Music to See You through Christmas and into the New Year

The Christmas carol that we know in English as Carol of the Bells is originally a Ukrainian New Year’s song called Shchedryk. The Ukrainian words tell of a swallow that sings of good fortune that will come with the following spring. So, it could be said to be a Christmas song, a New Year’s song and a spring song all rolled into one (which is just what’s needed at the end of a year like 2020.) My favourite version is by the Ukrainian-Estonian folk-rock band Svjata Vatra (who we’ve featured previously in this blog.) 

Shchedryk is one of the highlights of the band’s latest release Maailm sa muutud (World, you are changing). This, their seventh album, sees Svjata Vatra at the height of their powers. Lead singer, front-man and virtuoso trombonist Ruslan Trochynskyi has once again enlisted the mellifluous vocal assistance of his daughter Rute Trochynskyi, not to mention Žurba – a choir made up of Estonian-Ukrainian grandmothers. The effect of the three generations singing together is one of the things that makes tracks like Shchedryk and Ty Zh Mene Pidmanula so powerful. I recommend you check out the wonderful video of Shchedryk, just as soon as you've finished reading this blog post!

If you’re looking for something less rousing and more contemplative over the Christmas and New Year period I can recommend albums by both Benedicte Maurseth and Toby Hay.

Benedicte Maurseth is a pre-eminent player of the Norwegian Hardanger fiddle. Unlike the conventional violin, a Hardanger fiddle has four or five additional sympathetic strings that resonate, the undertones creating a darkly polyphonic sound, prized by film soundtrack composers seeking a more plaintive, other-worldly effect.

Maurseth exploits her instrument's ability to induce a meditative, trance-like atmosphere through complex rhythms and repetitive motifs. Most of the tracks on her eponymous seventh album are tunes from the 18th and 19th century but, rather than simply playing each twice through as would be traditional, Maurseth extends and improvises, adding to their hypnotic quality. 

 

The mystical minimalism of Górecki's music comes to mind, especially in the two original compositions, Etterdønning/Reverberation and Og fargane skiftar på fjorden/And the Colours Shift on the Fjord. But I was reminded most of the 1994 album Officium by another Norwegian musician – saxophonist Jan Garbarek. Garbarek's album was recorded in an Austrian monastery; Maurseth's was recorded, fittingly, in Strandebarm Church, Hardanger.  

Maurseth's album is by no means easy listening but, if you need the aural equivalent of a palate cleanser after too many Christmas songs, no one can doubt the honesty and sincerity of this transcendent music. 

And, finally, to Toby Hay...

In the early 60s, when stereo was a novelty, record labels released demonstration albums introducing listeners to the wonderful world of stereophonic sound. Imagine the 12-string guitar had only just been invented – Toby Hay's album New Music for the 12 String Guitar could do the same for those hapless music-lovers who only know the pleasures of a 6-string. 

Welsh guitarist Hay spent just two days in the studio recording this album 'live' and solo, with no overdubs, on a custom-built Fylde instrument. Many of the 12 tracks have an improvised quality while the use of a wide range of alternative tunings add variety and differing textures so the guitar sounds almost like a sitar or an oud, especially on The Last Mountain Hare and The Summer the Sky Cried for Rain. 

While tracks like the glimmering evocation of home Cynefin and the medieval-sounding The Falconer’s Knot will delight any time of year, the only traditional tune, Auld Lang Syne, is a risky inclusion (given its limited appeal for 364 days of the year.) However, if you need a quiet, reflective version of Auld Lang Syne to see the New Year in, Toby Hay is your man. 

Wishing you all a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year,

and here's the link again to Svjata Vatra's Shchedryk.

• Maailm sa muutud (World, you are changing) by Svjata Vatra (Nordic Notes)
• Benedicte Maurseth by Benedicte Maurseth (Grappa/Heilo)
• New Music for the 12 String Guitar by Toby Hay (state51 Conspiracy)

Awe-struck in St Davids

(c) Tony Gillam 2020

St Davids is the UK's smallest city. Its cathedral confers its city status though the city is the size of a village. Before summer was over this year I decided I wanted to have a short break away. It was already early September and I'd been locked down all spring. It would be my first holiday alone. I've had holidays with parents, brother, friends, wife and children but I'd never had a holiday with just me. I'd often travelled away for work on my own - but a holiday is different. So I chose to go to Pembrokeshire, just for a couple of nights. Not South-East Pembrokeshire, which I knew very well from a few lovely holidays years ago with my wife and kids, but North-West Pembrokeshire - St Davids. Familiar enough, but not simply retreading old ground.

I arrived in sunshine but, by the following morning, the area was covered in grey cloud and persistent rain. I'd heard that you could get a decent cup of coffee in the cafe at the cathedral - the Refectory, as they call it. So I hovered at the main doorway just as they were opening up and found myself being invited into the great cathedral itself. My wife Sue would have liked it because they didn't charge an 'entry fee', unlike many of the cathedrals in England. It's not that she was a cheapskate - and I know somehow the upkeep of the buildings has to be paid for - but Sue and I always agreed it just seems wrong for a church to insist on people paying to enter.

(c) Tony Gillam 2020

Being drawn into the cathedral on a rainy September morning I found myself rather caught off-guard. Of course, cathedrals are designed to be awe-inspiring so I shouldn't have been surprised to have suddenly felt so moved by the experience but, of course, so soon after Sue's death, I felt completely overwhelmed. I stopped to light a votive candle - not something I would normally do, but something Sue liked to do whenever we visited a church. She'd do it to remember her dad and perhaps other loved ones we'd lost. So I lit a candle for Sue and then, under the huge vaulted ceiling, before the alter and the tomb of St David, I became unexpectedly tearful. I continued to wander through the cathedral trying not to let anyone see I was upset.   

I came upon a little display giving information on local bereavement support groups which made me think perhaps it was common for grieving people to get upset in the cathedral. And then there was a small exhibition in a section called The Treasury explaining the history of the building and how it dates from the 12th century, though there's been a church on this site since the 6th century. The exhibition told how Henry VIII created the Church of England and the Church of Wales, how Cromwell had destroyed many of its treasures and how the Victorians had begun to restore the cathedral.

(c) Tony Gillam 2020

I continued on to a covered walkway which finally led me to The Refectory but I still had to wait ten minutes before it opened. Waiting on a bench in the covered walkway, watching the Welsh rain teem down, reminded me of the scene in Brother Sun, Sister Moon when St Francis and his band of brothers are going from house to house in Assisi, asking for alms in the rain.

(c) Tony Gillam 2020

Finally I was allowed into the refectory but had to wait five minutes more while the coffee machine heated up. In the fullness of time, I was rewarded with an excellent Americano. In the cosy cafe, I drank my coffee and pulled from my backpack a copy of New Humanist magazine that I'd brought with me. I'm not a humanist - at least, I don't think of myself as one, but perhaps I am. I'd bought this magazine simply because it had some interesting articles in it - a feature on the myth of the self, and a quirky piece about how Turkey passed a law in 1925 banning the wearing of the fez. There were a couple of items about blasphemy. While I'd been in lockdown and in full-time carer mode, back in April, it seems a prominent Nigerian humanist called Mubarak Bala had been arrested on charges of blasphemy. In the same month, I read, blasphemy had been decriminalised in Scotland. Apparently, Northern Ireland still has an active blasphemy law whereas the Republic of Ireland decriminalised it in 2018, and England and Wales in 2008. Lucky for me that blasphemy was no longer illegal in Wales, I reflected, as I flicked through my copy of New Humanist in the refectory of this centuries old seat of Christianity where, for the past 1,500 years, prayer and worship have taken place. At least I wasn't wearing a fez.

Time for some proper musical refreshment

Watching live music is a little tricky at the moment so it's an excellent time to catch up on some CD releases. Here are three recent albums that should help to keep our spirits up.  The smell of rain, an isle in the water ...and tea and symphony. Just what we need to provide some proper musical refreshment...

Can You Smell the Rain 

Nils Kercher 

(Ancient Pulse Records)

Can You Smell the Rain sees world music multi-instrumentalist Nils Kercher heading off in a new direction. The Bonn-based musician's earlier albums Ancient Intimations and Suku - Your Life Is Your Poem conjured up dreamy, mesmerising soundscapes featuring kora and West African percussion, but Nils has gone back to the guitar as a main instrument on his latest album. In doing so, the tracks on 'Can You Smell the Rain' are much more in a singer-songwriter vein than his previous albums, though the kora is never far away and a rich melange of percussion is also on display.

Some have compared Nils' sound to Paul Simon's Graceland but I was reminded much more of very early Simon and Garfunkel records, with the gentle voice and filigree acoustic guitar on tracks like 'Feathers'. I also detected shades of Jon Anderson and Yes, both because of the singing and the ever-evolving nature of compositions like the title track - a funky shapeshifter of a song.

As with his earlier albums, there is something delightfully original and refreshing about Nils' music. Guitars, percussion, kora, violin, piano and vocals all blend together to create an effect like a welcome rainstorm on a hot day.

 

To an Isle in the Water 

Brisk 

(Appel Rekords)

If Nils Kercher's music is not bound to any particular region, Brisk's music sounds thoroughly and authentically Irish, so it comes as a big surprise to discover the quartet are actually Belgian! Their fiddle player, Naomi Vercauteren, graduated from Ghent Conservatory having completed her thesis on bowing styles in Irish folk music.  And why are they called Brisk? Their publicity material helpfully explains their music is lively and quick ...and "just sounds brisk!"

This debut album is a carefully-curated collection of elegant and energetic versions of Irish, Scottish and Breton tunes featuring, alongside Naomi's fiddle, Gunnar Van Hove's Irish flute and whistles, Jeroen Knapen's guitar and vocals and Wim Moons's bodhrán, vocals and mandolin.

Most of the tracks are medleys comprised of tunes boasting quirky titles. 'Sofie's', for example, combines 'Sofie's Doopwals' with Hamish Napier's 'Grant Wood Reversed Into My Dad's Fence'. Contrasting with the ...well, yes, briskness of the instrumental tracks is a touchingly delicate rendition of the sea shanty 'Leave Her, Johnny', while Jeroen and Naomi's 'Shy One' is an impressive setting of W.B. Yeat's poem 'To an Isle in the Water', which also provides this admirable album's title. 

Tea & Symphony 

- the English Baroque Sound 1968-1974 

(Ace Records)

Musician and music journalist Bob Stanley has put together this affectionate compilation of tracks from that magical period in English pop music, the late sixties and early seventies. As the sleeve notes eloquently put it, "the English Baroque sound shunned guitar solos for string quartets and woodwind. Drenched in summer-into-autumn melancholy and never far away from the charts ... it was informed by Paul McCartney's 'Eleanor Rigby'  and 'For No One', the Zombies' Odyssey and Oracle and the chamber pop of the Bee Gees and Scott Walker."

The epitome of this style is Honeybus's 'I Can't Let Maggie Go', and this is included along with Colin Blunstone's 'Say You Don't Mind' and Clifford T Ward's 'Coathanger'. Among the previously undiscovered delights for me were Bombadil's 'When the City Sleeps' and Vigrass & Osborne's original version of 'Forever Autumn'.  

Much as I enjoy coming across new music and, indeed, some of the other benefits of the 21st century, I can quite happily reside fairly indefinitely between 1968 and 1974, so Tea & Symphony suits me just fine.

 

 

Travelling on

I started the 'Passengers in Time' blog at the end of 2010. I'm not the most prolific blogger but I suppose I've averaged about ten posts a year here on this blog. I've covered a variety of topics from books that I'd been reading to books that I'd been writing, and from music I'd been listening to, to occasionally music I'd been making. Alongside these adventures with books and music has been a third thread - 'time travel', by which I suppose I've meant a blend of reminiscences, social history and real-life travel. My posts have often been written in a voice that suggested these were accounts of solitary adventures but, in reality, whether it was walking in Shropshire, drinking coffee in Chepstow, Chipping Norton or Keswick, wandering round lavender fields in Yorkshire, exploring disused railways lines on Dartmoor or ruined castles in Northumberland, staying in windmills in Sussex, appreciating Japanese art at Hanbury Hall, cycling in Kent, picnicking in Paris, visiting chilli farms and Sherman tanks in Devon or enjoying medieval festivals in Tewkesbury, through all of these experiences I'd been accompanied by my dear travelling companion - my beloved wife Sue.    

Reviewing the blog's activity over the years, it's noticeable that my blog posts became less frequent in the second half of 2018. This coincided with Sue being diagnosed with a brain tumour. Through much of 2019, Sue enjoyed reasonably good health and I continued to blog fairly regularly, chronicling some of our trips - to the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, to Portsmouth to view the recovered 16th-century ship the Mary Rose (which Sue had always wanted to see), to a very unusual concert by Sue's favourite pagan speed folk band PerKelt as well as the last concert we attended together - a China Crisis gig, and an account of our very last holiday together in Devon.  

At the beginning of this year Sue's health deteriorated so that, by the time the coronavirus pandemic had forced everyone into lock-down, Sue and I had already stopped going out and about. Sue was too poorly to go anywhere and I had become a full-time carer. And then, on 25 June, Sue passed away. 

The things that normally console, comfort, energise and enthuse me: reading, listening to music, writing, songwriting, all feel like an effort at the moment, but I know they still hold the power to sustain and renew me. This blog has become an archive - of the books and music I've enjoyed, of the places we've been and the things we've done; it felt wrong to go on writing 'Passengers in Time' blog posts as if nothing had happened, without acknowledging the loss of Sue. I'm going to try to keep on blogging and to go on documenting my adventures with books, music ...and, of course, time travel. 

Sue was always very proud of my writing and I'm sure she would have wanted me to continue, but things are bound to be rather different, now that I've lost my travelling companion.

In memory of Sue Gillam (1965-2020).

Are we having fun yet? Eleven kinds of loneliness in self-isolation

Eleven finely-crafted short stories

Like much of humankind at the moment, I'm self-isolating because of the coronavirus pandemic. My consolations  - as ever in any very strange and difficult situation - include music and books. For the past few weeks, my great companion has been an engaging collection of short stories called Eleven Kinds of Loneliness by Richard Yates.

The book's title might not suggest any kind of light relief and - it's true - it's not a laugh a minute. However, these eleven stories are witty, compelling, finely-crafted and highly entertaining. 

I'd never heard of Richard Yates before but I'm a fan of short stories and came across his name in connection with other perhaps better known American short story writers like Raymond Carver and John Cheever.  All three authors are published in Vintage Classics paperbacks.

The blurb biography tells me Richard Yates was born in 1926 in New York, served in the US army and, in the sixties, worked briefly as a speech-writer for Robert Kennedy. Yates' prize-winning stories began to appear in 1953 and his first novel, Revolutionary Road, was nominated for the National Book Award in 1961. He died in 1992. Though it passed me by at the time, I've since discovered Sam Mendes directed a 2008 film adaptation of Revolutionary Road, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet. (Maybe that's one to watch in our Covid-19 lockdown.)

Yates' stories are set in suburban 1950s America, where frustrated office workers and would-be novelists live in fear of redundancy, while at the same time desperately hoping to break out of their particular version of the American Dream gone slightly wrong.  There are unhappy marriages - Yates was twice divorced - and, alongside all the rat-race hack-writers there are brilliantly sympathetic portraits of misfit school-kids, reluctant soldiers and long-term patients in tuberculosis hospitals.

Yates has a fondness for titles with multiple meanings: Out with the Old (a kind of One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest set in a tuberculosis ward) describes the experience of being an in-patient on the eve of New Year, but sombrely reminds us that not all the patients would survive the best available treatments for TB in the 1950s.

But there are touches of lightness in well-observed character descriptions. Describing Bernie, a character in Builders who's a cab driver in search of a ghost-writer for his memoirs, Yates writes: "His head must have been half again the size of mine, with thinning black hair washed straight back, as if he'd stood face-up in the shower..."

A Glutton for Punishment is an outstanding example of a story with a twist - but supremely satisfying - ending while Fun with a Stranger compares the very different experiences children in third grade can have, depending on whether their teacher is a Mrs Cleary or a Miss Snell: "It was not uncommon to cry in Miss Snell's class, even among the boys. And ironically, it always seemed to be during the lull after one of these scenes - when the only sound in the room was somebody's slow, half-stifled sobbing, and the rest of the class stared straight ahead in an agony of embarrassment - that the noise of group laughter would float in from Mrs Cleary's class across the hall..."

Yates is brilliant at capturing that sense that everybody else must be having more fun than we are. He's also subtle enough to show that, whether it's in a schoolroom, in the army or in the workplace, we can all learn something from situations that don't, on the surface, seem like a whole lot of fun.

From Scotland to Sweden via Estonia: three world music albums you might have missed...

At the Wrong Gig by Eriska - Muutused/Zminy by Svjata Vatra - Hillevi by Emma Ahlberg Ek 

 

Every so often, a radio station will produce a playlist of the best songs for driving. The likes of Bruce Springsteen or The Eagles usually figure as top drive-time tunes. But I discovered the perfect alternative soundtrack for heading down the highway on the rain-drenched motorways of the UK on my first hearing of Eriska's debut album. At the Wrong Gig sounds unmistakably Scottish and is ideal for keeping you moving – and keeping your spirits up when you're not.  

Eriska are a six-piece folk-rock band based in Glasgow that includes musicians from New England and Argentina as well as from Scotland. Scott Figgins' highland bagpipes, whistles and bellow-blown pipes are to the fore, as is Aileen Sweeney's accordion and Madeleine Stewart's fiddle, all giving Eriska's sound a traditional Scottish backbone. But what makes At the Wrong Gig really rock is Gavin Paterson's spot-on drumming and Dario Palazzo's guitars, while Julián Pombo's bass adds a jazz flavour to the whole affair, particularly on tracks like 'Discharged'.

'Two More Weeks' features a guitar solo that channels the spirit of Carlos Santana, while 'Sparrow' is a rare moment of relaxation. At the Wrong Gig is a high octane, highly enjoyable debut album.

If you prefer Estonian bagpipes to the Scottish variety, you might enjoy Svjata Vatra. Svjata Vatra formed in 2005 when Ukrainian singer and trombonist Ruslan Trochynskyi moved to Estonia and teamed up with local musicians. Muutused/Zminy (whose bilingual title translates as Changes) is the band's sixth studio album, and certainly displays an ever-changing sound, from the drama of 'Kohannija Zminyt Vse' to the boisterous knees-up of 'Marichka Chycheri'. Funky bass lines blend with ocarinas and Estonian bagpipes. There are moments of swaggering musical freneticism that recall Gogol Bordello or a kind of Cossack version of The Pogues.

While the interplay between whistles and flutes, trombone and guitars is very effective, the use of Jew's harp is a little grating in places, and the music-loving world could probably manage without the frantic rendition of 'You Are My Sunshine' (which appears as 'Oj, To Ne Ruzha'.) Guest vocals from Rute Trochynskyi work well, and the duet 'Oj U Poli Dva Dubky' sees Svjata Vatra at their most charmingly accessible, with a lilting pop tune reminiscent of Gotye's 2011 hit 'Somebody That I Used to Know'. There is a strong sense of playfulness in this music. Svjata Vatra's latest album shows how unexpectedly enjoyable and uplifting Estonian/Ukrainian folk-rock can be.

But if all this playful freneticism is too much, perhaps you'd prefer a journey back to the golden age of Swedish cinema. Concept albums are a rare thing in folk music but Hillevi is a fine example: the result of Swedish fiddler Emma Ahlberg Ek's fascination with the life of Hillevi Alexandra Oberg (1897-1979). As Ek explains in the charming booklet accompanying this CD, one area dominated by female musicians in the 1920s was that of cinema musician. Hillevi, widowed with two children, earned her living arranging and performing live music to accompany silent films until the advent of the talkies. Ek pays tribute to the life and times of her predecessor, fellow fiddler and countrywoman, in this wonderfully varied collection of tunes.

Supported by a sympathetic ensemble of accordion, double bass and percussion players, Ek recreates a few of Hillevi's own compositions, but most of the tracks are original tunes charting the ups and downs of Hillevi's life. The album is full of variety and atmosphere. The moody interlude 'Livhanken' has the crackle effects of an old 78 record. 'Hillevis Sorgevisa' and 'Ljuskronan' are reminiscent of The Albion Band's more plaintive moments while, with 'Kirunahambon', it is easy to imagine hordes of Swedish cinemagoers chortling at the antics of Charlie Chaplin. Hillevi is a delightful, highly original album.

Eriska At the Wrong Gig (Eriska) - Svjata Vatra Muutused/Zminy (Nordic Notes /Broken Silence) -  Emma Ahlberg Ek Hillevi (Caprice Records)