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Radio Show – Episode 14 – Creative Fire – October 2, 2016

In this episode we enjoy the golden light of autumn as we sit with our “Creative Fire.” Here we’ll find tales, tunes, and songs filled with the fire of the poet’s initiation, the love of the land, the Otherworld, and flat out musical fun.

02:12 Niamh Ni Charra – Cailleach An Airgid
05:00 Altan – Comb Your Hair and Curl It
08:42 Kathryn Tickell – Lads of Alnwick / Old as the Hills
15:19 Martin Hayes & Dennis Cahill – The Mountain Lark / Tom Doherty’s Reel
18:51 Mary Black – Song for Ireland
25:04 Pádraigín Ní Uallacháin – The Incantation of Amergin
30:36 Jami Sieber – A World Behind the World
40:13 Priscilla Hernandez – Leaves Never Settle in the Wind
42:35 Cernunnos Rising – Heartbeat of Harvest
44:52 Past Tense – Soundscape of Relaxing Nature Sounds
45:44 Knodel and Valencia – Willafjord
49:00 Silly Wizard – Queen of Argyll
52:23 Sharlene Wallace and Kim Robertson – Comb Your Hair
57:22 The Harp Twins – White Wedding

Listen to the latest episode of Forest Halls Celtic on demand

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Format: Track Title – artist (CD Title)

“Cailleach An Airgid” – Niamh Ní Charra (Súgach Sámh / Happy Out)
Translated as “The Hag with the Money,” this is a traditional sean-nós song from Connemara. Catch the video on Niamh’s site or on Youtube. A fun twist to what could be a harsh song about a young lad after an old woman’s money.

Chorus
She is your granny, she is your granny
She’s your granny, the hag with the money …
Do you reckon he’d marry, do you reckon he’d marry
Do you reckon he’d marry the hag with the money?
I know he’ll not marry, I know he’ll not marry
‘Cause he’s too young and he’ll squander the money

Chorus

We’ll soon have a wedding, we’ll soon have a wedding
We’ll soon have a wedding, by two in the village
We’ll soon have a wedding, we’ll soon have a wedding
Between Sean Seamais Mhoir and Maire Ni Chathasaigh

“Comb Your Hair And Curl It / Gweebarra Bridge” – Altan (25th Anniversary Celebration)
Irish folk group Altan plays a slip jig followed by a reel. Come Your Hair and Curl it? In Celtic music you can create a tune around just about anything!

 “Lads of Alnwick/Old as the Hills” – Kathryn Tickell 
I love the unison at the beginning of the set of Kathryn on the northumbrian pipes and Julian Sutton on the melodian, perfectly in tune.

“The Mountain Lark/Tom Doherty’s Reel” – Martin Hayes & Dennis Cahill (NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert)
As the set progresses, maybe you can feel how these two musicians drop deeper and deeper into the music and into the sensory world it’s creating. It’s a place where, as a musician, where your jaw becomes slack and it’s just you and the music and your instrument, and the sound all around. You might even find yourself drooling, you’re so into it. Martin and Dennis don’t do that – drool that is, but in the video you get that sense of going deeper and deeper into the music – at least, that’s how I feel listening to it.

“Song for Ireland” – Mary Black (Song for Ireland)
For the last quarter-century, singer Mary Black has been a dominant presence in Irish music, both at home and abroad. She has shared stages, tv shows and recording studios with some of the most revered performers of her time. She has also played a frontline role in bringing Irish music, past and present, to an increasingly appreciative and ever-growing global audience. The San Francisco Chronicle has described her as “One of the best interpretative singers around”. To me, her “Song for Ireland” captures the creative fire that one’s place – the very land itself – can ignite in our hearts.

The phrase “the fire in the head” refers to a visionary experience or poetic inspiration of a consuming nature. It appeared in “The song of Amergin”, a mystical poem spoken by Amairgen Glanglun, a bard from Irish legend, as he first stepped foot upon the land of Ireland, on the shores of Kenmare Bay. We’ll hear now a setting of this poem to music by Pádraigín Ní Uallacháin, including the poem spoken in Irish Gaelic.

“The Incantation of Amergin (Am Gaeth I M-Muir)” – Pádraigín Ní Uallacháin (Song of the Scribe)

Pádraigín has been recreating the ancient tradition of sung poetry by composing airs in the traditional style for early Irish poetry, medieval Irish poetry, Bardic poetry, traditional songs and new songs in Irish and poetry in Irish and English including works by leading Irish contemporary poets such as Ciarán Carson, Seamus Heaney, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, Biddy Jenkinson, Michael Hartnett, and also earlier works by W. B Yeats, Olav Hauge, Fearghal Óg Mac an Bháird, Fear Flátha Ó Gnímh, Eoghan Rua Mac an Bháird among others.

She is accompanied here by Helen Davies on harp.

“A World Behind the World” – Jami Sieber (Timeless)
“The Song of the Wandering Aengus” Poem by William Butler Yeats,
“The Tale of Taliesin” Text and retelling by Jen Delyth (Celtic Folk Soul: Art, Myth and Symbol)
Against the backdrop of Jami Sieber’s atmospheric composition for cello and voice, we take a deep dive into visionary and poetic fire with W. B. Yeat’s quintessential poem as well as by way of Jen Delyth’s commentary and tale of the transformation of the boy Gwion Bach into the legendary Welsh bard, Taliesin who lived in the sixth century.

Electric cellist, vocalist, and composer, Jami Sieber will be performing
Friday, Oct 14, 7:30 PM
Vashon High School Theater

Tickets are available at Vashon Intuitive Arts, Vashon Bookshop; online at Brown Paper Tickets
Sponsored by Woman’s Way Red Lodge.

“Leaves Never Settle in the Wind” – Priscilla Hernandez (Incantations)
A lovely song for Autumn.

“Heartbeat of Harvest”- Cernunnos Rising (Wild Soul)
… and another song honoring the Harvest.

“Willafjord” – Knodel & Valencia (Forest)
When Deb and I work up music together, we pull from any manner of inspirations. With this Shetland tune, were reminded of Harry Bellafonte’s “Jamaica Farewell.” That piece inspired our choices of a calypso style rhythms, and a “steel drum” sound and some strumming on our harps. We had the great pleasure of performing a trio version of this piece with Kim Robertson at the International Society of Folk Harpers & Craftsmen Conference held in Vermont in 1994. Kim is an absolutely inspiring, fun, and generous harper, and I count the experience of our working up “Willafjord” with her and us performing it as among the “highs” of my harp career. That conference in Vermont was memorable in other ways: At that time, I was 8 1/2 months pregnant with my first child!

Deb Knodel, by the way, will be performing a house concert on Saturday, Oct. 15. at 6:30pm. If you’re in the Bay Area, do think about attending! Deb is a harper who possesses creative fire indeed. She has been working on some pretty blazing arrangements these past few years, and she is a just plain fun and friendly individual. You will definitely enjoy yourself if you attend. Email me if you want more information: fhceltic ‘at’ gmail.com

“Queen of Argyll” – Silly Wizard (Kiss the Tears Away)
One of my favorite songs from renowned Scottish band Silly Wizard

“Comb Your Hair” – Sharlene Wallace and Kim Robertson (Q & A)
Another version of “Comb Your Hair” by two harpers who know how to create and play some intricate and awesome arrangements. I’m always inspired by Kim, and Sharlene is fabulous too!

“Lochaber No More” – Spookytree
Thank you to you all for joining me in Forest Halls. A special thank you to my husband Andy Valencia for providing behind the scenes technical support. Our 29th anniversary is coming up,  and in honor of that I finish the show with a cover of a song we danced to at our wedding. This piece is decidedly not Celtic. It’s performed on pedal harp and electric harp by a pair of identical twins who have something like 75 videos of their covers of famous pieces, in which they dress alike (different costumes each time) and play with a flourish. This is Billy Idol’s “White Wedding”, arranged and performed by the Harp Twins, Camille and Kennerly Kitt.

“White Wedding” (Billy Idol) – The Harp Twins – Camille and Kennerly
Fun harp stuff here, with pedal effects from the electric harp and soundboard drumming on the pedal harp.

 

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Into the Heart of the Dreaming

For it was said in that timeless moment that still echoes within me there are those among us who remember deep in some part of themselves–a part that will not let them rest–the forest and the living-ness of green things. It was said that it’s time for them to come home. Time for them to journey deep into the forest that birthed them. Time for them to take up their work–the work that resides in the deepest parts of themselves. Time for them to speak for the green things, to teach their children the way of Earth. Time for humans to think in new ways.

–Stephen Harrod Buhner, Plant Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm: Beyond the Doors of Perception into the Dreaming of Earth

Are you one whose Dream takes hold of you? Are you one who time and again has let that Dream go — the one Dream that holds all the smaller dreams. Perhaps it is not so much a letting go, as a turning away: to tend to the literal nature of daily life.

You are not making up your Dream. The Dream is speaking through you. It dwells in the deep and ancient forest within your heart.

Time and again I find reasons to turn away from the Dream and Soul that shines bright with images and feeling and initiative and a wise intelligence. Time and again, I find a deer trail that, when I take the breath to follow it, leads through gleeful and scratchy bramble back to the dragon clearing where the trees welcome me as a very young grandchild and the stones offer me their own sweet music. The plants set about educating me, and the birds remind me that the universe is threaded in song. And the land: the earth supports and voices the Dream.

Sword Ferns in Forest Halls - photo by Jane Valencia
Sword Ferns in Forest Halls – photo by Jane Valencia

I am always finding my way back to Forest Halls, even when I have thought I never left it (until I return: then I know I’ve only been groping through the salal at the very edges, with an occasional jab in the “I” by a twig).

The harp is one gate-opener for me, my foremost musical partner on the journey. The trees are my generous teachers, the plants my inquisitive co-creators, and the medicine ways of all are the ropes into the wise beauty and blessing that surrounds us and lies just below where I perhaps most typically reside.

There is beauty and blessing here indeed — as well as the sometimes terrifying dark that insists we choose, insists we follow the true nature of heart with eyes closed and hands and senses wide open. It insists that we decide to listen to the veriditas and learn its nature and wild poetic tongue … Decide: to listen …. or to turn away to head straight back to what we think is a place of safety. But what was once the cozy hut on the trail is in reality now a diminished and stunted expression of who we are. What suited and sheltered us at one point on the journey is not where we are meant to remain.

The world is alive, and all things within it are speaking. The trail we follow through the thickets and across open meadows, over waters and into the ancient mind of the mountains is speaking to us too. Take a moment and breathe into the pattern, the weave of all that is and the grace that lies beneath nourishing all. Where do you feel the language? Where do feel the song? Where are you in the forest, the deep, mysterious terrain of your soul? Where are you in the salt waters of your Dreaming?

Stories are welcome here. The forest is listening.

Hawthorn in Flower photo
Hawthorn in Flower: Do you see the faces in the leaves? – photo by Jane Valencia
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Newsflash! Garden Sneaking up on Unsuspecting Harp!

Many year ago, Dian Cecht — physician, god of healing, and member of the Tuatha De Danaan (an ancient tribe of divine folk in Ireland) — scattered his daughter Airmid’s cloak of herbs. With this action, he cast a possible comprehensive herbal tradition to the winds. As you might guess of an action initiated by rage and jealousy, unintended consequences have resulted.

(Hear the tale in Forest Halls Celtic – Episode 1. It takes place about halfway through the show. You can also read the tale in the Forest Halls Celtic – 4/3/16 Show Notes)

Rumors that herbal tradition had gone underground, and has recently erupted into renewed vigor and mischief appear to be well-founded, as represented in the photo below. It appears that a harp is about to be set upon by herbs

Garden Sneaking up on harp - photo
Garden Sneaking up on Harp – photo by field reporter Jane Valencia

Alert!

Herbal magic may pounce upon us at any time! It is imperative that we reassemble Airmid’s herbal cloak to prevent absolute pandemonium. PLEASE NOTE: Disagreement exists as to whether the chaos will result from feral herbs having wild garden parties in our hallowed concrete jungles, or from unconscious followers of Dian Cecht’s emotional state responding with fear and outrage to the fun and powerful healing mystery of the green beings that have been living beside us all this time.  Agreement does exist that reassembling Airmid’s herbal cloak will help bring the healing ways of the herbs to one and all. This was Airmid’s original intentio, and, we presume, that of her brother the astounding healer, Miach.

Help us reassemble Airmid’s herbal cloak! Here’s how:

In the comment box below:

  • Identify one or more herbs in this photo
  • Describe a healing property of each one you I.D.
  • Describe where one might find that herb laid out on Airmid’s cloak

Furthermore:

  • If you are an herbalist or lover of the plants, please let us know how you are contributing to the restoration of Airmid’s herbal cloak!

Important PS.!

Rumor has it that harp tradition – also resurfacing after centuries underground –  is in cahoots with the herbs. If that’s so, then the above photo may not actually represent the herbs sneaking up on the harp, but the harp leading the charge!!!! If you have reason to believe that the harp is enmeshed in restoring lost tradition please report the following:

  • How has a harp you’ve witnessed contributed to restoring lost wisdom to your neighborhood or community at large. 

PLEASE NOTE: If you are a harper, you yourself may have inadverently — or deliberately — contributed in this way!!!

  • If so, please share your subversive action(s). (In the harp underground, this is often referred to as a “random act of harping”)
Harp and Herbs photo
Harp and Herbs Clearly in Subversive Conversation – photo by field reporter Jane Valencia

Important PPS:

If you play an instrument, engage in a folk craft, art, or tradition, or creative expression of any kind you likely are contributing to a revitalized, intelligent, nature-allied, wise world. This is absolutely noteworthy, and we here at Forest Halls commend you for your dedication and passion.

  • Please share with us your creative expression, and your thoughts on how it helps reweave a cloak of joyful and wise healing ways in the world.

Please submit reports in the comment box below!

Your comments will be compiled into a Forest Halls report (blog post) that will be issued in conjunction with the next episode of Forest Halls Celtic, and given special mention there.

Thank you for your important contributions to healing, peace, harmony, authenitic expression, creative imagination, and radical fun in the world!