This week (air date June 15) a voyage around the British Isles, catching traditional and contemporary sounds from Scotland, Ireland and England. Plenty of variety, new and old, from the Emerald Isle, the windswept Scottish islands and finally the heart of England.
The thread that links all these songs is the thriving traditional and folk music scene. And no-one's done more to revive adapt and promote the music of Ireland than the Chieftains. Their album The Wide World Over included collaborations with Sting, the Rolling Stones, Joni Mitchell, Elvis Costello and more. And a couple of tunes with a deep Irish heritage, including "Carolan's Concerto" – a gorgeous piece where Derek Bell's expertise on the harp shines.
Carolan's Concerto is thought to have derived from a rivalry between the Irish composer Carolan and an Italian musician in Dublin. Turlough O'Carolan himself was a master harper, mystic, dreamer and extravagant drunkard.
If the Chieftains have led the way in popularizing and updating Irish folk, there are plenty of new artists who tapping into Ireland's rich musical heritage. One of them is Villagers - which is actually one very talented guy called Conor J O'Brien. His debut album, Becoming A Jackal, is a collection of poetic, lilting songs described by the judges of one prestigious music award in the UK as "a record of great charm and mystery". "We wanted to make it sound a bit like a Neil Young album,"he says . "Not to dress it up too much. Like someone is whispering in your ear, but also to get the epic-ness at times." Well, they succeeded: it is surely one of the strongest records of the year - and amazing that one man played nearly everything on this album. Beautifully orchestrated, and yet warm and intimate...and here is the title track.
Another rising star in Ireland is Julie Feeney. Her recent release Pages is a rich mix of pop, piano-lounge intimacy, and classical brilliance. The lyrics are poetic; the arrangements glorious and she took a big risk to get it right - digging into her own pocket to hire (and conduct) the Irish Chamber Orchestra for a whole day.
Feeney wrote the lyrics for “Pages” during a month-long retreat at an artist’s colony in northeast Ireland. Three years worth of material, including essays and overheard scraps of conversation, whittled down into poems and set to music when she returned to her Dublin home. One of the songs on the album is Myth which by the way she once performed spontaneously in Terminal 5 at JFK.
Staying with the Julies but crossing the wild Irish Sea, we reach the windswept archipelago of the outer Hebrides,thrashed by Atlantic storms for most of the year. Which is why they stay inside and make music, I imagine. One woman whose mission has been to preserve and present the best of the islands' musical traditions is Julie Fowlis.
“The thing about Gaelic songs is that something very old and ancient in them resonates with modern culture," Julie says. "People sang about love, work; difficulties like death and loss, tragedy. A lot of the songs from the Hebrides are influenced by the nature - the sea and the landscape.”
And you don't have to understand a word of Gaelis to fall in love with Julie's voice - as limpid as sunlight after an Atlantic storm. And she can cover the Beatles…Lon-dubh or "Blackbird" as rendered in Gaelic.
On the Scottish mainland are the Cairngorm mountains, home to the highest peak on the British Isles. And the inspiration for Mhairi Hall's debut album. And a fine spin it is too on traditional Scottish tunes. The album is called Cairngorm and features a mix of Mhairi Hall’s own compositions, and 18th and 19th century melodies with roots in the area. Hall says she’s been collecting tunes from old musical manuscripts for ten years. Her trio - which includes Fraser Stone (drums, percussion) and Michael Bryan (guitar) is directed and joined by the Irish bouzouki wizard Donal Lunny. Check out the jazz-tinged "A Good Winter"; on the show we played "Strathspeys from Strathspey."
Next up, three veterans of the Scottish folk scene: Brian O' hEadhra (and that is the right spelling , Bruce MacGregor and Sandy Brechin. Their album Sonas (the Gaelic word for happiness, good fortune, prosperity) draws on a wealth of tunes and songs from the Gaelic and Scots traditions, as well as each being acclaimed composers in their own right.
Of all the many folk groups and troubadours that have wandered the British Isles over the past 40 years, playing clubs and pubs and eating too much fried food traveling from one gig to the next, none have had more staying power than the McCalmans. They’ve been together almost as long as the Rolling Stones and have made 26 albums, before their final curtain call at the end of last year. One of the many traditional Scottish songs they've recorded was Farewell tae the Haven – off their compilation The McCalmans In Harmony: 30th Anniversary Collection.
'Farewell tae the haven my heart it is sad, The drifters I'm leavin' tae work on the land.'
Karine Polwart has not been around nearly as long as the McCalmans but looks destined for a long and storied career. She has twice won the 'Best Original Song' award at the BBC Folk Awards, and has also been a member of the cleverly named folk collective known as the Burns Unit.
"The most beautiful thing about songs is how they can take on a life and a meaning of their own," Polwart says. " I’m constantly moved and inspired by the deeply personal experiences people let me in on to me as a result of hearing them”. Karine took time out to give birth to her son in 2007. In an extraordinarily creative maternity leave, she recorded not one but two albums. But her best album is perhaps Scribbled in Chalk from 2006, which includes the song Terminal Star (and I won't charge you for the creative Dr. Who video.)
Scotland is also producing a fine pedigree of mainstream female singer-songwriters, including K T Tunstall and Amy Macdonald. her debut album from 2007 had the audacity to knock the revered radiohead off the top of the UK album charts. It was called This is the Life and has sold more than three million copies worldwide. (I was recently in Spain and her songs were constantly on the radio.) Not bad for a girl who was 19 when she wrote the album. Her depth of her lyrics goes well beyond her youth - suggesting a world-weariness about celebrity and tabloid-driven gossip that's best heard on Footballer's Wife.
Long before Amy was even thought about, the Battlefield Band was fusing the rich heritage of Celtic music with ancient and modern instruments.
In the vanguard of Scottish music's revival, the band (named after a Glasgow called Battlefield) have mixed old songs with a self-penned repertoire, all played on a fusion of ancient and modern instruments - bagpipes, fiddle, synthesiser, guitar, flutes, bodhran and accordion. Tthe group was formed by four student friends in 1969 and have now been on the world's roads for over 40 years. Their album Threads won some sizzling reviews - "A case of familiarity breeding respect" .... "If you are feeling down, throw away the Prozac and listen to this." One of the songs on Threads is "Tramps and Hawkers" and on the show we played "Miss Kate Rusby." And the reason we did that is that one of the band's members, John McCusker, was married to the doyenne of English folk music, one Kate Rusby, and produced her albums. They are no longer an item, but the link still works.
Described as a "superstar of the British folk scene" and "the first lady of young folkies" Rusby is one of the few folk artists to have been nominated for the prestigious Mercury Prize. Her album Sleepless from 1999 was her breakthrough, a collection of gentle ballads, including "Sweet Bride" with understated arrangements perfecly complimenting her delicate voice.
Rusby duets with American folk/bluegrass singer Tim O'Brien on "All God's Angels," and ventures beyond the traditional folk realm with a deeply affecting version of Iris DeMent's portrait of small-town life, "Our Town." Incidentally, she is devoted to her dog Doris, and married again.
Finally, and from a warmer, drier place a new release. The offspring of Malian duo Amadou and Mariam now has a record of his own. His name is Sam and he's part of SMOD, and like Mom and Dad his debut album is produced by Franco-Spanish eccentric Manu Chao. It's very much more hiphop-oriented than his parents' songs, but still very much rooted in Africa as tracks like "Fitri Waleya" demonstrate. And the young band is more than capable of a ballad, like Simbala.
"SMOD’s bouncing melodies and appealing guitar-lines recall nothing if not a younger, more sinewy version of Dimanche à Bamako,"concludes one reviewer. Dimanche... was the breakthrough album for Sam's parents, and from the trivia department, they've met President Barack Obama.
Tune in every Wednesday evening at 7pm ET to World Tour on WMLB, The Voice of the Arts, on 1690AM in the greater Atlanta area. And online at 1690wmlb.com.
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