Various: Horses and Hangings, Homicide and Hellfire

This is a cracking album with which to kick off the final New Year of Music Arcades.

As with yesterday's album, the trigger was a completist's desire for an exclusive — in this case the version of The Bonnie Banks O'The Airdrie by Alasdair Roberts and his occasional collaborator, the Finnish jouhikko player Pekko Kappi. It's a live performance where the audience on the Isle of Skye contribute a chorus in the way a London audience never could.

But this is far from a stand-out track on a collection that manages to give a snapshot of the best in folk music at the moment, while being both local and universal, and not featuring any big "stars". The music is steeped in tradition, but not in thrall to it in any academic or purist way. It's rooted in these islands, but the handful of tracks sung in Turkish and Bulgarian are a tribute to the immigration that is part and parcel of island life. I liked it when Eliza Carthy said that her Rough Music album was so titled because the music on it was rough. I thought at first that she meant rough as in "coarse", rather than rough as in "approximate", but I guess she could have meant both. As the Morning Star put it, the compilation "competes easily with any of the BBC2 folk awards CDs in terms of beauty, diversity, eccentricity and raw talent".

The CD came out last August as a memento to the 2010 Leigh-on-Sea Folk Festival. I would have been there myself, but it was the hottest day of the year, and there was no way the Boy would have tolerated a journey of over an hour each way on public transport with lots of interchanges in that heat. Here are some pictures of Alasdair's performance, featuring Jackie Oates, who's also on the album.

It's too early to pick favourites, but I paid particular attention this time to the version of The Cutty Wren by Corncrow, because I've just been reading about it in Bob Stewart's Where is Saint George? (op. cit.):

The crucifying of the hunted wren (once actually carried out by country folk)… is quite possibly a direct link with the typical sacrificial forms of religion known to use the cross as a symbol… The wren is often known to be a symbol for the King, a concept well represented in various songs and rituals that relate to the basic 'Cutty Wren' theme. Folk-lore of the wren is abundant, and it is usually accepted that the wren-king is likely to be a form of symbolism or substitution for the human sacrificial victim…

[But also] The wren was the totem symbol for the Celtic god Bran [who was] an oracular hero, a being who linked the outer world with the Underworld. His head may still be seen upon remains of a Roman-Celtic temple in Bath, the ancient city of Aquae Sulis. His hair and beard and long moustaches are typically Celtic, and he has a minute pair of wings which shows his identity with the local cult hero, Bladud, who was a British 'Icarus' figure. He is supported not only by two typical Roman or borrowed Greek figures, but also by Owls, the totem-bird of the infernal Goddess.

This helps me to make a few new connections.

Buy direct from the Leigh Folk Festival

Discogs entry for this album Wikipedia entry for this album

Comments

[Fred Stagg]

Final New Year?

[David]

Yep, by this time next year, this particular drain on my time fascinating hobby will be finished and collecting cobwebs.

[Fred Stagg]

Well, I guess it must be time to stop buying records. From what liitle I've seen, that might be easier said than done. What with it being such a fascinating hobby and all.

[David]

Part of the idea of doing Music Arcades was to prove to myself that I have enough records, and therefore don't really need any more. I haven't fully succeeded in this yet, but I'm getting there. I think the site would look a bit odd if the daily posts petered out into a sporadic one- or two-a-month series of updates based on each new record I buy. So I'm aiming for closure, in all senses!