While searching for a video of the traditional Boxing Day Marshfield Mummer's Play...
...I came across the following video of a krampus festival in the alps. Unlike the (supposedly) benign Santa Claus, the krampus takes naughty children away in his bag and eats them. This is genuinely scary. Makes our English folk customs, however wonderful they are, seem a little, um, tame...
Monday, 26 December 2011
Wednesday, 21 December 2011
Ho ho ho
Of all the myths about magic mushrooms, the one I most wanted to be true was that Father Christmas is secretly and originally a fly-agaric munching shaman from Siberia. Alas, there's very little evidence that he was, and rather a lot to suggest he wasn't, and it turns out this myth was invented by the poet, Robert Graves, in one of his poetic flights of fancy, back in the early 70s.
But while researching Shroom, I discovered something interesting: Santa Claus and Father Christmas are not the same figure at all (see Ronald Hutton's The Stations of the Sun). Saint Nicholas, and the tradition of leaving presents for children on Saint Nicholas' eve, arrived in America with the Dutch, at their colony on Manhatten island. By the time New Amsterdam had become New York, Saint Nicholas had been quite forgotten, that is until he was revived by Washington Irving who transplanted the saint's traditions to Christmas Eve.
Irving inspired others. Most of the imagery associated with Santa (flying reindeer, chimneys and all) comes from one subsequent source, Clement Clark Moore's saccharine poem T'was the night before Christmas: the rest was cooked up by artist Thomas Nast and the advertising executives at a popular fizzy drink manufacturer (who need not be named). In other words, the modern Santa Claus is an American confection.
I've just written about my feelings towards the festive season for Spiral Earth so I shan't repeat them here, but it seems to me that everything that is wrong with Christmas is encapsulated by Santa: the consumption, the excess, the mad rush at a time when we should be still, the shmaltz and pester-power, the pretence that this is all somehow magic.
No wonder people like me need Santa to be something else, something genuinely rooted in the myths and traditions of what is an ancient midwinter festival, one that exists not to sell us stuff, but to heave body and soul through the dark days ahead. If Graves had dug just a little deeper in his quest to find re-enchantment he would have realised that he didn't need to invent a spurious shamanic tradition for Santa: he could just have drawn attention to the English figure that Santa superceded and who is more than fit for purpose - Father Christmas.
According to Hutton, people began to personify Christmas here in the seventeenth century (that's tradition aplenty). There was always something slightly unruly about Sir, Lord or Father Christmas, concerned as he was with feasting, merry-making and adult concerns. As such he appears in various seventeenth century masques and still, today, in Mummers Plays. This photo doesn't depict Father Christmas, but you get the idea...
In my imagination Father Christmas becomes a swarthy figure, crowned with holly, mistletoe and yew, carrying a double-headed axe (with which to sort out Gawain) and a flagon of magic winter solstice brew. No presents. No mad rushing about trying to meet the insatiable demands of children. No ersatz gestures. Just an ancient figure with a story or two, hoying us through the night with a fart, a joke and a twinkle in his eye. High time, then, that we rid ourselves of Santa, the gaudy imposter, and bring back the true spirit of Christmas.
And on that note, have yourselves a happy Yule. Whatever you do, may it work it's ancient magic upon you. Thank you for reading, and I'll be back in the new year for more. See you then.
But while researching Shroom, I discovered something interesting: Santa Claus and Father Christmas are not the same figure at all (see Ronald Hutton's The Stations of the Sun). Saint Nicholas, and the tradition of leaving presents for children on Saint Nicholas' eve, arrived in America with the Dutch, at their colony on Manhatten island. By the time New Amsterdam had become New York, Saint Nicholas had been quite forgotten, that is until he was revived by Washington Irving who transplanted the saint's traditions to Christmas Eve.
Irving inspired others. Most of the imagery associated with Santa (flying reindeer, chimneys and all) comes from one subsequent source, Clement Clark Moore's saccharine poem T'was the night before Christmas: the rest was cooked up by artist Thomas Nast and the advertising executives at a popular fizzy drink manufacturer (who need not be named). In other words, the modern Santa Claus is an American confection.
I've just written about my feelings towards the festive season for Spiral Earth so I shan't repeat them here, but it seems to me that everything that is wrong with Christmas is encapsulated by Santa: the consumption, the excess, the mad rush at a time when we should be still, the shmaltz and pester-power, the pretence that this is all somehow magic.
No wonder people like me need Santa to be something else, something genuinely rooted in the myths and traditions of what is an ancient midwinter festival, one that exists not to sell us stuff, but to heave body and soul through the dark days ahead. If Graves had dug just a little deeper in his quest to find re-enchantment he would have realised that he didn't need to invent a spurious shamanic tradition for Santa: he could just have drawn attention to the English figure that Santa superceded and who is more than fit for purpose - Father Christmas.
According to Hutton, people began to personify Christmas here in the seventeenth century (that's tradition aplenty). There was always something slightly unruly about Sir, Lord or Father Christmas, concerned as he was with feasting, merry-making and adult concerns. As such he appears in various seventeenth century masques and still, today, in Mummers Plays. This photo doesn't depict Father Christmas, but you get the idea...
In my imagination Father Christmas becomes a swarthy figure, crowned with holly, mistletoe and yew, carrying a double-headed axe (with which to sort out Gawain) and a flagon of magic winter solstice brew. No presents. No mad rushing about trying to meet the insatiable demands of children. No ersatz gestures. Just an ancient figure with a story or two, hoying us through the night with a fart, a joke and a twinkle in his eye. High time, then, that we rid ourselves of Santa, the gaudy imposter, and bring back the true spirit of Christmas.
And on that note, have yourselves a happy Yule. Whatever you do, may it work it's ancient magic upon you. Thank you for reading, and I'll be back in the new year for more. See you then.
Tuesday, 13 December 2011
Time machine
On our respective eighth birthdays my father bought me and my brother a camera each, a Kodak Instamatic (we were at that squabblesome age where all presents had to be identical). Here's a photo taken by my brother of me with my parents, somewhere on Dartmoor.
And here's one of the first photos I ever took, of Sandy our new labrador puppy, back in 1976. I know it's 1976 because that was the year of the drought and you can see how dry the ground is.
I still have the camera and for some reason or other I turned it out earlier this autumn.
Imagine my surprise when I discovered there was still a half-finished film inside. I had no idea what could be on it. And then I found out that it's still possible to get film processed, at a price, so we finished it off and took it to the printers.
This is the first picture I saw when I opened the envelope, and immediately I knew where I was.
The year was 1986. I was eighteen and had just left school. This is Susannah, my girlfriend at the time. It was early autumn and we were stomping around the fields behind my childhood home in Devon. Gap years meant we went our separate ways and I haven't seen her since (if you're reading this Susannah - hallo! I hope life did you well).
Looking over my shoulder, the shop assistant was most apologetic about the print quality. "There's dust on the lens, see. It would all look better in black and white." I smiled and said nothing. For me it's the random effects of light, age and chemistry that make these images so compelling.
Here's Susannah again, with our house behind her. Sandy died after eating poison, so that's Pip you can see in the bottom right.
We must have gone to the legendary Friday market in hippy hangout Totnes (a stronger contender for Goblin Market you'll be hard put to find) for here's a character who used to wander round with a parrot on his shoulder (and a streak of guano down his back). Someone told me he's dead now. The jangled colours make him look like a ghost.
Fast forward twenty five years and I am back on Dartmoor, but married now, another chapter of the same story laid out on a single papyral roll of film.
We take photos to help us remember, precisely because our memory is not photographic. It can't be trusted. Colours fade. Events blur. Timings become uncertain (I had quite forgotten that autumn day with Susannah - maybe it was our last together?).
But even photos, with their uncanny ability to freeze time, make ghosts of us all. We are already shades.
And here's one of the first photos I ever took, of Sandy our new labrador puppy, back in 1976. I know it's 1976 because that was the year of the drought and you can see how dry the ground is.
I still have the camera and for some reason or other I turned it out earlier this autumn.
Imagine my surprise when I discovered there was still a half-finished film inside. I had no idea what could be on it. And then I found out that it's still possible to get film processed, at a price, so we finished it off and took it to the printers.
This is the first picture I saw when I opened the envelope, and immediately I knew where I was.
The year was 1986. I was eighteen and had just left school. This is Susannah, my girlfriend at the time. It was early autumn and we were stomping around the fields behind my childhood home in Devon. Gap years meant we went our separate ways and I haven't seen her since (if you're reading this Susannah - hallo! I hope life did you well).
Looking over my shoulder, the shop assistant was most apologetic about the print quality. "There's dust on the lens, see. It would all look better in black and white." I smiled and said nothing. For me it's the random effects of light, age and chemistry that make these images so compelling.
Here's Susannah again, with our house behind her. Sandy died after eating poison, so that's Pip you can see in the bottom right.
We must have gone to the legendary Friday market in hippy hangout Totnes (a stronger contender for Goblin Market you'll be hard put to find) for here's a character who used to wander round with a parrot on his shoulder (and a streak of guano down his back). Someone told me he's dead now. The jangled colours make him look like a ghost.
Fast forward twenty five years and I am back on Dartmoor, but married now, another chapter of the same story laid out on a single papyral roll of film.
We take photos to help us remember, precisely because our memory is not photographic. It can't be trusted. Colours fade. Events blur. Timings become uncertain (I had quite forgotten that autumn day with Susannah - maybe it was our last together?).
But even photos, with their uncanny ability to freeze time, make ghosts of us all. We are already shades.
Friday, 9 December 2011
Evolution of a classic
I was excited after our recent Wod gig in North Wootton when Mike York played me some Turkish sipsi music. The sipsi is a small reedpipe, played using circular breathing, with a wild and thrilling sound. I was immediately captivated by the lumpy nine-time rhythms and mind-boggling technique.
On its own the sipsi can sound a bit naked, which is why it is usually accompanied by other instruments, but this got me thinking about the evolution of the bagpipe. Reedpipes are found all across Europe and the near East, from the Welsh pibgorn to the Rajasthan pungi, and though known in Antiquity are probably much older.
One solution to the thinness of the sound is to play two pipes together. The slight discrepancies in tuning create a chorus effect that is a bit unnerving.
The other possibility is to add a drone pipe, one that plays a constant note and which grounds the melodies and improvisations. The instrument now has its own accompaniment.
While blowing gives you greater control, and means you can gain extra notes in the upper register or use the tongue to produce articulation, it's not very pleasant having two long reeds in your mouth. I wonder who the genius was who, looking at the animal skins used for carrying water and wine, realised they could be used with the reedpipe to create the necessary reservoir of air.
This is not the instrument of Apollo, but of Marsyas the satyr. It's for making us dance, inspiring us to ecstacy with repetitive rhythms, percussive melodies and wonky temperaments.
All these pipes use a single reed, and single-reed pipes are still found in Eastern Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, Sweden and Wales.
But the final development was the double-reed and the discovery of how to drill out conically-bored chanters. This was probably an Arab innovation.
Thus it was that the double-reeded bagpipe, as we know it in the West, spread up through Western Europe in the Middle Ages, perhaps from Islamic Spain or brought back with crusaders.
It's the kind I play. I love the instrument's ancientness. It's part of the pleasure it brings.
On its own the sipsi can sound a bit naked, which is why it is usually accompanied by other instruments, but this got me thinking about the evolution of the bagpipe. Reedpipes are found all across Europe and the near East, from the Welsh pibgorn to the Rajasthan pungi, and though known in Antiquity are probably much older.
One solution to the thinness of the sound is to play two pipes together. The slight discrepancies in tuning create a chorus effect that is a bit unnerving.
The other possibility is to add a drone pipe, one that plays a constant note and which grounds the melodies and improvisations. The instrument now has its own accompaniment.
While blowing gives you greater control, and means you can gain extra notes in the upper register or use the tongue to produce articulation, it's not very pleasant having two long reeds in your mouth. I wonder who the genius was who, looking at the animal skins used for carrying water and wine, realised they could be used with the reedpipe to create the necessary reservoir of air.
This is not the instrument of Apollo, but of Marsyas the satyr. It's for making us dance, inspiring us to ecstacy with repetitive rhythms, percussive melodies and wonky temperaments.
All these pipes use a single reed, and single-reed pipes are still found in Eastern Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, Sweden and Wales.
But the final development was the double-reed and the discovery of how to drill out conically-bored chanters. This was probably an Arab innovation.
Thus it was that the double-reeded bagpipe, as we know it in the West, spread up through Western Europe in the Middle Ages, perhaps from Islamic Spain or brought back with crusaders.
It's the kind I play. I love the instrument's ancientness. It's part of the pleasure it brings.