The Salmon are Leaping

Yesterday we walked down to the River Teign to watch the salmon returning to their traditional spawning waters, something we'd never seen before. The drama comes from their having to get past obstacles like this:

The photo doesn't really convey the height of the salmon-leap, nor the sheer weight of water pouring over it, but it's breathtaking to see the fish leaping out of such a torrent. It seems impossible that any make it up and over but somehow they do. Apparently they need the river to be in flood else they have nothing to swim against.

It was also rather wonderful to see how many people went just to witness this natural annual spectacle. In other cultures I suppose there'd be a festival of some kind, but here we did it the English way, sitting quietly without fuss or bother.

I've heard it said that in some American Indigenous cultures the salmon symbolises the need to return home to rejuvenate, a story I can quite relate to having come home to Devon for exactly that reason. In the Druid tradition, the salmon symbolises wisdom, that is to say intuitive wisdom rather than book-learning. But I think the salmon deserves recognition, and a toast, for its sheer bloody-minded determination, for persisting against the odds.

Blowzabella

Back when I was an undergraduate in the late eighties, my friend Chris made me compilation tapes from his vast vinyl collection of psych, prog, folk and other assorted weirdness. That's how I discovered Blowzabella.

Named after a seventeenth century English dance tune, Blowzabella played a mix of English, French and Balkan tunes with characteristic gusto and relish on instruments like the hurdy-gurdy and the bagpipes, instruments that in England at least had been largely forgotten. Though never fully embraced by the English folk establishment their influence has been immense.

For instance, they took a major role in reviving those instruments in the UK. Founder member Jon Swayne went on to become an internationally acclaimed pipe-maker, known especially for his English Border pipes (or English Half-Longs).

Many of the band's compositions became session standards, played in Britain, Germany, Holland, France and America: tunes like The Man in a Brown Hat, the Motorway Mazurka, the Rose of Raby and so on.

Their popularity abroad is such that when in 2003 they played a three-hour, headline set at Saint Chartier in France, the crowd was so large the organisers had to pull up the dance floor to make room. By the end of the gig there was so much dust in the air you could barely see the band.


But most importantly, I think, they helped reignite interest not only in traditional dance-music but also in drone-music more generally. In 1987 Jon Swayne wrote presciently that:

'a reassessment is taking place, whether conscious or unconscious, of the values symbolised by the forces of Dionysus/Bacchus representing irrationality, chaos, the power of the inner feminine; these are rising against the values of Apollo, the upward-striving play of reason and intellect, masculine control, the cool music of the spheres, which have help sway for two thousand years.'


That reassessment is still underway.

The extraordinary thing is that after thirty-five years on the margins of British folk, in which they've suffered the usual trials and tribulations of any long-lived and independent band, they're still going strong, still playing to sell-out audiences, still knocking out the killer tunes.

I certainly owe them a lot for I wouldn't be a musician or a piper without them. Much of my repertoire comes from their albums. My pipes were made by Jon and, indeed, I studied technique with him for a couple of years when I lived in Bristol. It was therefore a great honour and privilege to be asked to play a tune with them in Exeter on their recent tour. Thanks guys.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, surely now it's time for their lifetime achievement award?

Mosaik

Regular readers will remember that a few posts ago I shared a video from Polish band Mosaik. Their mix of indigenous Slavic folk with Eastern and medieval influences seems to have hit the spot for a number of you have been raving about them. Here's the video again in case you missed it.

I've just discovered that their next album is already recorded but they need to crowd-source the money to put it into production. Supporting the album couldn't be easier - just go here - but best to use a browser like Chrome that automatically translates the Polish for you. As I write there's just under a month left but they still have a way to go, so go on, give them some pennies! 75zl is about £20, for which you get the album and a t-shirt - bargain, I'd say.

Meanwhile, here are their two promo videos, the first a time-lapse sequence of them sorting out their studio, the second them playing in the fields as a huge thunder storm looms. Cracking stuff.