Eight Songwriters and a Scientist: The Darwin Song Project

Eight somgwriters were invited to take on a creative challenge...

When you think of Charles Darwin — should you think of him at all — you might call up images of the tropics in the Galapagos Islands, or the harsh climate of Tierra del Fuego at the tip of South America, or possibly monkeys and courtrooms in Tennessee.

All of those have connections with the nineteenth century scientist, but with the exception of five years spent voyaging around the world on the HMS Beagle, Darwin spent most of his life and did most of his groundbreaking thinking and writing at home in rural Shropshire, in the English midlands, not far from the border between England and Wales.

It was there that eight songwriters gathered, in a farm house that was already old in Darwin’s time, to create a group of songs to mark the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth.

That in itself would have been challenging enough. Added in to The Darwin Song Project: although each musician was an accomplished writer and performer in the folk music world, for the most part they did not know each other at all.

In addition, they’d have to perform the songs at an already sold out concert at the end of the week they’d spend together, a concert which would be recorded for an album and taped for a program to be broadcast on the BBC.

A full set of challenges, then...

It seems only right that the song they decided on to open the concert and the recording was called Trust in the Rolling Ocean. It finds Darwin jumping head first into voyages to unknown lands.

That song was a collaboration among four of the writers, Karine Polwart, from Scotland, and Jez Lowe, Rachael McShane, and Stu Hanna, all from England.

Many of songs the group created are collaborations, while a a few, such as American Krista Detor’s meditation on time, change, and mystery called Clock of the World, were written by a single artist.

The flourishing strangeness and attraction of tropical lands comes up in another song, Turtle Soup. Darwin is on the run in the western outlaw style ballad We’ll Hunt Him Down, and From Miss Emma Brawley finds an indignant woman setting Darwin straight on man and monkeys.

Deep questions of faith, family, and facing change come into play beyond the science and the controversy, as well.

Mother of Mysteries, written by American Mark Erelli along with Karine Polwart, puts Darwin the questioner front and center. Erelli has a master’s degree in evolutionary biology, “but I felt that stuff was tangential to any songs we were going to write. It was really more about the man than the theory,” he said.

That’s a conclusion to which all of the artists came, although they each did differing sorts of research while preparing for the project.

“I wasn’t too bothered by the science side of things,” Emily Smith said. “I don’t grapple with evolution, it’s not really bothered me about where we come from or how old we are and what not.”

Smith, from Scotland, mixes both traditional material from Scotland and her own original songs in her work. “I was much more drawn to his personal life,” she said, “and his relationship with Emma and the children.”

Darwin and his wife Emma shared a deep love, and deep differences over ideas of faith.

Smith, along with Stu Hanna and Jez Lowe, get to the heart of that elegantly yet directly in Save a Place :

Farewell my love

Close though you be

Your mind is many many miles away

From your children and me

The world you spent traveling is here

at your feet:

Is there a way to make it all complete?

At the end of the week, all the songs, styles of collaboration and co writing, and differing voices and instruments came together for the live concert, and live recording at Theatre Severn, in Shrewsbury.

“The stage was brand new, too, and the day we had the concert, the theatre staff, the sound guys, us, the music — everybody was literally finding their feet everywhere, “ Smith recalled.

“There was such potential for things to go wrong, but I think there was such huge hope in all our hearts for things to go smoothly — and I’m still amazed at how good the recording sounds. If we’d gone into a studio, you wouldn’t have gotten that energy to it.”

A fine energy, indeed, excellent leads, creative backing vocals and instrumentation, and a range of thought provoking songs which reach beyond the specific details from which they arose.

Whether science, family, history, or creativity is your focus, the songs these musicians created for The Darwin Song Project will make good companions.

Another version of this story first appeared at Perceptive Travel. It is no longer available so it seemed a good time to bring The Darwin Song Project here, especially as you’ll find other stories about several of these artists here at Music Road.

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Scotland's music: The Woods from Hamish Napier

When you walk in a wood, what do you see? Weathered bark and new green sprouts, tall trunks and saplings, mosses, lichens, green leaves, red ones, brown ones, ones which have turned to gold, flowers, evergreen branches, yellow gorse, purple heather...

What do you hear? Bird song, the rustle of a deer as it moves through the wood, the dart of a squirrel, the voices of the waters, your own footsteps over rock and soil and leaf.

Perhaps you sense a whisper of stories of those who have walked this way before you, as well.

Hamish Napier has heard all these things, and more.

The woods he has in mind, and in experience, are those in the Cairngorms in Scotland’s Highlands.

The ideas, and the place, became resources he’d draw on the create the music for his album The Woods. Napier was commissioned to create The Woods by Cairngorms Connect, which is a joint project of RSPB Scotland, Wildland Limited, Scottish Natural Heritage, and Forestry & Land Scotland.

Through the album, Napier and his musical friends offer a journey that draws on music of Scotland’s traditions and ideas from nature, history, and language to create new stories and honour older ones.

Just as you experience light and shadow, close up views and wide ones, intricate tracery of fern and flower and boldness of high soaring tree trunks when you are in a forest, so to Napier and his musical friends reveal and share aspects of many aspects of woodlands on their journey

It used to be that children in Scotland were taught the Gaelic alphabet through learning names of trees. That comes into play as Napier chooses names for many of his tunes and draws inspiration for their creation, from different sorts of trees and the roles they play in the forest. Other aspects of woodland landscape, creatures and stories appear from time ot time as well.

Of the opening track, The Pioneer, which is tied to beith, the letter b, Napier writes “A Slow air for the beautiful birch. B is the first letter of the Early Medieval alphabet (the Ogham) which is very apt as it was one of the pioneering species to spread across the barren post ice age landscape 10 millennia ago...”

He goes on to talk of birch across the seasons, and of the uses to which it was put by Highlanders of old. You do not, of course need to know any of this to appreciate the beauty of the tune. It does give context to inspiration, creation, and connection, however. On The Pioneer, Napier plays bamboo flute and piano. He is joined by Steve Byrnes on guitar and drums, Innes Watson on fiddle and strings, Jarlath Henderson on uilleann pipes, James Lindsay on double bass, Su-a Lee on cello, and there are vocals, so to speak, from natural sounds of woodpecker, chaffinches, and swifts.

The Woods is an album that invites and rewards listening all the way through as the musicians have presented it. Much like a wander in physical woods, though, you can follow markd paths or go along other ways.

That said, several tracks I’d point out to you:

The Capercaille Rant/An Taghan is a fast paced celebration and evocation of the at times dramatic and in Napier’s words, otherworldly bird of the woods. “The giant grouse fly through the Scots pinewood with all the grace of a cannonball,” Napier writes. In nature the capercaillie’s rival is the pine martin, an taghan, “one of Scotland’s most beautiful and beloved predators.”

On The Tree of Blessings, you will hear Napier’s solo piano as he plays in tribute to the juniper. The Tree of Life/The Tree of Lightning is a a majestic and complex tune for the dair, the darach, the mighty oak. Though these days oak are more abundant in the west of Scotland than in the Cairngorms, there is archeological evidence that they were important centuries ago. Individual oak tress may in fact live for centuries. Druids and others considered the oak to be a doorway between worlds, too. More than enough from which to be drawing ideas for a tune...

Forest Folk is a tune at once lively and gentle, with a melody you’ll quickly catch on to. It is inspired by the flowers of the forest, and dedicated to those who go for a wander in the woods. “Find a big tree, lie at the foot of the trunk, and gaze up at the clouds drifting high above the branches,” Napier writes in the sleeve notes booklet, which you may gather from these excerpts I’ve ben sharing it is quite extensive and well worth repeated reading. The booklet also includes outstanding art work by Somhairle MacDonald. Take some time with his drawings, and with what Hamish Napier has written as well. Both will add to your understanding and appreciation of the music.

Hawthorne River/The Witches’ Tree begins with the voice of the River Spey and moves into tunes which, though newly composed, readily evoke Highland music of older times, as well as the presence of the river, the hawthorn, and the blackthorn.

The Tree of the Underworld speaks of the elm tree and draws on a story from 19th century forestry, I’ll leave you to seek that out through the sleeve notes. Suffice it to say that in addition to fine work on the cello, Su-a Lee plays her musical saw to haunting effect.

The March of the Lumberjills, and the letter R, ros for wild roses, give the nod to the Women’s Timber Corps, who came to work in forests during World War II. One of these women was Hamish Napier’s grandmother, who subsequently married and settled in the Highlands. The Regeneration March holds a bit more stately aspect, as befits a tune drawn from the idea of heather and forest reclaiming land which had been changed by both felling and wild fire. Calum MacCrimmon (you will know him from his work with the band Breabach) lends Gaelic singing to The Highest Willows which, though in the style of a lament, is a hopeful piece drawing many threads of the stories told in The Woods together.

There is quite a bit more to unpack and enjoy in The Woods, both in the music and the sleeve notes booklet. Both are well worth repeated exploration.

Here you may find out more about The Woods as well other projects from Hamish Napier.

You may also wish to see
Hamish Napier: The River
Hamish Napier’s album The Railway.
Eddi Reader: Cavalier
The Ledger, an album from Hamish Napier’s brother Findlay Napier and sister-in law Gillian Frame, with their friend Mike Vass

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Two Roads Home: Music from Tim Grimm and Mary Ann Kennedy

Home: it’s an endless source of inspiration for creative artists of all sorts. For Tim Grimm, this might include writing a song that begins with speaking of a well loved cat sitting on the front porch of a farmhouse in Indiana. For Mary Ann Kennedy, it could include making a song out of a historic report of a sporting event that took place in a park near where she grew up as a Gaelic speaker in Glasgow. There are differences; there are similarities. Both well know how to make personal memories and insights resonate beyond place and moment, and yet how to respect both those things.

Tim Grimm’s recording is called Heart Land Again. It is revisit of sorts to his album Heart Land, which he released twenty years ago. Back then, Grimm and his wife Jan had moved back to central Indiana after a time working in the entertainment industry in Los Angeles. The sons who were young children then have grown up to become musicians themselves, and now join their parents on this recording, and as regular participants in The Grimm Family Band.

The songs on that album twenty years ago “were a gift,” Grimm says,”the result of falling in love again with the rural Midwest and its people.” Times change, people pass on, the whole country changes. These songs, ones from the original collection reworked with fresh eyes and ears, and songs newly added for this project, are lasting.

Together, the dozen tracks bring both wide angle and close in views of heartland stories. Better Days, which is sometimes described as Grimm’s anthem, offers a well limned portrait of generations, connection, what changes and what remains on the land. That might seem a lot to find in one song. It is all there, though, told with the voice of a singer who knows how to serve the story. Down the Road considers the accelerating rhythms of change on the countryside. The traditional song Sowin’ on the Mountain, here with bluesy groove filled sound, suggests, perhaps, possible consequences.

Pumpkin the Cat (watch for that cat, who comes and goes quickly in the lyric despite being the song’s namesake and centering visual image) is a meditation on choices both immediate and long term and what’s good and right that comes from them. The whole album is that, really. It is w ell worth repeated listening. Grimm has a natural storyteller’s voice, Jan and sons Connor and Jackson add illuminating harmonies and instrumental backing. Dan Lodge-Rigal, who played piano on the original Heart Land, is back for this project. Ben Lumsdaine adds percussion and Krista Detor, whose music you’ve encountered before here along the Music Road, adds backing vocals too.

Mary Ann Kennedy’s road home is to a different place: the busy, lively, and sometimes gritty city of Glasgow in Scotland. She grew up there in a Gaelic speaking family, and has gone on to a many faceted career as harpist, singer, composer, producer, and broadcaster.

With her album Glaschu she’s created what she names as a home town love song. For some time now she’s lived in the Highlands of Scotland, but work often takes her back to her home town. That’s a perspective which gently informs some of the song choices and the arrangements you’ll find here. It’s a perspective which is not nostalgic and certainly not sentimental, but reflective, vivid, and thoughtful. “You can take the girl out of Glasgow, but never Glasgow out of the girl,” she writes in the sleeve notes, “ and in the spirit of the Gaels’ eternal need to sing about home, this is my Gaelic love-song for the city in all its guises -- the voices of arrivals in search of a new life and of those, like me, born and bred there with Gaelic as our first language.”

Song -- mostly in Gaelic -- and music from instruments are woven together with occasional spoken word interludes, at times in Gaelic and at times in English. Kennedy has an expressive soprano. You will have no trouble understanding the emotion of a song even if Scottish Gaelic is not one of your languages. There are English language lyrics and notes on the songs in the sleeve notes, however.

Kennedy takes you on a journey that includes a sports report from a historic shinty match -- did you know that shinty is a Highland game with stick and ball was the inspiration for ice hockey? A lively story of a trip along the River Clyde “which quite possibly hasn’t been sung in a century or more,” Kennedy notes, adds to the fun. When I Came to Glasgow First, a mixed language Gaelic and English song, takes a more serious turn as the subject is vignettes of what it was like for a person from the Highlands to arrive in the big, rambling, and loud city of Glasgow in the middle of the twentieth century.

Orange Parade in Glasgow points up some of the clashes and differences that both immigrants and long time residents found. The lyrics are by poet Derick Thomson, who was from Lewis in the Outer Hebrides but spent much of his life in Glasgow. “His images of Glasgow in the 80s in his Gaelic poetry are absolute reflections of my memories growing up n the city,” Kennedy writes. Orange parades commemorate the victory of William of Orange over James of Scotland more than five hundred years ago. It is often a flashpoint of religious and political division. It was, Kennedy continues, “a sad and fearful thing to watch in my home where I was brought up to celebrate diversity rather than reinforce difference.”

There are more songs, some of laughter and others of conflict or of sorrow, all weaving into the tapestry of Glasgow as seen and heard through the lives of its Gaelic speaking people. All its people, really. A translation of Michael Mara’s song Mother Glasgow into Gaelic seems a particularly appropriate and movingly done choice. There’s also the engagingly titled Statues, a Goose, and the Morning After, in which a man takes enough drink to go dancing with the statues in George Square -- and that’s only part of the story.

Kennedy brings Glaschu to a close with Goodnight & Farewell, which she points out, is not only a song often used to close concerts and gatherings but also “a beautiful parting glass song, making a heart connection with emigrant communities and urging us all to look for the good to keep hold of in ‘strange times.’”

Kennedy is supported by a number of musical friends, among them Findlay Wells, Nick Turner, and Jarlath Henderson. Wilma Kennedy and Bill Paterson do an excellent job of bring the brief spoken word sections to life in good connection with the music, too.

Roads home: whether that be to the countryside in Indiana or the city in Glasgow, or some other place which has its part in your life, this music will resonate. Give Heart Land Again from Tim Grimm and Glaschu from Mary Ann Kennedy a listen. Give them several; each has much to offer.

You may also wish to see
Mary Ann Kennedy and Na Seoid
Wilderness Plots
Julie Fowlis: Alterum
Music & Mystery: Conversation with Carrie Newcomer

If you'd like to support my creative work at Music Road,
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Scotland's Music: Hamish Napier: The Railway

Trains.

Perhaps you ride one every day on your way to work or school. Maybe you take a lighthearted ride at holiday time. Perhaps you know trains mainly from children’s toys or pictures in books.

Trains hold a combination of grit and romance. They pass through landscapes, and are part of them. Trains help create community, and communities. Trains and train tracks are of the present, and evoke stories of other times.

Whatever way you’ve come to know trains, you will find much to enjoy in Hamish Napier’s recording The Railway.

He draws from the stories of one specific railway line in one specific place and time, the Great North of Scotland Railway in the Speyside region of Scotland’s Highlands. To research ideas that would inspire his music, he read accounts of the railway’s history. He interviewed three men who had worked the railway, all now in their nineties and with many stories to tell. He walked the landscapes the trains had traversed, and drew on his own memories of growing up in the Speyside area.

That grounding in specifics allows the tunes and songs to reach beyond the Great North Railway’s story and draw in the imagination of anyone who has ever taken a train journey, or dreamed of taking one.

Hamish Napier is a composer, performer, and music tutor who grew up in the northeast Highlands of Scotland. His main instruments are the piano and the flute. He has supported musicians including Gary Innes, Eddi Reader, Karen Matheson, and Donald Shaw, appearing often in concert and on more than forty recordings. His own recording The River explores and celebrates landscapes, experiences, and people along the River Spey.

When he was performing music from that recording in a series of concerts across Scotland, the new owners of Grantown East: Highland Heritage and Cultural Centre came to one of the shows and knew that Napier was just the person to compose the soundtrack to go along with their project, the restoration of the Grantown East Railway Station into a place marking this history of this Highland railway line, which had ceased operation in the 1960s.

The music on The Railway indeed takes listeners on a journey -- several journeys, rather. The opener, The Speyside Line, draws one in to a musical journey with cadences which suggest Highland landscape. The Firebox, as lively and flickering as its title may suggest, draws on the history of the steam powered trains and the stories told to Hamish by driver Jimmy Gray, driver Jocky Hay, and signalman James Telfer. So does a tale of races between trains back in the day called Jocky the Mole, which is a song with lyrics Hamish’s brother, Findlay Napier.

Fire and water, smoke and steam
A train is like a living thing
Driver, engine, fireman
It takes us three to make her sing

Findlay sings in the chorus as the story unfolds.

The lighthearted tune Cheery Groove pays tribute to Hamish and Findlay’s parents and their home at Number 2 Cherry Grove, where it’s said many great house ceilidhs were to be had.

Mixing respect for history with love for the land and its people and regret for some changes seen, there’s another song with lyrics from Findlay called The World Came In by Rail...

We walk along the railway line
Among birch and wild rose
And all that’s left are outposts
Of an empire no one knows

A different look at a related idea is found in the tune The Old Ways, a slow march written to honour those who respect and keep up the traditional crafts, stories, language -- and music -- of, Napier writes in the sleeve notes “what is unique and special about our culture.”

Those joining Hamish Napier on the recording include Fraser Stone on percussion, Gillian Frame on backing vocals, James Lindsay on double bass, and Patsy Reid on fiddle. There are also cameo appearances by the sounds of a fireplace, Broomhill sheep, and whistle, brakes, wheels, and other railway sounds. Andrea Gobbi co-produced the album with Napier and recorded and mixed it. You will also enjoy the album artwork and design, which are by Somhairle MacDonald.

There are many more gems among the music -- every track is a keeper, and the journeys of history, music, landscape, and reflection are well worth the taking as Hamish Napier has organized them. He draws things to a close with The Railwayman, and three part suite inspired by the story of driver Jimmy Gray’s career on the railway.

Take the journey on The Railway. Take all of the journeys offered through this music. You’ll come away with much to reflect on and much to enjoy.

Also of note: at this writing word comes that Hamish Napier is at work on his third album, to be called The Woods.

You may also wish to see
Hamish Napier: The River
Eddi Reader: Cavalier
Scotland’s music: Sarah-Jane Summers: Solo

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Scotland's Music: A Tapestry of Scotland's Music Abroad

Weaving a tapestry, piecing a quilt, finding threads that pull through and ties that bind: these ideas turn up as often in descriptions of music as they do in speaking of textiles. In the project Scottish Diaspora: Music & The Song the two arts have come to together.

Across the centuries and across the years, across continents and miles people from Scotland have settled, bringing with them the love of their native land and making Burns night suppers in India. Highland games in Australia, and Gaelic speaking towns in Atlantic Canada. These folk also brought their music with them, handed it on, and used it to tell stories of the lives they made in new places.

The arts community of Prestonpans in Scotland decided to ask people from these far flung Scottish heritage communities to tell their stories through cloth and thread, embroidering them into blocks which will form a large and ever growing tapestry. The folk at Greentrax Recordings began gathering music that shared the ideas of finding life in new lands while leaving and still loving Scotland. The result is a two disc recording that spans, poetically enough, opening with the song Scots Abroad, sung by The McCalmans, and drawing the music to a close with Brian McNeill’s take in The Rovin’ Dies Hard.

As the music winds between these two songs, you will find songs of yearning, songs of leaving, the occasional song of return, songs of new lives in Canada, in Australia, in England, the flavors of Scottish music mixed with aboriginal stories, Spanish rhythms, beats from India, and thoughts on the working life in England. There are farewell songs in English and in Gaelic, and songs of exploration and remembering in both languages as well. Among the voices telling these stories are Jean Redpath, Dick Gaughan, Donnie Munro, Margaret Stewart, The Cast, Rua, Salsa Celtica, Ali Mills, Fiona J. Mackenzie, and Stan Rogers. Standout tracks include Munro’s Strangers to the Pine, Mairi MacInnes on Carry Me Across the Ocean, Siobhan Miller with River of Steel, and Natalie Mac Master’s Glencoe Dance Set. All the songs and tunes are well worth your time to listen, though. Taken together, they make an engaging tapestry all their own.

In the liner notes you may learn a bit about each song, and see photographs of some of the completed tapestry blocks. You may see images of several more parts of the tapestry by following this link.

Photograph is by Kerry Dexter and is copyrighted. Thank you for respecting this.

You may also wish to see
The Scottish Book Trust’s Project Stories of Home
Julie Fowlis: Every Story
Scotland's music: Capercaillie: At the Heart of It All

If you'd like to support my creative work at Music Road,
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.

Canada's music: Maria Dunn

Emigration, immigration. The choice or circumstance that brings one to make a living and a life in a country not one’s native place. How to live, what to learn, what to keep from home, what to let go, what to change. These are ideas debated by lawmakers, in community gatherings, in churches, in homes, and in the thoughts of those who travel. In the ideas of artists, too: in her album Piece By Piece Maria Dunn distills voices and ideas and thoughts on these ideas and on the lives of those who live them out day by day

Dunn, who lives in Edmonton, Alberta, has often looked to the intersections of history and social justice as inspiration for her songs, The music on Piece by Piece draws on material Dunn came by in interviews with women who worked at a clothing factory in Edmonton over its ninety three years history, from 1911 to 2004. The women came from countries across the globe, from eastern Europe, from Viet Nam, from Italy, from Ukraine, from China, from rural Alberta and other places in Canada.

Pray for my safety on the journey
I’ll send word from the other side

-- from the song I Cannot Tell You (the whole story)

click on the album cover image or the text link to hear samples of the music

As Dunn weaves their stories, we hear of a woman who wrote to her World War II soldier in Italian while those on the line helped her learn English and a union leader,originally from Ukraine who went to Toronto to confront company board members. There’s a song of hope and resilience based on a lullabye a woman from Viet Nam sang during an interview and a song called Speed Up, which with words and music captures the rhythms of the workday and the thoughts of women whose hands and minds did the work of making clothing, and another called Blue Lung, which finds a woman thinking about one of the consequences of such work.

There is connection, there's distance, the family, there's friendship and weathering all sorts of change in these stories,. There’s a song of called Farewell, occasioned by the thoughts of those who’d worked together for years when they learned that their factory would be closing.

“Day by day and side by side, our common ground ensured, we stitched together more than just the work,” Dunn sings.

Dunn has a gift for both words and melody, shown on these songs in the ways she adds flavors of the sounds of different countries while maintaining a through line of song and story bringing together these elements in much the way the women from different countries worked side by side in the factory. Dunn is herself an immigrant to Canada, “though my situation was very different -- I was born in Scotland, and my family emigrated to Canada when I was a baby, and my father had a good job,” she says. “Still, I think that has helped me understand their feelings and their stories.”

Dunn, who plays guitar and accordion as well in addition to singing, has an inviting storyteller’s way with her voice, and her melodies tell engaging stories on their own. She’s well supported here by producer Shannon Johnson, who plays violin, and other gifted folk who sit on sitar, bass, cello, and other instruments in spare yet atmospheric backing.

You may also wish to see
music of Canada
sounds of Cape Breton
Maria Dunn’s web site

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Songs & landscapes: Sarah McQuaid

Sarah McQuaid brings a confluence of landscapes to creating her music: she was born in Spain, grew up in Chicago, lived for some years in Ireland, and is now based in Cornwall in the southwest of England. She spends about six months of each year traveling the world with her music. McQuaid’s most recent recording, The Plum Tree And The Rose, finds her exploring ideas of changes, through stories which arise from history and from her own travels.

McQuaid is also a parent. The song she sings in this video comes from that place, as well.







Recently, I had the chance to write about The Plum Tree And The Rose at some length for A Traveler's Library and Perceptive Travel. In these two (different) stories you will find out about how a Renaissance hall and a cathedral inspired McQuaid to write two of the songs on the album. You’ll also learn about a really fine song called In Gratitude I Sing, which was inspired by McQuaid's remembering the American holiday while far from North American shores.

McQuaid will be playing a number of concerts and also giving workshops on DADGAD guitar in the United States during September and October. Here is McQuaid's tour schedule.


you may also wish to see
from Scotland: The Boy and the Bunnet
Music for a midsummer's day
late summer: two for the road

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Music and focus

Many stories to be taken from watching the Olympics in London just now -- one of them is the power of focus.

Focus is important in learning, playing, creating, and listening to music too, of course. One of the sorts where this is most evident is the style known as sean nos.

In Irish, those words can be taken to mean several things. The sort of music they have come to be associated with across the years and decades is a traditional style, often unaccompanied, and most often music sung in Irish. The emotional and character of the story is meant to be carried and conveyed primarily by the dynamics of the singer’s voice, and his or her choice of what exactly to do with that. In very traditional settings or in homes where songs are shared around the kitchen table, the singer may sing with eyes closed or turn away from those who listen and face the wall to increase the intensity of the song. In such surroundings, too, one or two of those sitting nearby may at times take the singer’s hand as the song unfolds.

Sean nos style finds its way into the work of contemporary Celtic musicians, although at times in ways that have changed from how things were not that long ago. Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh, who grew up in the wets Kerry Gaeltacht, comments that such singers “wouldn’t so much teach you the song. They’d give you the verses, but you had to find your won way in to the story, to the emotion and the ornamentation of how you;d sing it.”
Cathie Ryan has heard these older tradition bearers too. “ Some of the the traditional sean nos singers, maybe they didn’t have the best voices, maybe they were not the most brilliant singers, but they could transport you, they could take you to another place, by the power of their singing.”

One of the things they had, indeed, was focus.




Bright Star of the West: Joe Heaney, Irish Song Man is a book that will introduce you to one of the tradition bearers. The writing is a touch dry but it is well worth the read to learn about the music and the life of this important musician. You can also hear Joe Heaney discuss and sing the song Roisin Dubh here


Roisin Elsafty writes about sean nos from a singer’s perspective

Iarla O’Lionaird adds to the sean nos conversation

Roisin Elsafty with Ronan Browne on pipes and Siobhan Armstrong on harp
with Roisin Dubh



you may also wish to see
Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh: Daybreak/Fainne an Lae
Cathie Ryan: teaching tradition

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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.

-->If you'd like to support my creative work,
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.

a hundred years ago

A hundred years ago, most of the music people heard was live. They made it themselves, or their neighbors did, in parlor or front porch or church or kitchen. They went out to see someone play music, they listened and sang and played in pub or club or school room, as they worked and at home. A recent study shows that now, less than one per cent of the music most people hear is heard live. That may be unlikely to apply to many who travel here along the music road. Still, it’s an idea to think about.


Music to go along with this

Music Road: darwin song project
Music Road: wilderness plots
Music Road: ceol chairlinn: sharing music in winter

storytellers

Over at Frugal Kiwi, there's been quite a discussion going on about the question would you survive as a pioneer?


Most of that conversation revolves around practical skills, which of course are well needed. Seems to me storytelling is a practical skill as well, as is reflection. Otherwise how would anyone ever learn anything? including those practical skills. Not to mention have the courage and wisdom to carry on. The seanchai and the singer have their places in a pioneer existence too, I think.

You could take just about any of the music here along the music road to go along with this idea, really. Several suggestions:

Music Road: reflections with Adrienne Young

Music Road: Songs of the Immigrants

Music Road: tuning up for Burns Night: four Scots musicians

Music Road: Carrie Newcomer: Before & After

-->If you'd like to support my creative work at Music Road and elsewhere,
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.