Sunday 19 February 2017

Fishe or Fowle

I saw a recommendation for a CD on Twitter a while ago, and it sounded interesting enough for me to order the CD.
It's traditional music at its finest, performed by Kate Fletcher and Corwen Broch, on a variety of interesting and obscure instruments such as the Kravik lyre, Trossingen lyre, Saxon lyre, the slovisha gusli (whatever that might be!), Welsh crwth and pibgorn, bagpipes and more. And some fine singing as well. They even include a list of the instrument makers who made the instruments used on the CD - and in the list of people they thank, they include "the trees and animals whose dead bodies made our instruments".
There are two CDs in the sleeve. The first has a variety of songs such as The Seal-Woman's Sea-Joy and other songs about seal-folk, the Song of the Travelling Fairies, and the title track Fishe or Fowle - a song about shape shifting.
The second CD is one long epic The Play o'de Lathie Odivere, sung once with musical accompaniment and once without. The song was first collected in the Orkneys in the 1800s, but the tune was collected in 1938 in Orkney by Professor Otto Andersson of Finland.
It's a quite magical album - it certainly transported me to another world while I was listening - and it can be found at www.ancientmusic.co.uk

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