music and courage

As much as there are times for planning and sorting things out and looking ahead and setting goals, there are also times -- often, many times --for taking the next step when that next step, and what comes after that aren;t clear. A leap of faith, you could say, or a step of one.

Music is a good companion for facing and preparing for such times, whether they come with excitement or reluctance.

this photograph is from County Louth, in Ireland, and is copyrighted. thank you for respecting this.

music to go along with these ideas
Carolyn Hester has several songs which deal with this idea including one called Ascending Woman, which is on her album Texas Songbird
thinking about change and moments of time is a theme running through Carrie Newcomer’s song ideas on Before & After
music from the tradition which makes good companion for such journeys includes Exiles Return from Karan Casey & John Doyle
music without words to go along with these ideas Hanneke Cassel: For Reasons Unseen


you may also wish to see
Delicious Baby's Photo Friday, where travelers offer new insights to the world each Friday.

Appalachian and Celtic: Kyle Carey: Monongah

The Isle of Skye in Scotland, the west coast of Ireland, the Appalachian mountains, New Hampshire, New York Sate, Cape Breton: Kyle Carey has spent time in all of these places, and one way or another, they all find ways into her music.

Carey’s album Monongah makes it clear she has been thinking about people, history, landscape, and what stories they may tell through time. The title track, for example, comes from the story of the men and the women and the children affected by a 1907 West Virginia mine disaster. Carey began thinking of this upon reading Appalachian writer Louise McNeill’s poem about the events of that time, and the song shows Carey’s gift for distilling emotion into a few brief words and a melody which helps make that essence clear.


McNeill’s poetry and the landscapes of the southern mountains come up again through the album. Carey has a voice well suited to this, with a warmth that invites the listener in and a sense of phrasing that hints that there is more to these stories beyond the verses that she sings. In Orange Blossom, Carey is thinking about that train which is the subject of a well known bluegrass tune, but her protagonist sees the journey on the train as an escape, a return, perhaps, to warmer places and times. John Hardy’s wife takes a look at things from the point of view of a woman who receives just a few passing words in other songs. What was she like, and what happened to her, Carey wondered, and came up with intriguing answers.

There’s a strong connection between Appalachia and the Celtic countries in Europe. That comes up on Monongah, too. Carey is well versed in Scottish Gaelic, and teaches it in fact. She’s spent time studying in Cape Breton in Atlantic Canada, and in Scotland. So it is natural for her to include these experiences in her work, which she does with the song Gaol ise gaol i, a love song she sings in Scottish Gaelic. From Cape Breton comes The Star above Rankin’s Point, a lighthouse keeper's lullabye of sorts which captures the sea swept feeling of life along the North Atlantic.

There a Cape Breton tinge to the playing on this collection as well, coming by way of Cape Breton native Rosie Mackenzie, who sits in on fiddle for several songs. Carey has invited a number of musical friends along on this journey, a journey she took to the west of Ireland to produce the recording with Donogh Hennessy, known for his work with Lunasa. From Ireland also Pauline Scanlon added harmony, and Trevor Hutchinson played bass. Among the others supporting Carey, from Ireland and New England, Aoife Clancy sang harmony as well, and from New York state John Kirk played banjo and mandolin.

It is Kyle Carey's poetic take on story, landscape, emotion, and language which center things here, though, and her engaging storyteller’s way of singing that opens the door to her stories. Gospel twined with Celtic notes, banjo leading into Scottish Gaelic, miner’s stories traveler's tales of loss, change, and recognition, Monongah is a varied journey, one worth the taking.


you may also wish to see
Kyle Carey’s website
Music Road: Aoife Clancy: Silvery Moon
Music Road: Scotland & Cape Breton: tradition and innovation

music and wisdom

Music is often a source of wisdom. That I think that way will be no surprise to you if you have been walking along this music road with me for any amount of time. Whether the idea is new to you or you’ve been reflecting on it yourself, I invite you to pause a moment now and consider it.

That is, in part, what wisdom requires: it may come as a flash of insight, at times, and those times are welcome. Still they require seeing things from new angles and pondering and working with the changes -- which leads to the contemplation from which wisdom often arises.

Everyone who is an artist, who creates also has as part of his or her job the requirement of contemplation and reflection. Music, especially the sort of music of substance we talk about here along the music road, may be both a way into such insights and a companion in contemplation.

this photograph is of the mountains of Mourne in Northern Ireland, which are themselves a fine place for contemplation, and for music. the photograph is copyrighted, and I appreciate your respect for this.

music to go along with these ideas
Music Road: Mary Black: By the Time It Gets Dark
Music Road: cathie ryan: the farthest wave
Music Road: Best Music, 2010

you may also wish to see
Delicious Baby's Photo Friday, where travelers offer new insights to the world each Friday.

Seven Stories

Recently I was invited to take part in Seven Links, an initiative started by TripBase with the idea of highlighting posts in seven quite varied categories, articles that perhaps newer readers may have missed and regular visitors might be interested to be reminded about
.
Wandering Educators and A Traveler’s Library both nominated me to take part. I encourage you to see their seven links posts and learn about their sites

Here are my stories. I hope you enjoy hearing them for the first time, or revisiting them. Your comments, of course, are most welcome


*most popular
this rather short essay with words and photographs shows a bit about what I think of Irish music and the island of Ireland, beyond the stereotypes. it’s been up for years and still draws in buckets of readers -- if you haven’t read it in a while (or ever) maybe it’s time
Irish music, Irish landscape

*most beautiful
photographing musicians at work helps me think about music, and is an art on its own. you’ll find many posts on photographing music along the Music Road.

here’s is one of my favorites of those Celtic Connections 2011: images, part two

and this is one about a concert where words and image came together especially well, I think Another Fine Winter's Night: Matt & Shannon Heaton

*most helpful
through five years of writing here, I’ve done more than a few practical guides and lists, which people always enjoy. I chose this, one, however, because it helps you think about an important aspect of life and music from a different angle -- another thing I write about often.
rest in music


*most controversial
the bodhran can be a controversial instrument. here’s a story...
bodhran

and then there was
a choice (not having to do with bodhrans) I made during the US presidential campaign debates
listening through the changes

*a post which didn’t get the attention I felt it deserved
energy, heart, creativity, history, joy: you may not understand the languages in which they sing but you will understand all that nonetheless all that from their music
Dual: Julie Fowlis & Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh

*a surprising success
Indiana based Americana songwriter Carrie Newcomer often makes her points quietly. I am glad this helped quite a few hear her.
Carrie Newcomer: Before & After

*a post I am especially proud of
listen to this music, which, if I’ve done my part right, is what you will want to do. perhaps you will hear a bit of it through my words
Cathie Ryan: The Farthest Wave


Part of this process is to pass the idea along by nominating others to join in, and encouraging you to go read their work. Whether they decide to choose their own seven links or not, these people write articles worth reading

Sue Dickman writes about India, books, blueberry pies, and other things at A Life Divided
Jackie Dishner takes you on adventures geographical and thoughtful at Bike with Jackie
Shannon Heaton writes with grace and humor about being a musician and learning to be a new mother at Leap Little Frog
Sarah Henry brings Bay Area perspective with an Australian twist to her stories about good food and the people who care about it at Lettuce Eat Kale

music: reflection along the road

Music has always been a good companion along the road for me, whether that road be physical or spiritual, whether it is an unknown path or a well known one. Perhaps this is because music itself, especially the sort of music we consider here, has within it both familiar and new, aspects which both ask good questions and offer ways to think about answers. What do you think?

music to go along with these ideas
Music Road: listening through the changes
Music Road: artists of the decade
Music Road: Carrie Newcomer: Before & After


you may also wish to see
Music Road: photographing music: connections
and
Delicious Baby's Photo Friday, where travelers offer new insights to the world each Friday.


photograph was made in Kelvingrove Park, in Glasgow, Scotland. it is copyrighted. I appreciate your respect for this

Beoga: How to Tune a Fish

How do you tune a fish? The wry and coming coming at things from and angle perspective that question implies infuses the music offered by the five members of the band Beoga on their album How to Tune a Fish. A like titled set opens the music, and it draws you right in, just as though you were hearing them at a session in their based in County Antrim, Northern Ireland. Interesting choice of instruments they bring to the music, too: two accordions, piano, fiddle, and bodhran.

The second set, Sticky Bun Slides (the title comes from a conversation bodhran player Eamon Murray had with an Italian friend) keeps things dancing right along , and moves into the song Home cookin’ from American songwriter Rick Danko, with fiddler Niamh Dunne stepping up to sing, adding a bit of an Irish edge to the country blues in the piece. Ballymacaldrick is a lovely slow tune from accordion player Damian McKee, inspired by his home place in Antrim.

Seán Óg Graham handles the other accordion, and on occasion guitar as well. He also composed a number of the tunes, including that one about fish tuning. Liam Bradley , whose background includes world wide composing and arranging for Irish dance, is on keyboards for the group.

It’s a lively mix of tradition and innovation they bring here -- in fact How to Tune a Fish seems to lean a bit more toward a trad focus than several of the band’s earlier albums. Not to say they don’t bring in other things as well, including the country take on Home cookin’ and a vaudeville song called Come Out of the Rain, which they clearly have a fine time doing. Songs and tunes both, it is apparent that these five really enjoy each other’s music, and really are listening to each other, as well. through all the twelve tracks.

That’s an aspect interwoven into the music which makes things all the better for those who listen. The word beoga means lively in irish, and Bradley, Dunne, McKee, Murray and Graham deliver on that. Not lively for the sake of fast played tunes though, but rather because that’s at the heart and energy of the music they offer, Irish music moving forward with a crisp northern edge.


About that fish -- care to offer an answer to the question?

you may also wish to see
Music Road: Grada: Natural Angle
Music Road: malinky: flower & iron
Music Road: music of Donegal: Altan

twelfth of July: Ireland north and south

"Come pledge again your heart and your hand
One grasp that never will sever
Our password be our native land
Our motto, love forever
Let the orange lily be
Your badge, my patriot brother
It's the everlasting green for me
And we for one another..."

from Sean Tyrrell's song The Twelfth of July (Lament of the Children)



Cathie Ryan also has a very fine version of this song on her album Cathie Ryan

you may also wish to see

Music Road:Radio Ballads: Northern Ireland
Music Road: Ireland, north and south

music and listening

Recently I’ve been hearing the idea that the digital age has forever changed the way we tell stories. That is because, I hear and read, people now demand constant interaction, instant connection, and immediate participation in the story. That has set me thinking about sean-nós singing.

What? Sean-nós is an ancient style of sharing music in Ireland and Scotland which isn’t that widely known or widely practiced today. Am I thinking about how to update this for the digital age, you might be wondering?

No, as it happens. This idea had me thinking about the quality of attention and intention that takes place in both old style sean-nós and in the way singers who have studied it incorporate the ideas from in their work here in the twenty first century.

As the words sean-nós actually mean old style, I suppose it is a bit redundant to speak of old style sean nos. As it was done in earlier times, however, it was unaccompanied singing, the details and the larger picture and the power of the story conveyed only by the way the singer chose to present it through his or her voice. The primacy of the story, the idea, was foremost. The singer often sang with eyes closed and sometimes with head turned aside from those who listened.


That power of emotion and focus on story have been carried forward into the twentieth century by artists who have worked with tradition bearersand studied sean-nós. Cathie Ryan, Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh, and Roisin Elsafty, all of whom you’ve met here along the music road, come to mind. When songs are taught in sean-nós, the singer is given the song but the ornamentation, the individual style of the telling, is for the singer to work out on his or her own. Each of these women has carried that idea forward as well, by giving thoughtful consideration to adding backing instruments and additional voices to the core and heart of sean-nós, which, for each of them, remains the voice. They have also found ways of weaving aspects of what they have learned from this older style into other songs they offer today.

When sean-nós was shared around the kitchen table, at times the singer would reach out for a hand, or someone who was present would offer a hand, for the singer to hold, a connection to carry with them through the intensity of the story and the song. That is not, I think, the sort of connection and intention that is being proposed or enjoyed, if those are the right words, by those who wish for greater interaction and more instant connectivity. Stories, and songs, and the stories which live within songs are meant to be listened to, to be loved, to be understood, and yes, to be shared. First, though, they have to be heard. That is an aspect which is being overlooked, I think, in the quest for constant interactivity.

Naturally, this is a subject with many viewpoints, and one to which I'll return. I’d welcome your thoughts.

you may also wish to see

Music Road: Dual: Julie Fowlis & Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh
Music Road: Cathie Ryan: Songwriter
Music Road: old songs, old stories: Elsafty Armstrong Browne

kelvingrove cat, and music

this cat was quietly contemplating the west gate at Kelvingrove park of an evening as I was on my way to a talk at the University of Glasgow...

which reminided me of this album
Three Colours Ginger
in which fiddle player Brongaene Griffin offers a Celtic and old time gathering of tunes to do with cats


you may also wish to see


Matt and Shannon Heaton have a lovely song about a cat at Christmas on their album Fine Winter's Night Music Road: Another Fine Winter's Night: Matt & Shannon Heaton
Cherish the Ladies does a fine take on the well known Irish session tune The Cat Rambles To The Child's Saucepan
Carrie Newcomer takes in cats and all manner of other animals in the song Crash of Rhinocerus on her album Before & After

bagpipes & bluegrass: Outlands from Fred Morrison

Train Journey North is the set which opens Fred Morrison album Outlands. You may be tempted to think the bagpipes on this sound rather like a train’s whistle, which may or may not be intentional, and may or may not endear the set to you. In any case, hang on and stay along for the ride:

Morrison is one of Scotland’s most creative pipers, and he’s brought along four men who are equally well known for their readiness to take music in directions it has not gone before. From Scotland guitarist and fiddler Matheu Watson sits in, as does the ever creative bodhran player Martin O’Neill, whose work you met most recently along the music road with Julie Fowlis. From the United States come banjo ace Ron Block whom you might know from his work with Alison Krauss and Union Station, and Grammy winning songwriter and string wizard Tim O'Brien.

It’s not about their credentials, of course, it is about the music they make together here. Morrison’s idea was to take on connections between bluegrass and highland pipes and whistles. It is no academic exploration, either. It is rather a collection of sets which join original and traditional tunes which connect with rhythms which might find themselves at home in either style. The title track, Outlands, starts off with what might be a bluegrass hoedown and travels over to a ceilidh in the highlands before it is done. Leaving Uist finds Morrison taking up the low whistle and joining with O’Neill and Watson for a spare set which paints the distinct landscape of the western isle. O’Neill’s bodhran again helps set the scene as he opens the appropriately named Drumcross set, and Morrison’s low whistle leads in to the haunting tune Nameless, and he takes up the reel pipes for the quiet Seonaiidh’s Tune set

There are ten sets in all, each equally varied and interesting. If you’re expecting highland pipes and whistles, it’s not quite that. if you;re expecting bluegrass, it’s not that either. It is fine listening that honors and extended both traditions.

you may also wish to see

Music Road: Julie Fowlis: Live at Perthsire Amber
Music Road: Musical imagination: Matheu Watson
Music Road: Capercaillie: Roses & Tears

song for early summer

A bit of a meditative take on this well known and sometimes overdone song. It goes well with early and mid summer. The singer is Mary Black.




"I never made promises lightly
and there've been some that I've broken
but I swear in the time that's left
we'll walk in fields of gold..."

you may also wish to see
Music Road: Reflections with Mary Black
Music Road: late summer: two for the road
Music Road: ten songs

music and history

If you’re open to it, both music and history live in landscape, and in the buildings and spaces we create around these things.

These are a doorway and a window of a place Dominican monks constructed in the twelfth century on a hill above the shores of Carlingford Bay in Ireland. It has been used for
It has been used for other purposes since then, many of them not religious or having to do with music. Still, when the wind is right you might just hear their music rising through the stones.


I have a feeling, too. that the view out the window has, in some ways, not changed all that much.





photographs were made in Louth, Ireland, and are copyrighted. thank you for respecting this.

you might also wish to see
Tommy Sands’ album Let the Circle Be Wide which has many songs about Irish history, and a lovely one about coming home across Carlingford Bay, as well
Music Road: music and architecture
and
Delicious Baby's Photo Friday, where travelers offer new insights to the world each Friday.