patrick season: emigration

There's a recurring story in Irish legend in which a person sets out -- usually because they've been banished from the island, community, or family--in a curragh with only the night stars as guide and a knife for tool. No oars, no companions. A curragh is a small fabric framed boat. Having made the night (and day) sea journey to arrive again on land, the person is then able to accomplish great things.



photograph of the Irish Sea off the coast of Louth


you may also wish to see

Music Road: patrick season: music and mist
Music Road: Songs of the Immigrants
Music Road: Cathie Ryan: Songwriter
to explore photographs from many parts of the world, visit Delicious Baby's Photo Friday

World Ocean Day: music of the waters

Climate, commerce, culture, and myth all converge at water’s edge. Even if you’ve never seen an ocean, the world’s waters play a big part in your life.

Monday, 8 June, is World Ocean Day. On that day, the organizers of the event suggest that you wear blue and tell two in honor of the oceans of the world . The tell two part means tell someone two things they don’t know about the world’s waters.

Perhaps you’ll learn about and share music of the oceans. Work songs and love songs, songs of regret and songs of celebration, the oceans and those who work on them and live by them continue to inspire music of all sorts. From Gloucester to the Apalachee Bay, from North Uist in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland to the China Sea to the Straits of Magellan to Galway Bay and back again, and all seashores and waters in between, there’s great music and inspiration for music in and on the water.

Explore a bit of that water based music at the links below, and find out more about World Ocean Day here.


saltwater music: Del Suggs

Jennifer Cutting and the Ocean Orchestra

Souls of the Sea

Cathie Ryan: The Farthest Wave

Dual: Julie Fowlis & Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh

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now playing: Jennifer Cutting

Ocean

Voyages to love and away from it, into time and out of it, moved by the waters and on the waters, shown in words and melody, voice and the voices of instruments. It is indeed a voyage. Songs for the Night Sea Journey is the subtitle, so to speak, of Jennifer Cutting’s project Ocean, an endeavor which took the composer seven years and likely seven crossings of the seas to complete. Musically, she draws on elements of American folk, classical music, the music of Ireland, and even some sea green indefinable ground in between. There’s excitement in the journey starting out, and sensuality of the sea, turning to loss, and searching and time between, and reconciliations and recognition and return. Though it does not fit easily into any category except perhaps original music, there’s much here to please and intrigue those who like classical, new age, Celtic, and folk genres -- and the spaces between. It's also a recording which works well with the sometimes contemplaive nature of winter, though it's good for any season.

You may also wish see
Song of Solstice: Music for Changing Seasons, a story about another recording by Jennifer Cutting and the Ocean Orchestra here at Music Road
Music & the Power of Connection, a story at Wandering Educators which included music from The Ocean Orchestra's recent album Waves

now playing: The Brendan Voyage

The Brendan Voyage


This is now reading, actually. It's a book. more on this in a bit...
as promised. Explorer adventurer Tim Severin set out from the Dingle Peninsula, County Kerry, in a leather and wood curragh, with 4 other men (later three), to see if the stories told in the 9th cenutry manuscript telling of St. Bredan's voyage and long thought to suggest the Irish reached America before the Vikings and before Columbus, could be true. Long and short of it, yes. Severin's Voayge took place in the late 1970s; Brendan's if one believes that, in the fourth century. Each worth reading about for connection and confrontation between people and nature, and one's own nature. They made it to Newfoundland -- Severin and his companions, that is, and if one follows on the evidence, Brendan and his too.