The sun hides away, yet the musicians still come out to play. We must scare winter off with all we can muster. Last week, we had a merry troup of 15 musicians again, with travellers from overseas and from Northern lands. A very talented mother and son duo had us all clapping to a Ukrainian foot stomper and some super jigs and Old-Time.
Now we are late in the year, how about playing some songs of the night. Darkness, chilly eves and starry skies, moons and planets, dig out your night time tunes and bring them into the light for all to hear.
For a welcome change from my ramblings, I’d like to include a special bit of writing on this week’s blog to get us in the mood for autumn, by Dr Tehmina Goskar, one of our fine fiddlers at the trad session:
Under darker skies
As the season shifts Autumn turns our gaze upwards towards colourful sunsets and darker, starry skies, moody clouds. Scents of wood smoke and warm earth mingle with browning leaves. My thoughts turn homewards, to hunkering down, coziness and comfort, much hibernation but also huddling close and playing out the long evenings with music and song among friends.
I think toward our minor key tunes and those with unusual modalities. In Cornwall October is an important time in the fishing seasons, whether for native oysters dredged carefully under sail in the Fal or seining for pilchards in Mounts bay, much of this happens under dark skies. I wrote the jig Salt and Silver in tribute to pilchards and the women in the presses who organised themselves like the brigade systems in Michelin Star restaurants to preserve and pack this internationally-renowned fish. John Dory is another simple jig, also played as a three-man tune (a round) which we play following a tune from a hymnal collected in Nancledra called O What Is That Upon Thy Head? For an upbeat tribute to fishing communities, what about the Fisher’s Hornpipe?
Meanwhile the land is ploughed and turned ready for winter crops, livestock are brought towards the homestead. There is an air found in the Cornish collection at Morval House called the Despairing Shepherd, in Am, that I am reminded of. The Warleggan Ox Driver is another air that borrows from the old English tune, the Plough Boy. Think of tunes that invoke these moods, these ancient rhythms that mark time differently.
There is a lunar eclipse on 28th October and Playford’s Emperor of the Moon immediately comes to mind. It jumps across octaves and can be played at any speed depending on the atmosphere you want to create. It is frequently paired with Bellamira.
Happy October one and all.
Tehmina Goskar
