Journal tags: singing

When I play music, it’s almost always instrumental. If you look at my YouTube channel almost all the videos are of me playing tunes—jigs, reels, and so on.

Most of those videos were recorded during The Situation when I posted a new tune every day for 200 consecutive days. Every so often though, I’d record a song.

I go through periods of getting obsessed with a particular song. During The Situation I remember two songs that were calling to me. New York was playing in my head as I watched my friends there suffering in March 2020. And Time (The Revelator) resonated in lockdown:

And every day is getting straighter, time’s a revelator.

The song I’m obsessed with right now is called Foreign Lander. I first came across it in a beautiful version by Sarah Jarosz (I watch lots of mandolin videos on YouTube so the algorithm hardly broke a sweat showing this to me).

There’s a great version by Tatiana Hargreaves too. And Tim O’Brien.

I wanted to know more about the song. I thought it might be relatively recent. The imagery of the lyrics makes it sound like something straight from a songwriter like Nick Cave:

If ever I prove false love
The elements would moan
The fire would turn to ice love
The seas would rage and burn

But the song is old. Jean Ritchie collected it, though she didn’t have to go far. She said:

Foreign Lander was my Dad’s proposal song to Mom

I found that out when I came across this thread from 2002 on mudcat.org where Jean Ritchie herself was a regular contributor!

That gave me a bit of vertiginous feeling of The Great Span, thinking about the technology that she used when she was out in the field.

I’ve been practicing Foreign Lander and probably driving Jessica crazy as I repeat over and over and over. It’s got some tricky parts to sing and play together which is why it’s taking me a while. Once I get it down, maybe I’ll record a video.

I spent most of Saturday either singing the song or thinking about it. When I went to bed that night, tucking into a book, Foreign Lander was going ‘round in my head.

Coco—the cat who is not our cat—came in and made herself comfortable for a while.

I felt very content.

A childish little rhyme popped into my head:

With a song in my head
And a cat on my bed
I read until I sleep

I almost got up to post it as a note here on my website. Instead I told myself to do it the morning, hoping I wouldn’t forget.

That night I dreamt about Irish music sessions. Don’t worry, I’m not going to describe my dream to you—I know how boring that is for everyone but the person who had the dream.

But I was glad I hadn’t posted my little rhyme before sleeping. The dream gave me a nice little conclusion:

With a song in my head
And a cat on my bed
I read until I sleep
And dream of rooms
Filled with tunes.

Going from Iceland to Greece in a day gave me a mild bit of currency exchange culture shock. Iceland is crazy expensive, especially given the self-immolation of the pound right now. Greece is remarkably cheap. You can eat like a king for unreasonably reasonable prices.

For me, food is one of the great pleasures in life. Trying new kinds of food is one of my primary motivators for travelling. It’s fascinating to me to see the differences—and similarities—across cultures. In many ways, food is like a universal language, but a language that we all speak in different dialects.

It’s a similar story with music. There’s a fundamental universality in music across cultures, but there’s also a vast gulf of differences.

On my first night in Reykjavik, I wound up at an Irish music session. I know, I know—I sound like such a cliché, going to a foreign country and immediately seeking out something familiar. But I had been invited along by a kind soul who got in touch through The Session after I posted my travel plans there. Luckily for me, there was a brand new session starting that very evening. I didn’t have an instrument, but someone very kindly lent me their banjo and I had a thoroughly enjoyable time playing along with the jigs and reels.

As an added bonus—and you really don’t get to hear this at most trad sessions—there was even a bit of Icelandic singing courtesy of Bára Grímsdóttir. I snatched a little sample of it.

A few nights later I was in a quiet, somewhat smokey tavern in Thessaloniki. There was no Irish music to be found, but the rembetika music played on gorgeous bouzoukis and baglamas was in full flow.

Brian Eno has much to say on the subject of singing:

I believe that singing is the key to long life, a good figure, a stable temperament, increased intelligence, new friends, super self-confidence, heightened sexual attractiveness, and a better sense of humor.

You can read the whole thing or listen to his voice.

He may be overselling it but I think he’s onto something, as I noted last time I sang karaoke in Brighton. And it’s not just karaoke—singing in a church choir, playing Rock Band, performing in a cheesy covers band …none of these activities really have anything to do with virtuosity and everything to do with opening up the lungs and passing air over the vocal cords in an uninhibited way.

I used to sing all the time. Before I had a “real” job it was how I made ends meet, busking my way ‘round Europe.

These days when I reach for my bouzouki or mandolin, it’s usually to play some tunes—jigs and reels. But lately, with Grant McLennan on my mind, I’ve been rediscovering the songs of The Go-Betweens. As well as listening to their back catalogue, I’ve been recalling their songs I used to sing and I’ve started singing them again.

It feels good. Eno describes it thusly:

You use your lungs in a way that you probably don’t for the rest of your day, breathing deeply and openly. And there are psychological benefits, too: Singing aloud leaves you with a sense of levity and contentedness.

It feels especially good in combination with the plucking of strings …or as Shakespeare put it:

Is it not strange that sheeps’ guts should hale souls out of men’s bodies?

For no particular reason, I’ve been recording some of those Go-Betweens songs. They’re very rough. They’re very lo-fi. But playing and singing them …well, it just feels good.

• Bachelor Kisses
• Rock and Roll Friend
• Bye Bye Pride
• You Won’t Find It Again
• The Devil’s Eye