership Dream Guitars, and McManus, who was, when they met, teaching a class at the Swannanoa Gathering, a respected summer music school in North Carolina.

McManus, a Scots native, chose many Celtic based tunes for this project, and as always, he puts is own spin on them. They were recorded in the Compass Sound Studio in Nashville, which is on the upper floor of a building which has seen its own share of music history and atmosphere even before Compass moved in. One has to think that Eric Jaskowiak’s recording and mixing and McManus’ playing added to the legends and the music in the walls of the building not far off Music Row. There are fifteen tracks on the album, with a march, a strathspey, and a reel to start things off, with Irish, Asturian, South African, Cape Breton, Quebec, Scottish, and Romania tunes among those which follow. The liner notes offer lovely photographs of the guitars as well as short descriptions of them, and brief notes on the music, as well. It’s a fine album to play through and let unfold at it’s own pace, a meditative trip through sound and story told with no words. Notable cuts include that opener, which is Inveran/The Devil’s in the Kitchen/Locheil’s Away to France, Muireann’s Jig, which Niall Vallely wrote and Coast River, from Donal Lunny.

you may also want to see

Voices: Donal Clancy

Voices: Hanneke Cassel

barry walsh : the crossing

Songs of Homecoming, to Scotland and other places