Mike Jenkins - Welsh Poet & Author
  • Mike's Blog
  • New Book!
  • About Mike
  • Contact
  • What's the point?
  • The Climbing Tree
  • The Fugitive Three
  • Publications
  • Red Poets

TO THE SOUND COUNTRY

3/4/2016

0 Comments

 
Picture
   If I could take one thing with me (apart from certain people and, of course , guacamole!), it would surely be music.
   My good friend the Bartzman could provide the perfect soundtrack : enough songs to last infinity ( well, nearly).
   As an atheist, all this is pure fantasy.
   One of my greatest regrets is not learning a musical instrument while I was in school.
  In Primary the whole year group were divided up between 'recorders' and 'harmonicas' and ironically ( because I do play a bit of blues harmonica when drunk enough) I was chosen for the recorder.
   I really enjoyed playing in our mass ensembles, singing in school productions and carol concerts and especially round the piano in music lessons, which concentrated on folk songs.
   Today - with schools being exam factories - music , together with drama and art, is peripheral. A tragic state of affairs in a 'gwlad o chantorion'/ a nation of singers.
   In Grammar School I joined the choir and, till my voice broke, was a bit of an Aled Jones ( without the recording contract!). Once I'd become a shaving baritone I re-joined and loved the school's annual carol-singing door-to-door.
   At Uni I found the choir intimidating and soon gave up. Everyone sat down with a manuscript and I couldn't read music. We ploughed through Brahms'   'Requiem'  very mechanically.
   It wasn't till I picked up my friend Scouse Pete's 'gob-iron' and blew away till I could bend notes that I wanted to make music again.
   I never went to a music lesson outside school. When I was only six my mother suggested the piano and I emphatically refused. She never pursued it.
  My wife used to teach piano so maybe when she retires she'll teach me.....though my stubby hands do not auger well.
   My passion for music has always been a restless search for the fresh, exciting, different.
   It can be like discovering a new territory and then saying to anyone who'll pay attention - 'Hey, you gotta listen to this! It's something else!'
   It doesn't always work. 
   Some have dismissed Tom Waits as a growler and Future of the Left as dogmatically political just because of their name.
   So it  was interesting to read an interview with my latest enthusiasm , Julia Holter from California who, like John Cale before her, had to move away from her formal training as a pianist and into the freer form of singer-songwriter.
  Though she's obviously a highly talented pianist and keyboard-player this is never uppermost in her songs in the way Cale's viola is part of so much Velvet Underground.
   I have to admit that I was wary of Holter at first.
   In articles, she tended to be associated with fellow quirky Californian Joanna Newsome, and though I do like the harp-playing of the latter, I find her vocals rather annoying and her lyrics often pretentious.
   I can't speak with authority about Holter's previous, more experimental , albums, but her latest one 'Have Me In Your Wilderness' is exceptional. It struck me as much as Cohen's first album and Sufjan's 'Illinoise'.
   Her music combines jazz, classical, folk and some rock influences without deliberation and , in that way, reminds me of my other album of last year 'Everyone Was A Bird' by Grasscut.
   She cites Robert Wyatt as an influence and , like Wyatt, her songs never follow conventions: there are few choruses, rhymes and she uses the spoken word tellingly at times.
   Though many songs appear lyrical, this is misleading.
   Holter insists her songs tell stories from a variety of viewpoints and - in an age of relentlessly confessional singer-songwriters - this is so beguiling.
  Yet  unlike most by Peter Gabriel and Randy Newman ( two others who use many persona) she is intimate and mysterious.
   Swirling around in my head at present is her curious song 'Betsy on the Roof' with the nearest she gets to a chorus and the line 'Uh-oh, she said, uh-oh' sung in Kate Bushy-fashion.
   Things are left unexplained in this song and that is what's poetic about her lyrics.
   It draws you in, sets a scene, suggests characters, yet never ends in resolution.   
   Is Betsy a cat, woman in a dream, or a girl on the edge of madness?
   Holter can vary moods radically, for instance between the jaunty wit of 'Everytime Boots' and brooding darkness of 'Night Song' (closest she gets to Cohen).
   She shows how music is evolving in an intriguing manner. Of course, classically-trained musicians have transformed themselves before into rock and singer-songwriters  ; Cymru's own Cale the prime example.
   Yet. when you look at the likes of Sufjan Stevens and Grasscut it seems as if folk, electronica, jazz, classical and rock are gradually  matamorphosing into an new art-form which is no longer a fusion but a 'place' beyond boundaries.
   Much as I love poetry and novels, there are very few I'd return to again and again as I do with albums like this one, a sound country with rivers of strings, wind's percussion and voice somewhere out to sea.

   I wrote this poem after listening to Holter's 'Have You In My Wilderness'....... 


                                 TO  THE  SOUND  COUNTRY

When I leave
take me to the sound country,
a boat burning
in the middle of the sea.


Washed up on the shore ;
let the woman
stranded on the island
find what's left of me.


Let her make music,
though berries and water are scarce,
drumming wood with bones,
curious xylophone teeth.


Let the wind sing ashes
strewn along the sand
and she in harmony,
as gulls swoop and pick.


Let her voice know fire
and raise up smoke
to warm her nights
till the sun startles her awake. 
    
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.



    Archives

    November 2019
    September 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    August 2011
    July 2011
    June 2011
    May 2011
    April 2011
    March 2011
    February 2011
    January 2011
    December 2010
    November 2010
    October 2010
    September 2010
    August 2010
    July 2010
    June 2010
    May 2010
    April 2010
    March 2010
    February 2010
    January 2010
    December 2009
    November 2009
    October 2009
    September 2009
    August 2009
    July 2009
    June 2009

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
Photos used under Creative Commons from johnharveypegg, Dai Lygad, joncandy, victoriapeckham, David Holt London, aeneastudio, fromthevalleys-, Metro Centric, andymag, David Bergin Photography, villunderlondon, @markheybo, joncandy, Martin Pettitt, Between the Shadows, joncandy, johnkell, olivia.barrie, villunderlondon, Lake Worth, MittenStatePhototog, frankieleon, robynejay, joncandy, mcaretaker, Thomas Leuthard, Knight Foundation, joncandy, Joybot, brownpau, Iburiedpaul, villunderlondon, amit_gaur, abegum, simonw92, beeveephoto, Aislinn Ritchie, Shannon Green Photography, joncandy, Nick J Webb, Vish Menon, AberCJ, gcoldironjr2003, joncandy, World Can't Wait, jonl1973, Watt_Dabney, petejam70, Kerndav, MJ Klaver, joncandy, Daquella manera, spratt504, joncandy, ashleigh290, Glyn Lowe Photoworks., afanatochka, r.nial.bradshaw, themendingnews, rikkis_refuge, Matthew Straubmuller, joncandy, onnola, final gather, funktionhouse, marioanima, joncandy, Dai Lygad, joncandy, Guttorm Flatabø, brittreints, garryknight, villunderlondon, wonker, Martin Pettitt, joncandy, tnarik, AJC1, simonw92, wardyboy400, joncandy, Bombardier, joncandy, Cargo Cult, joncandy, joncandy, SeanOConnor2010, Feral78, comedy_nose, Abode of Chaos, mkairishstudies, joncandy, avail, Jörg Weingrill, Gwydion M. Williams, Leshaines123, KiltBear, eisenbahner, Capt' Gorgeous, Francis Storr, New Chemical History, Matthew Black, jc.winkler, Gwenael Kere, Karen Roe