Music, harvest, and time

Martinmas: falling as it does in mid November, it used to be a time a time that the year’s rents were settled,. the gathering in from the harvest sorted, and plans made for the drawing in of winter.

Harvest: the word suggests a natural unfolding of things, a place for time and space and taking in and transforming. Not unlike the process of creating a song or a poem or a story or a painting, or building a house, or nuturing a friendship. or raising a child, or building a community. Or any number of other things. that prosper with time, attention, thought, and care.

That time for growth and reflection, the telling of the long story, the connection with a past that is more that five hours or five years ago, seems to be less common in the present day. Short story and immediate response have their place, but theirs is not the only place, or necessarily the right or the best one.

There are a number of ways this connects to music, especially the sort of music I introduce you to here along the music road. Lively or quiet, most of it is necessarily contemplative and a way of connecting with the longer thoughts of the day and the year.

You’ve met songwriter and singer Cathie Ryan here along the music road. As part of her work as a musician she teaches workshops on singing, and on Irish mythology. “I think we are connected to the ancestors,” she says, “and it’s part of our work to find out what that connection is. That’s in the stories of the myths, and it’s in the songs too.”

Music to go along with these ideas

 Cathie Ryan: Through Wind and Rain
Cathie Ryan: Songwriter
Another Fine Winter's Night: Matt & Shannon Heaton
Music Road: music, autumn, and a cup of tea

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Music and summer's harvest

From the pages of the Wall Street Journal to the gardens of the White House, from food blogs to supermarket aisles, there is a buzz going around that we need to pay more attention to vegetables, and that 2011 is in fact the year of the vegetable.

If you’ve been thinking about vegetables, there’s a song for that. A really funny one, good for kids and adults both, it will have you singing along in two languages in no time. The song is called Barnyard Dance in English, El Baile Vegetal in Spanish, and it is by Tish Hinojosa. Follow the link there at the title to hear a snippet of it, and look for it on Hinojosa’s album Cada Nino / Every Child.

There are other songs which include vegetables. James Taylor has Sweet Potato Pie, Marcia Ball has Red Beans and Rice, Tim O’Brien offers Cornbread Nation This year of the vegetable and time of late summer harvest might be just the right moment to be pulling up these to listen to.

Once you check out Baile Vegetal, you may never think about those vegetables sitting quietly (it seems) in your kitchen the same way again.



you may also wish to see
songwriter Tish Hinojosa, at Perceptive Travel



a book about a year of eating food sourced locally at
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life

and to help out those who are hungry while having fun learning about languages, geography, and other things visit to learn abouta way to do that...

Another way to support: you could

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Autumn & Thanksgiving listening, continued

In the second half of autumn. there’s gathering in of harvest and looking back toward summer, while heading into the work of winter.

Autumn is a very fine season all on its own, though, with work of transition, and work of connection, work of creation and work of preparation.


As you walk through the season, good musical companions are Hanneke Cassel’s For Reasons Unseen and Jay Ungar and Molly Mason’s Harvest Home.

Harvest Home comprises an orchestral piece of that same name, done in collaboration with the Nashville Chamber Orchestra (now known as Orchestra Nashville), and a selection of tunes crossing landscapes of place and musical geography of the United States. . Ungar plays the fiddle, Mason is a guitarist, and other musicians you’ve met here along the music road sit in, among them Christine Balfa, John Kirk, Keith Murphy, and Paul Gambill, who conducts the Nashville Chamber orchestra for this outing. It’s a fine collection all around. Haymaker’s Hoedown, Prairie Spring, and Bound for Another Harvest Home are good ways to get an idea of the spirit of things, and you may very likely recognize another original tune, Ashokan Farewell.

Cassel’s album wasn’t designed especially for the harvest time of year, but the music she chooses for it holds a reflective idea, even in the fast paced pieces, that works well with the season. Cassel is a fiddle player, pianist, and composer whose work is grounded in Scottish tradition with dashes of Americana and Irish flavor , and in this case, music she learned while traveling in China, as well. Musicians you’ve crossed paths with along the music road sit in with Cassel too, among them Natalie Haas, Alasdair Fraser, and Lissa Schneckenburger. As is Harvest Home, For Reasons Unseen is an album to listen to all the way through, and with especial note of the Blackberry Meadow Footrace set, The Goat Whisperer, and the Dusky Meadow set.

you may also wish to see

Music Road: harvest time
Music Road: autumn skies

-->Your support for Music Road is welcome and needed. If you are able to chip in, here is a way to do that, through PayPal. Note that you do not have to have a PayPal account to do this. Thank you.