Irish, Scottish, folk, and country music from many different neighbourhoods, and sometimes, from behind the scenes
Friday, November 01, 2024
Music for your election thinking
Music offers ways to connect across place, across time, across language, across other divides.
There is more that connects us than divides us is one of the points US Vice President Kamala Harris often makes, as she campaigns to become president ot he United States.
Many of you who join in here at Music Road arebased outwith the United Staes. Perhaps you do not care about elections in the US. Perhaps you are of the opinion that they do not matter to you.
I’d ask you to rethink that.
Perhaps you are a US voter who is still thinking about who you wish to vote for, or if you will vote at all. You might, perhaps, think that is election does not matter to you, either.
Perhaps, wherever you live, maybe you think it will make no difference ot your life, whoever wins.
It will.
As you consider your decisions on these things, here are severla pieces of music to help you with your consideration.
If you are thinking your ideas, your conversations, your beliefs, and wat you do about them have no consequence, consider this from Carrie Newcomer
If you are feeling a bit isolated, consider this from Tish Hinojosa
If you are thinking about what to weigh, what to value as you make your choices -- in voting if you are a US voter, in conversation and thought if you are watching events for elsewhere -- consider this from Claire Lynch. This may not be your faith, your book, or your story. Every faith and system of ethics has things to say about situations like the one Claire speaks of in the song, though.
If you’ve children you’d like to involve or who are already involved in thinking about there events. this song from Matt Heaton will offer a few good ideas. Works for adults too.
I have also included a several non music resoureces to add to your considerations.
Well, okay, a musician speaks here -- listen to what Jennifer Lopez has to say about why she is voting for Kamala Harris, and about the power of community
and...take time to hear, to listen, to what Vice Preident Kamla Harris has to say
If you are a US voter, there is still time to vote. I encourage you to do so.
I have cast my vote for Kamala Harris. I ask you to join me. Consider well your choices on the rest of your ballot, too.
Democracy really is on the ballot.
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Celtic Colours International Festival is on 11 through 19 October, with concerts and community events all across Cape Breton.
Cape Breton is in the northern part of the province of Nova Scotia in Atlantic Canada.
That’s great, you might be thinking, but I am not near there at all...
However --> several festival concerts will be streamed on line. There is no cost to watch, but as the festival is a non-profit, you may want to consider making a donation to keep things going.
No worries if you cannot join at the time of broadcast, you should still have time to watch. In the past concerts have been left up through the next day at the festival's website and YouTube channel.
...and you will want to watch. Celtic Colours celebrates and draws on music mad on Cape Breton and from Scotland, Ireland, First Nations, Acadian, New England, and other aspects of Cape Breton heritage.
Artists from those places come to share their music, as do musicians from all across the Maritimes and from many other places in Canada as well.
Celtic Colours is known for its innovative collaborations as well as its respect for heritage.
Each concert is an ambassador concert of sorts: there are several acts on each bill. They each present a set on their own, and all join up to share in a finale. Sometimes, artists can’t resist sitting in with each other on the way to that finale, as well.
All this makes for concerts filled with heritage as well as filled with surprises.
There’s another surprise: there’s not an announced schedule of which concerts will be aired; what will be on is usually announced shorty before showtime each evening.
A word of respect must be said to festival artistic director Dawn Beaton, who puts all these collaborations together, and to the folks at Novastream, the Cape Breton based company whose people handle the broadcast of the shows. It’s no easy thing to shoot and direct live music, as I well know from experience; these folk know their stuff
Okay, but who might you see?
No guarantees, because, as mentioned, shows to be broadcast are not announced in advance.
However, a bit about just a few of the artists set to perform at Celtic Colours this year:
JP Cormier is a singer, songwriter and player of many instruments. The Cape Breton native will be at the opening concert and several other shows during the festival, including one which will feature JP and musical friends playing through music from his album Another Morning.
Mary Jan Lamond, also from Cape Breton, is a world renown Gaelic singer. Her friend fiddle player and step dancer Wendy MacIsaac joins her on stage at times; their duo album Seinn is well loved classic of Cape Breton music. This year, Wendy will be appearing on her own and as a memebr of the top rated band Beolach.
The three musicians who make up The Once bring top class singing to music which shows influences of Ireland, Scotland, Americana, and bluegrass over from their home base in Newfoundland.
Speaking of Americana, Jay Ungar and Molly Mason return to Celtic Colours with the decades of musical stories to share through song and tune; also from the US, Molly Shawn Scanlan and Connor Hearn as the duo Rakish walk the line between folk and classical as they make their Celtic Colours debut on fiddle and guitar.
You may find Dawn Beaton playing the fiddle, as well as playing keyboards and dancing. Often she on her siter Margie perform as a duo. Their heritage and practice in music inform their off stage creative practices as well, Dawn as artists director of Celtic Colours and Margie is in charge of school and college reatiosn and marketing at The Gaelic College.
Rose Morrison grew up and began her music career on Cape Breton. After some eyears living away, she’s returned, expanding her renown as a fiddle player to include songwriting and singing.
First Nations artists are always part of Celctic Colours, from drum circle members to dancers to fiddle players to songwriters this year Alex Kusturok of the Metis tradtion and Morgan Toney, who connects his Mi'kmaq heritage with Cape Breton style are among those from First Nations taking part.
Ireland is always well represented at Celtic Colours. John Doyle, Mick McCauley, and Oisin McAuley form u a trio to bring song and story from Dublin, Donegal, and Kilkenny to Cape Breton.
Cape Breton has strong connections to Scotland; it is one of the few places outside the Highlands and Island of Scotland where you will fidn Gaelic in daily use. It is natural then, that artists from Scotland always form a highy anticiapted and enjoyed aspect f Celtic Colours.
Among those joining in this year: top guitarist (she handles other instruments and is a singer, composer, and producer as well) Anna Massie; lengendary songwriter Archie Fisher; rising fiddle masyer Ryan Young; awatfd winning Gaelic singer Julie Fowlis ever creative five piece band Breabach, with special guest Moynihan joining in.
There;s msuch more to be explored, and there will no doubt be surprise in store as well as familiar friends to meet again in the broadcast concerts, or,if you have the opportunity, in person.
Photographs: Julie Fowlis and Mary Jane Lamond courtesy of Celtic Colours; John Doyle by Kerry Dexter; Anna Massie courtesy of Innes Campbell Communications
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If you’ve spent time in Scotland, you will likely hav seen Joy Dunlop presenting weather on BBC Scotland and on BBC Alba.
Perhaps you are learning Gaelic? Then you may have come across Joy’s work as a presenter of the the broadcast and online series Speak Gaelic. Perhaps you’ve heard her present award shows and other programs in Gaelic and in English, or leraned of her work developing Seachdain na Gàidhlig/ World Gaelic Week, a time celebrating Scottish Gaelic language and culture.
Maybe you’ve heard that she created and conducted the Alba Choir, Scotland’s entry in the Eurovision Choir competition.
At the heart of all this, Joy is a musician, an award winning singer and stepdancer.
She grew up in the traditional music community of Connel in Argyll in the west of Scotland, studied on the isle of Skye, and has traveled the world with her music.
With all that she’s got going on, she takes her time in releasing albums.
Caoir is pronounced koor. In Scottish Gaelic the word means a blaze of fire, fiercely burning, flames or flashes.
That idea comes through in the warming, welcoming sound of Joy’s vibrant soprano, and in the music she has chosen to record.
It also follows through in the connection and creativity shared by the musicians who join Joy on the recording: who are Ron Jappy on guitar, Ifedade Thomas on drums, Gus Stirrat on bass, Mhari Marwick in fiddle, and Euan Malloch on electric guitar.
It is a connection that evolved into an album.
It began, Joy said, “as a jam session with four fantastic musicians, and soon grew into something more -- a selection of music that we all loved and a real friendship and bond between us all. I think that sense of joy comes across in the music.”
It does indeed.
Dunlop’s sense of adventure and creativity, as well as her musicianship anchor the music she and her collaborators create.
Caoir begins with a lively set of jigs to draw listeners in with both music and rhythm.
Rhythm and beat are present through the music on Caoir. This is the first time Joy has brought drums and bass into her music. In the hands of these musicians, these additions work well within the ten tracks of traditional music.
You will hear this in subtle fashion as Joy explores the gentler side of her voice and music as she sings Am Braigh/The Braes. This is a song Malcolm Gillis wrote in praise of his home area of Margaree in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. Joy spent some time living and working in Mabou in Cape Breton. She writes in her notes on the song “Cape Breton is a place dear to my heart... I can confirm that it’s just as beautiful as the song describes.”
Cape Breton is also one of the few places outside the Highlands and Islands of Scotland where you will find Scottish Gaelic in daily use.
You will also hear that beat and rhythm in several of the faster paced songs on Caoir. Among those is Mo Nighean Donn Ho Gu/ My Brown Haired Girl.
Waukling songs for working the tweed, puirt a bheul to celebrate and keep alive dance and piping music through the voice of the singer, story songs of legend and history, love songs -- all these are part of the music on Caior, presented with creativity and thoughtfulness as much as with celebration.
“I’ve always loved music that pushed the boundaries of what was considered trad without losing the soul of the songs,” Joy Dunlop said. “As a Gaelic singer, I’m always trying to make my music accessible to those who don’t speak the language.
“With this recording I wanted to capture the sentiment of the songs, whether the listener understands Gaelic or not.”
Another aspect that comes across clearly is the connection and creativity Joy and the artists who join her bring to the music.
Reflecting on this, Joy said “That mix of trust, creativity, and drive for exploration eventually emerged as an album that will hopefully resonate with trad fans and those who just love music.”
Whether you have Gaelic or not, give Caoir a listen -- more than one, really, to explore all the musicians have to offer. You are bound to enjoy the journey.
...and mention must be made of the visual aspect of the album, which really carries through that
them of flashes of fire while serving both the music and the artist. Photography is by Euan Robertson and album design is by LOOM Graphics.
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Anna Massie is a skilled backing musician on stage and in the recording studio, an ace collaborator at band work (she is a member of RANT and Blazin’ Fiddles), a gifted producer, and as the creator of The Black Isle Correspondent videos and presenter of BBC Scotland’s flagship folk radio show Travelling Folk, an award winning broadcaster.
Indeed, Anna has a lot on her plate and many ways to share her musical gifts. So it makes sense that is has been some time -- since 2003 to be exact-- since she has recorded a solo album.
“I have been extremely lucky to work with a wide range of wonderful musicians over the years, but this is the first time I’ve recorded an entire Ot’album myself, playing all the musical roles,” Anna said.
“It’s ben a challenge, but a lot of fun. I’ve loved having complete creative control over the record and being able to explore my own individual sound.”
Anna is well known for her creative dexterity on guitar and her skill on fiddle. If you watched The Black Isle Correspondent you’ll know she is also a singer (if that’s new to you, this album is fine chance to hear her voice). Banjo, mandolin, tenor guitar, keyboards and mouth trumpet (“it’s exactly what you think, and it’s a real thing,” Anna points out in the sleeve notes) are instruments she brings into the mix as well.
A fine gathering of music it is, one that allows Anna space to show her creativity as a songwriter, arranger, and producer as well as a player. Her dry and wry wit comes out, too.
That wit is especially in evidence in her selection of songs to cover.
Among those are My Life Is Over Again from Cape Breton ’s JP Cormier which deftly pokes fun at a number of country music song tales, and Australian Tom Morgan’s The Outdoor Type, which finds the singer poking fun at herself for how much she’s not that.
On a bit of of a gentler note, Anna opens the album with her song Thanks for Writing, a light rhyming piece that yet contains some of that balance of connection and isolation found during lockdown times.
Dinner Medals is a lovely tune with a funny reason for its name (I will let you read the sleeve notes to find out about that).
The title tune of the Worth the Wait set is gentle, thoughtful, and lively, written to celebrate the marriage of Lauren MacColl and Ewan MacPherson (you have met both of them through their music here along the Music Road). It pairs with tunes written to honor a Black Isle naturalist and to mark the end of the first lockdown time in Scotland.
,
Tunes for friends’ weddings make up another set; there’s a tune written to mark one hundred days of the Black Isle Correspondent during lockdown, and a lovely arrangement of traditional tunes Battle of Waterloo and Out on the Ocean.
There’s also The Lovat Bar, a fine tune Anna wrote for her students in guitar class at the annual Blazin’ in Beauly music school that Blazin’ Fiddles members host each summer.
Two Down is almost a solo album -- but it seems only right that Anna invited her parents to join in.
Goren Berg’s Polka is a a tune her dad Bob Massie wrote and on which he plays mandolin. Her mum. Alison Massie, joins on spoons for that tune and also adds spoon percussion to that set of wedding tunes mentioned earlier.
There’s a tune inspired by Anna’ parents, too -- or at least their garden experiences. Anna spent the first pf Scotland’s lockdowns back in the Black Isle where she saw first hand how the veg growing was going. The tune is called The Pioneer Waltz.
With that tune, and other songs and tunes on Two Down, you will have a fine time, whether you are exploring all the musical lines, laughing at the sound of the mouth trumpet, or taking the quieter tunes including The Pioneer Waltz, The Love Bar, and Out on the Ocean.
Anna has remarked that what she’d wish for Two Down is that it gives listeners a smile. That it does, on many levels.
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Haar. In the northeast of Scotland that is the name for a mist that often comes in across the coast. It lends a feeling of uncertainty as one walks about and tries to find one’s way.
Musician Lauren MacColl had some of the grimmer aspects of what haar can suggest on her mind as she began writing music for an album, and working on music commissioned for Scotland’s Year of Coasts and Waters., MacColl’s instrument is the fiddle.
She found her way through the fog, though, to peace and hope.
“This music was written during a year of huge personal loss, when it often felt that the haar had engulfed me and those closest to me,” she said.
“Working on this album has been a solace,” MacColl continued, “and at the heart of it is a strong pull towards the coast both its fragility and its strength. Haar --- tor me-- is a reminder that that after the mist always comes the light.”
That idea appears that more than once in the music MacColl has composed and has chosen for the album she named Haar.
Most of is inspired by landscapes, seascapes, and stories of the place she calls home, the Black Isle in the northeast Highlands of Scotland.
The Black Isle is not an island, though it has a good bit of coast as it is a peninsula bounded by the Cromarty Firth, the Beauly Firth, and the Moray Firth. It lies just a bit north of Inverness. People have been coming to settle there, to work the waters and the land, since the time of the Picts and before.
Several of the tunes Lauren MacColl offers on Haar were inspired by histories of shipwrecks and lives lost at sea, and the effect these had on the communities left behind. In these tunes, MacColl has a gift for evoking hardship, change, and resilience through the music of her fiddle.
There are happier stories in the journey on which she tales her listeners as well.
One such is the set which pairs the tunes The Lost Bell and Women of the Shore. The fast paced opening tune is inspired by the true story of two bells cast in Holland for churches on the Black Isle back in 1624. They both almost made but...one lies beneath the waters to this day. That, Lauren decided, warranted a lively tune.
She pairs it with a tune of history and resilience honoring the women who had such a large part of in the lives of fishing communities in the Black Isle and all along Scotland’s coasts and waters.
Another story of resilience is honored and illuminated in the tune Culbin. The town of Culbin, east of Nairn, was overcome by a great sandstorm in 1694. Residents fled and did not return.
About a hundred years ago, Scotland’s Forestry Commission began planting trees, and now, as Lauren writes in her sleeve notes
”Culbin is a thriving home to nature.It is an ever changing place where shifting sands continue to remind us of the power of our coasts. A place full of dragonflies and singing seals.”
That love of and respect for nature, and a view of changing life along the coast both cleared eye and poetic come through clearly in Lauren’s work. Whether she is writing a tune inspired by the northern lights, or changes in spring weather, or a memory of how her grandmother’s love for the area her family calls home inspires her own love of the place and her work to share its stories through her music, without speaking a word Lauren evokes history. community, and landscape.
It is MacColl’s clear storytelling with her fiddle that anchors and informs the music on Haar.
She has gathered a group of musical friends to come along with her on the journey too, several of them with their own ties to the area. You will hear Rachel Newton on harp and spoken word, James Lindsay on bass, Alice Allen on cello, Jennifer Austin on piano, Anna Massie on acoustic and nylon guitars, and Mairearad Green on accordion.
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Ireland's music: Roisin Reimagined: Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh and The Irish Chamber Orchestra
Róisín Dubh, a love song that with time became one of Ireland’s most well known political songs
Slan le Maigh, a song of love for a place, and a song of leaving and farewell
An tSeanbhean Bhocht, a allegory of Ireland celebrating the Rising of 1798 and the spirit of independence
An Chúilfhionn, with poetic words of loved place and loved woman set to a slow air that has become one of Ireland’s best known melodies
These songs and a good number more are al part of this story.
These songs go back centuries. Some have connections which reach back further in time as well.
Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh found her world turned upside down when the pandemic struck.
A touring musician, she couldn’t tour; an artist who loves to share Ireland’s traditional culture and engage her with audiences in person, she wondered when and if she’d be able to do that again.
Nic Amhlaoibh is also a person who likes to look forward and to plan.
A conversation with her friend, producer and instrumentalist Donal O’Connor, got her thinking.
What would you like to do, when this is over, he asked? What would be your dream project?
Maybe something with strings, a string quartet...? she said.
Why not go bigger? Why not have an orchestra? O’Connor suggested.
They did.
The result of that question: Roisin Reimagined, first a concert and a broadcast, then as a recording.
The creation of these saw Nic Amhlaoibh, O’Connor, the Irish Chamber Orchestra, six contemporary Irish composers, several players of traditional instruments, the Kilkenny Arts Festival, and more folk behind the scenes join together to create a project that brings together folk and classical music, stories from Ireland’s sean nos canon, the high art of Irish song, told with new perspectives.
A gathering of songs mainly from the sixteenth through the nineteenth century (though some are thought to have origins far older), sung in Irish, form the basis of the project.
Most are what is known as big songs, songs from the history of Irish song. They are part of what is known as the sean nos or old style tradition, a style which was passed own singer to singer.
“A singer may give you a song, the basics of it, but you have to find your own way inot it,” Nic Amhlaoibh said. In sean nos, the emotion of the song is conveyed by the style and ornamentation the singer chooses through which to tell the tale, that finding your won way into the song.
Does that sound confusing ot unfamiliar? It’s not; think about a song you enjoy in another style and you will see that there are connections.
In recent centuries sean nos has been thought of and passed down as unaccompanied singing. Nic Amhlaoibh’s research has found that was not always the case, though.
If you’re Irish, or well familiar with Irish music, you’ll know some of these songs. Róisín Dubh, Slan le Miagh, and An tSeanbhean Bhocht, for instance, those three mentioned at the top have melodies which will seem familiar even it you cannot quite place where you’ve heard them.
Nic Amhlaoibh learned many of the songs on Roisin Re-imagined growing up in the west Kerry Gaeltacht, and has sung some of them on occasion as part of her own concerts as a solo artist.
“In some ways it’s a full circle love story back to these songs,” Nic Amhlaoibh told Matthew of the Oboe Windfree podcast.
Several of the songs were newer to her repretoire; she’d learned sean-nos traditional style growing up in west Kerry, though.She’d done occasional one off gigs with orchestras, working with composers?arrangers and an orchestra on a full on productionwas new to her.
All of this “was a challenge I wanted,” she said.
There are songs of love, of longing, of leaving. Some have words written by poets, some with authors unknown.
There are songs with other stories too, a song trading wordplay in Irish and English, for instance, as well as the march rhythm of An tSeanbhean Bhoch, and a set of fast paced songs including Cuirfimid deaindí, a lively piece often sung to and with children.
In the songs in varying combinations, there are the voice of traditional singer, singing in Irish, the musicians of a chamber orchestra playing violin, viola, cello, and bass; players of traditional instruments including fiddle, harp, uillean pipes, arrangements by six Irish composers, each coming from different musical worlds...
What holds these elements and combinations together?
Respect -- respect of the musicians for each other and for what each brings to the music -- is clear and central to every idea and every note.
It is a powerful unique, creative project that respects the musical traditions from which it comes and frames them with new ideas.
Nic Amhlaoibh’s voice, presence, understanding of and love for the material form another centerpiece.
So does the skill of producer Donal O’Connor.
Muireann grew up in the west Kerry Gaeltacht with Irish as her first language. Music, language, and landscape have influenced her style and the material she chooses as well.
Thirteen years touring the world as lead singer and flute player with the top traditional band Danu,a thriving solo career with albums featuring songs in irish and in English, collaborations with artists from a range of genres including classical, elctronica, and Scottish folk form part of Nic Amhlaoibh’s story as well. She is also a successful broadcaster, presenting programs on Irish and English language radio in Ireland and on Irish and Scottish television..
Donal O’Connor is from the other side of Ireland on the east coast. He is from a musical family that saw him having lessons in both fiddle and classical violin while growiing up. He is in demand as a player, and as a producer of recorded music and broadcast projects including Se Mo Laoch, Celtic Connections, Bosca Ceoil and mnay others.
Then there’s the Irish Chamber Orchestra -- known for its willingness to explore connections between classical and traditional music. The Kilkenny Arts Festival, which co-commissioned the project, is equally willing to explore musical adventures, as are the six Irish composer/arrangers involved in Roisin Reimagined: Cormac McCarthy, Paul Campbell, Linda Buckley, Sam Perkin, Niamh Varian-Barry, and Michael Keeney
You will find your own way in to the songs of Roisin Reimagined. Each piece is well worth your time: there is a lot going on in all of them, and there’s is directness and clarity, too to be experienced as you take time to listen.
You may like to know, too, that the sleeve notes for Roisin ReImagined include lyrics in Irish and English as well as notes on the stories of the songs.
You may also wish to see
Muireann Nic Amhloaibh’s album Foxglove & Fuschia Dual, a recording Nic Amhlaoibh made with Gaelic singer Julie Fowlis from Scotland
Women of Ireland: Four Musicians, including Nic Amhlaobh along with Katan Casey, Cathie Ryan, and Cara Dillon
Photographs of Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh, The Irish Chamber Orchestra, and Donal O'Connor courtesy of the artists
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At the year's turning: 5 songs for new year's reflection
At the turning of the year, it is a time of looking forward and looking back. As ever here at Music Road, the stories found in music are company along the way, and guides to help think about the challenges, acceprt the sorrows, and share the celebrations of the turn of seasons.
Carrie Newcomer’s song Singing in the Dark works for this point in the seasons and beyond.
The idea for the song sparked for Newcomer when she spent a bit of time at the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky. A respected writer, artist, and thinker on matters of the spirit, she’d been invited to experience the place where spiritual teacher and writer Thomas Merton had lived.
While there, she attended several of the services through which the monks keep hours of the day -- matins, lauds, vespers, compline, for example -- some of which occur in the dark of night and the dark of very early hours of the morning.
On new year’s eve and other times, someone is always singing in the dark...
You will find Singing in the Dark on Carrie Newcomer’s album A Great Wild Mercy.
Waitin’ on Mary is a Christmas song, yes. It also works really well with the atmosphere and events going in in the world just now: finding reasons to hope amidst despair, for one thing. Gretchen Peters wrote it. You will find it on her album Northern Lights.
Rani Arbo has set words of Alfred Lord Tennyson to music in Ring Out Wild Bells. Each of the verses she’s chosen speaks to today as much as they did to Tennyson’s time.
You will find it recorded on the Rani Arbo and daisy mayhem album Wintersong.
In Scotland, the celebration of midnight as one year turns to another is marked by and is called the bells. Rani Arbo and daisy mayhem’s song is a nod to that, and so is this...
Auld Lang Syne, as well known as it is, really does belong as a part on one year turning into another. Here’s a fine version of it by Hannah Rarity and Blazin’ Fiddles. You will want to listen, yes, but then perhaps second time round go ahead and sing along.
Bittersweet as the turning of a year may seem at times, it is also a time which invites celebration, connection and hope. Cajun musicians Canray Fontenot and Michael Doucet caught that ideas well in their song Bonne Annee. So did Rani Arbo and daisy mayhem in their performance of it, on their album Wintersong.
Wishing you all the best at the turning of this year, and as the new year unfolds.
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