Contemporary Music
If you peer through the layers of folklore and listen for hints in the extant oral traditions still alive on the fringes of Europe, maybe you can catch a glimpse of how our ancestors heard music, and saw the world. In a world full of noise and machines, bright lights and flickering images, it's easy to forget what music can do.
Rigantona bring you a feast of ancient sounds with contemporary style. Influenced by Faroese tradition, the Kalevala, Sean Nos singing and Anglo-Saxon and Celtic Poetry, Kate and Corwen seek to rediscover the lost epics of the British Isles and bring them to a modern audience. Ballads become trance-dances, work songs become spells and forgotten instruments speak again taking us into a strange world of mythology and folk belief.
Though drawing on many influences, Kate and Corwen are determined that their music should remain at its heart, deeply British, rooted in these Islands. Pipe and Tabor is not lost among the sounds of Kantele or Spilapipa, the Welsh Pibgorn and Crwth rub shoulders with the Gusli and Sruti Box.
Looking outwards can be a way of looking deeper into British tradition. How did the Anglo Saxons play their lyres? We do not know, but perhaps we can learn from the Finnish Kantele tradition. How was the Shetland Gue played? We do not know, but its brothers the Tallharpa and Jouhikko give us clues. Like many First Nations Peoples we can learn about our deep selves from the traditions of our neighbours, some of whom still remember what we have forgotten...
Click on the following links to listen to some samples:
Laily Worm and the Machrel of the Sea
The Evil Stepmother strikes again...
Wren Hunting Song
A procesional song connected with the Midwinter custom of Hunting the Wren.
Ionn Dah
Scottish music from the Islands, a Seal Womans song followed by a Fisherman's Song for calling Seals, played on the Shetland Gue.
Background photo used with kind permission of Mike Pimley.