Music Arcades: Gabrielle Ijdo, Stanley Robertson and Duncan Williamson: Travellers' Tales

I've had this CD less than a month. Just as I got Loveless on the basis of a single mention by Brian Eno, I sought this one out following a single passing comment by Alasdair Roberts, in the course of his performance at the Spitz on 6th September.

That's a measure of how highly I rate Alasdair at the moment. I've seen him play four times in the last ten months, but the Spitz gig was the best of the four. Really intimate (those at the Fly and the Luminaire were too intimate as they were overcrowded to the point of being uncomfortable) and I had a seat with a table about ten feet from centre stage, with Alasdair playing solo and very relaxed.

He introduced one song saying that he really liked the singing of Duncan Williamson and then went on to play the song The Golden Vanity, which he said he'd learnt from Williamson. I got home and googled the man and the song, and came to this page where I placed the order — and the CD arrived a couple of days later. Today is only my second listen.

Alasdair was in the audience at Shirley Collins' presentation at Green Man on gypsy and traveller music. But if Green Man is the cool, 'sharp' end of folk music — pretty young women in long frocks dancing in the green Welsh hills — then this CD is the 'blunt' end. I like both.

This will never be cool. There are no musical instruments on the album at all; just the unaccompanied solo voices of three ~~travellers~~ people. Eleven songs and two stories, including one about a silkie, that creature of Scottish folklore that I first came across through Alasdair's EP.

Great sleeve notes that locate the songs within both the travelling tradition and the wider canon of folk song collections, particularly Cecil Sharp's.

Buy online — option 1

Buy online — option 2