And also, perhaps, we were a little afeared of the London greyness.

But we were invited to sing, and present ourselves and our doings, to a number of high-powered Folk Industry Executives. We are glad such people exist, for we’d like to win some support for our project and our future plans, and we need to make some good allies. And of course, folk in suits are still just folk, and deserve a good sing-song as much as the next bunch…

So this is the story of our London walk, which is the first decent jaunt we’ve made with Holly dog.

Recordings and a little video can be found below…

In inevitable fashion, sundry preparations waylaid us. So on the friday before the gig, we finally stepped out…

We took the Pilgrims’ Way, aka the North Downs Way, from where it met the village of Chilham. This is the third time we’ve trod these paths going West, and they are a mixture of incredibly easy and very tricky. Certain points seem to roll gently downhill for miles, while other parts traverse the sloped edge of a muddy hill, each step forward sliding two sideways. So empty lanes were occasionally taken, instead of the wigglier hillside moments.

Spring is here, and this gave us great comfort. Vetch found its way into our sandwiches, and nettles and cleavers and chickweed into our cookpot.

We walked on past Lenham, where the great chalk cross is cut into the hillside. As we sat in rest, the M20 roared its dominance over the landscape. It is very full, and very rapid.

Walking this way, we remembered the strange shifts of consciousness that a long walk gives. Sometimes we focussed on each other, on conversation and companionship. Sometimes we watched the ground move beneath our feet. Other times we followed the shifting trees and hedges, and other times again, our eyes were fixed on the furthest horizon. We also found ourselves occasionally walking through an internalized landscape of small aches. Walking makes the world expand, and contract.

The first night we spent in woods near Jack Cade’s hole, where the leader of the (failed) 1450 rebellion hid, after Cade led his ‘battallions’ of ‘peasants’ to complain about the treatment of the poor in Britain.

Unlike the 1381 uprising, looting was rife once the common folk reached London. The King’s favourite officers were killed, their heads lopped off, and put on poles (and made to kiss one another, apparently). Just like 1381, the rebellion was routed, its followers ran away in disarray, and the leaders, including Cade (also named Jack Amend-All), were rounded up and killed. So feudal life in Britain carried on…

The woods were very lumpy, with no convenient bundles of fern to make mattresses. They were also brambled to the max. We were glad we carried no delicate tents nor blow-up mattresses. Our bones, we figure, must have been softened by recent house-dwelling. Holly dog got cold in the heavy wind (which brought the rain in too) and she was forced to retire to within the limited confines of Will’s bivi bag halfway through the night. She needs her own travel home…

On day 2 we crossed some busy roads, and found an acoustic hotspot.

This was an underpass with a fantastic acoustic, although with much background noise and horrible air. Here are two recordings we made:

The Colour of Amber

The Burning of Auchidoon

Soon after we met Kits Coty Stone, a dolmen-like structure, estimated at 6000 years old. A nasty spiky cage surrounds it, and we were foiled from sleeping in its perfect shelter.

Bluebell hill we met sunset, and rested in the Robin Hood pub, where a strangely uptight family ordered huge plates of food but ate almost none of it. Our eyes bulged, and thankfully the landlady agreed that a ‘doggy’ bag could be provided. So all 3 of us enjoyed steak, bacon, and chicken for breakfast, after a second lumpy night in the woods. We remembered again how important it is to find a place to sleep before resting in the pub, and before darkness falls. And we remembered, in the chilly winds of after-dark, how glad we both were to have a companion with whom to share these challenges and understandings. Alone, this journey would be perhaps more heroic, but lots less fun.

Day 3 we crossed the Medway at Rochester, the only real option. There ought to be ferry-folk, or smaller footbridges. The busy road across half-killed us, our energy boxes suddenly feeling horrendously empty.

Relief was palpable as we climbed the hill away, and found cool airy woods, which led to the fine sunday pub in Luddesdown. Here the landlord gave us an open invitation to his woods in Bexley, and after singing we sold a CD to pay for our sunday lunch, a most necessary luxury…

Then we walked on through Foxenden and Meopham, down the Shipley Hills Road, where we enjoyed such challenges as a 14 year old driving a peugeot really fast.

The few people we met on the path, we greeted happily, but found ourselves slow to offer songs. After but 2 days walking, this is no surprise, but it was still a disappointment, and we looked forward to a time, sure to be soon coming were we to continue walking, where every meeting comes with a song.

As dark fell, we vowed to continue, and walked through Halling, where the air-quality became noticeably poorer. London approached us…

Darkness got thicker, when we discerned a man with a huge dog, whose face we could not see, from whom we asked directions. “Do you know where the church is?” Ed asked. Silence was the reply. “We’re trying to find the pub” ventured Will. “Righto, it’s just over this field” came the answer.

So we walked to Hartley, where we found an almost empty pub who welcomed dogs, and took the opportunity to sing and meet. Although but 2 days from our home, this place was utterly unknown to us. The dialect was also very different. Promises of “24 owls” had us totally confused, and we looked and listened in vain, till we noticed the selection of 24 ales…

A chap called Steve, who told us he liked only dance music (“like everyone else…drum n bass and dub-step”), introduced us (when the pub got lively) to the people, and corralled us an audience. He told us he had no interest in folk music, but…”your journey is brilliant. You should make a video every day, put it on YouTube. Everyone would watch it. Trust me…i’m a sign!”

We told him we would take his words quite literally. We met a sign in Hartley. “But why did you come here?” everyone asked. “You’re right on the path to London” we explained, “you’re the main route!”. They were surprised, and proud too.

It got late, when we met a very drunken man called Uzi, who by introduction had turned to Ed and said “I f****g hate hippies”. It took a long while to bring him round to talk with us, Ed’s goodwork being largely repsonsible. Hugs and handshakes followed, and we rolled off.

5 more miles after dark took us to South Darenth, where our map told us (in gothic writing) of St John’s Jerusalem, a National Trust property. We assumed the ruins of a Knights Hospitallers castle, or chapel, who would never begrudge pilgrims, so we went looking. This ancient group are the ancestors of the same gang who provide free ambulances at public events.

But instead of a handy ruined wall, we found instead a manor house with cars parked outside, essentially a private residence. But the hour being late, the land behind us being wet and the land before us urban, we lay low in their parkland, and took our little sleep. It is not the best feeling, to know you are sleeping where you’re probably not welcome. But between the hours of midnight and 6:30, no-one ever complains. So we took the sleep we could.

Sure enough, at 6 in the morning the house labrador was let out, he smelt us, and started barking with heavy rhythmic insistence; so we quietly and tiredly down-tarped and scarpered.

Dartford was our morning treat, some 3 miles north, awaiting us once we’d passed beneath the M25. This was like stepping through a portal to Mordor,  where the litter was strewn to the very tree-tops, and living trees were scarred with fire, daubed with futile paint, churned up and made foul. Huge pipes pumped unknown fluids into the suffering stream of the Darent, and we stopped to consider how recently this river path would have been idyllic and delightful, and how extreme 100 years of change has been on England. But too tired to lament too deeply, we headed in for breakfast.

As we crossed the lakes, fruit of massive 1920s quarrying, we met a drunken man, red-capped vodka bottle dangling from his pocket. He slurringly asked us what on earth we were doing. We told him, and he became our town-guide, taking us to the cheapest cafe in town, and afterwards taking us to his house for tea and rest. He even let us use his shower, which helped bones and muscles considerably.

An ex-Royal Marine Commando, he had served in Northern Ireland and Cypress. He was court-martialled for the theft of 1800 rounds of 9mm ammunition, for use with the Colt 45s which many soldiers foraged from the confiscated weapons thrown down garbage shutes of blocks of flats, while the barricades were being cleared in 1973.

He called us scholars, and asked why we were sleeping outside when we could get proper jobs, and make real money. We explained our reasoning, which he grudgingly accepted. He then asked us to write a character reference for his upcoming court-case, for verbal assault. We did so.

Then he walked us to the right path, which would have taken us a long time, and much getting lost, to find. Weeping, he bid us farewell. As he walked away, a red kite flew from the sky and screamed the parting…

We were now tired, but London was ahead, and there would be no more opportunities to surreptitiously sleep the night. So we gritted our teeth, held our noses, and walked on.

Past Cray marshes, we met the Thames, and fields gave way to the urbanity of Erith. Poo was literally everywhere, on each bench and pavement, an incredible ring of excrement on the very edge of London. Next came massive industrial build-up, with about 8 miles of various sewage treatment, from the Victorian to the ultra-modern.

Our singular hope for a sleeping option was a high-fenced dump, on the edge of Belmarsh prison. Was this once a Beautiful Marsh, as the name suggested? We did consider trying to break in, but it looked little better than landfill, and so we thought better. By now, bones were aching from the concrete underfoot, and every rest we took needed 5 minutes of hobbling to regain momentum.

At last we found Woolwich, and got cold. A few phone calls, and we found our way to New Cross, where we stayed in the only purpose built housing co-operative in London, a wonderful community.

Morning, after a most welcome lie-in, we walked to the Cutty Sark, and Greenwich maritime museum.

We met a lady called Tharini, who had contacted us through the website, and walked with her along the Thames path, all the way into the heart of London.

We were not sure why we made this arrangement to meet and walk the last few miles with a stranger, but we were both slightly fractious and sad with each other, Ed from low energy, and Will from painful feet. Tharini, we are pleased to say, brought us right back to good companionship, an effect that some people seem able to summon almost without meaning to.

At Monument, we were arrived in the very heart of London. So beside the river, outside a pub called the Banker, we took our rest, and called ourselves finished. We had walked to London, and it was not so very difficult at all.

Here we also made our final recordings of the journey:

Lasses From Banyan

Last Verse Ryb and Avon (with whistler at end)

The Jolly Robber

This post is being written in the space between this arrival and our concert, the purpose of the journey. So we must go and practice. (edit – made the concert with 4 minutes to spare before our slot…)

Thankyou. Good evening. and Cheerio.

We hope to make things easier for people interested mainly in the music we make.

For us, the songs we sing are crucially aligned to our movement through landscape. The old songs, in their simplest conception, are creative responses of people to life in place.

As such, an old song lives best in its place of birth, to be released spontaneously within the echoes of its original expression, to turn from history to breath, and meet ears.

That means live, unamplified, on the land, and to people…

But since this is only a website, and can only reproduce digitalized recordings, that’s all we can share with you, until we meet in person.

So if you want to hear everything the website has available, without having to trudge through writing and photographs, this page is for you.

(Press MORE for the songs…)

Songs of Ed and Will, and friends
Spenser the Rover, recorded in February 2009 for the ‘Songs’ album.

Albert Berry and the Coal, recorded in February 2009 for the ‘Songs’ album.

Will & Ed Podcast, recorded by the bakery boys in woods near Monmouth, July 09:

The Leaves of Life (Seven Virgins), singing down a 300ft well near Winchester, April 09:

Country Life, album out-takes, autumn and winter verses:

Ryb-an-avon, at a busk in Llandrindod Wells, December 2009 :

Grey Funnel Line underneath the aquaduct of dreams, with Ginger,winter 09/10:

Ramblings Interview on BBC Radio 4,  with Clare Balding, on the Wiltshire Downs, May 2009 :

Good Old Way, at an Easter church service in Radnorshire, 2010:

finishing Lord of the Dance, into 3 Drunken Maidens, a gig at the Fforest Inn, Llandegley, April 2010:

High Barbary, sung in the woods, winter 2009 :

O Lord Hear my Prayer, in Michelmersh church with Susie and Ayla, May 09:

Parting Glass, us with Sam Lee in a rainy dome, 2009:

Husband’s Courage, album out-take, last verse:

Fare thee well lovely Nancy, sung around a fire on the South Downs, April 09:

Turtle Dove, sung by Ayla’s mum Annette on the South Downs, April 09:

Supper Songs

recorded summer 2008 with Ed,Will and Ginger, our first crack at studio recording:

Harvest Song

Grey Funnel Line

Adieu Sweet Lovely Nancy

Diggers song

Fiddler’s Green

John Barleycorn

.

Drunken sailor with Ayla and Annette on the South Downs, April 09:

Drunken Sailor, actually drunk, October 2010:

Rage against the dying of the light, sung by Annette on the South Downs, April 09:

Radio feature, part of a series on characters from Kent, by Richard Dadd and Dan Fryer, the Bakery boys, for BBC Radio Kent, Monmouth, July 09:

Will’s silly song – Sebastien stan, and he really is very silly, February 2010:

Burning of Auchidoon, a gig at the Fforest Inn, Llandegley, April 2010:

My Husband’s Courage:

Good Old Way - beside the river, under the aquaduct with Ginge, winter 09/10:

Grey Funnel Line – Jamming in the echo, the aquaduct with Ginge, winter 09/10:

a final note at the aquaduct, with Ginge, winter 09/10:

Sound play at the aquaduct:

Introducing Elvis of Preseli, who played with us at the Fforest Inn:

Sam Lee

came out to see us in Wales, winter 2009/10, and here he is singing:

Van Dieman’s Land

Cherry Tree Carol

The Clydeswater

Robin Hood and the Pedlar

Gower Wassail

Henry Martin

On our next walk, of which we’ll speak soon, we’ll be focussing on video-making as a main method of sharing information.

So we thought it a good time to bring together all our disparate web videos, to make viewing them simpler.

Please enjoy these videos responsibly.

Press more to see them all:

Short Clips of London Walk

Ed and Will on BBC1 Secret Britain 2010

Keep Your Knives Sharp with Barney Spoon

A Stool by Ginger

Barney Spoon’s Wooden Spoon Tutorial part 1

Barney Spoon’s Wooden Spoon Tutorial part 2

Barney Spoon’s Wooden Spoon Tutorial part 3

Barney Spoon’s Wooden Spoon Tutorial part 4

Hopper, on culture and how to split hazel

Hopper, on hurdle-making

Our woodland thanks

Building a house in the woods

Arriving in Radnorshire woodlands

Sourdough bread making

Ayla gets born

An odd egg

April Snowfall

A slippery hitchhike in Radnorshire

Birch Sap is better water

Will finishes a big hurdle

Under the bridge, urban folks make their sounds

Welsh Elvis and the Kitchenettes

Our pal Ryan comes to Radnorshire

Welsh dog sledding

Animation of Ed Will and Ginger, by Ruth Herbert

Waking Up in Paxton Tower

Adieu sweet lovely Nancy

Because i believe

Avebury Midsummer Madness

Boy Scouts Ritual

Songs Sung while not walking

Playing ankle tap

A short documentary, RTS award winning, by Molly King

This post is all about another Paul Cummings, who we met in Avebury at midsummer last year.

HMP by Paul Cummings - Chalk Pastel 835x595 mm

“You reckon that’s pacified your Gods? Cos it ain’t pacified mine”.

Click to read more, and see all the pictures…

When we met him, Paul was a wild fellow, fresh from HMP, with head shaven and eyes-dark, dancing and roaring beside the fire. See him here.

Once he’d stopped trying to fight us, Paul became quite charming, and we enjoyed each anothers’ company greatly. He told us how hard it was to make art in prison, with no paint, and how he learned to use coffee granules, cigarette ash, jam and silver foil for his paintings.

“But it’s a nightmare trying to get silver-foil, though there’s loads of it, cos all the junkies want it. They’d peel it off my art if I let them.”

Other gen from Paul included prison “home”-brewing – an open carton of orange juice left by a radiator – or a loaf of bread hollowed out with sugar and water poured in the middle. Rough but effective, we’re told.

To the pictures: sorry it took so long to share them with you; the wait, we’re sure you’ll agree, is well-ended.

PS…to see a comparison between ‘our’ Paul Cummings and the very successful other one, click here. You can decide for yourself whether something’s topsyturvy…the pictures speak a thousand words…

PPS…Rumour has reached us that Paul is once more enjoying her Majesty’s hospitality. So to offer support, to attempt an exhibition, or to enquire after prints, email us here, and we’ll pass it on.

Running Hare by Paul Cummings - Coffee, tea, ash, toothpaste, pen 300x415 mm

Golden Eagle by Paul Cummings - Chalk Pastel 415x595 mm

Dark Wood by Paul Cummings - Coffee, tea, ash, toothpaste 600x1700 mm

Greyhound by Paul Cummings - Chalk Pastel 415x595 mm

Ron by Paul Cummings - Chalk Pastel 835x595 mm

Hare by Paul Cummings - Chalk Pastel 415x595 mm

Self Portrait by Paul Cummings - Coffee, tea, ash, toothpaste, pen 415x300 mm

Sun Wolf by Paul Cummings - Chalk Pastel 600x600 mm

Black Sun by Paul Cummings - Ash, toothpaste, pen 300x210 mm

Lydon by Paul Cummings - Chalk Pastel 595 x 410 mm

Urban Shaman by Paul Cummings - Chalk Pastel 835x595 mm

Forest Raven by Paul Cummings - Raven Coffee, tea, ash, toothpaste 300x415 mm

Sol Nigra by Paul Cummings - Coffee, tea, ash, toothpaste, pen, charcoal, silver foil 835x1200 mm

To read Paul’s descriptions of his art, click here.

as heard on BBC Oxford, boxing-day 2010

It is a study in soundscape, social history, and the multi-layered reality of space. It looks at the many-parted understandings of the road, and land surrounding it, through the eyes and experiences of walkers, singers, motorcyclists, steam-waggoners, and many more.

You can listen to the whole thing on Felix’ website, the Domestic Soundscape.

And here is a clip of our contributions to the show:

Please enjoy. And our thanks to Felix, who is, we should say, one of the best sock-knitters we’ve ever met.

It has been a short-to-medium while since we shared any information on this website. We have been off-target, waiting for tides to shift, and have found our previous expressive output a difficult standard to live upto.

The truth is, we took quite a bashing last winter, living in Welsh woods with our girls. Things fell apart, and we found we had no choice but to accumulate some character. Iindeed, it was fairly whacked into us.

While this was all a beautiful and unique opportunity to build a home, and learn about living outside in one place, it was also a terrible trial, for flimsy but razor-sharp personal reasons, and we found ourselves and each other very difficult companions.

O dear, poor walkers, singing a sad song now. Poor, poor, sorry singers, not walking so tall now. Yes, we felt very sorry for ourselves, and it has taken a good long low-lying fallow time to restore our strength in self and other.

But as far as we can tell, the job’s a good one, and we’re more ready than ever, to get going walking and singing soon after this winter thaws.

Between now and then we have to plan and record another album, and get a friendly dress-maker to make us good solid woolen walking clothes. We’re also winging for some organic longjohn manufacturers to sponsor us to the tune of free LJs. It really is fulltime rock and roll.

And we await inspiration as to where our next journey should tread. We figure we should be able to squeeze in 6 or 7 months walking next year; but from where to where? Your suggestions, we’d love to hear them. Tell us here.

Meanwhile, the other whole point of this post: the full archive page. Alaric, our friendly web miracle fellow, has made a page that succinctly lists all the articles up on this website, which makes it all far easier to browse, without falling into corners of no return.

So please take a look, and enjoy. WWW.AWALKAROUNDBRITAIN.COM/FULL-ARCHIVE

Or, just click on this LINK.

Stay warm this winter. Wear wool not cotton.

Thankyou. And cheerio for now.

will and ed.

The Songs We Sing

or, how we understand traditional music’s importance.

woodland winter songs

Traditional Numbers

We usually sing old songs, the ones with such deep history that no-one remembers who made them up. Throughout many eras of life on these islands, such songs have just tagged along, a mysterious but comforting part of existence. The sun came up, and the songs were there. No barcode proclaimed their origins. They belonged to no-one, or to everyone, to families, and tribes, as well as individual singers. Like the cliffs, valleys, birds and rivers, like the days of the week and the buildings all around, they were undeniable monuments of the landscape.

Till song collectors wrote them down, early archivists like Cecil Sharp and Baring Gould, these old songs were just a background hum to the rhythms of everyday life, so obvious they were almost unnoticeable. Like the English Elm, they drew attention only when they started to disappear.

It’s these ‘traditional’ songs that we love to sing. We sing them unaccompanied, without electric amplification, in two-part harmonies. That’s just me and Ed, on some drizzly back-street, with our bags stashed in a doorway, crooning a plough-song when everyone’s gone home.

background

Instruments and amps are hard to walk with, and pure voice is the oldest way to make music, with the least possible boundaries between the performer and the listener. Before the industrial age, instruments were specialized tools, crafted at great expense, unavailable to most folks. Of course, it’s a great aspect of modern life, worth celebrating, that strange instruments can be ordered with a few clicks.

But singing songs will always be free for everyone, the common pursuit, and as such, these traditional songs have been the soundtrack for real life all over Britain, for countless generations.

It can be dangerous to call the songs ‘folk’. This little word brings unwanted knee-jerk associations – stale ale, a muddy finger in one ear, and the twang of ancient rebellion seething beneath unruly forests of beard. This is misleading, because slightly true. What is certain, is that good songs are good songs, and if they have survived for hundreds of years, well they’re even better. They are not just silly, or funny, nor are they all ‘ral-dee-fiddle-o’. They address key issues, whose relevance doesn’t fade: love and social taboo, murder, the abuse of power and the perils of ignorance, the rich/poor divide, social injustice, and all possible complications of sex, death and farming.

The word ‘traditional’ is also unsatisfying. Let us be clear, this word does not mean a thing dead and gone. It signifies something that’s been around for a long time, and still continues. Traditions link the past and the future, they live in the present (or else they’re called antiquities), and they bring meaning to our continued existence on these Islands of Britain.

Song Fruit

Songs, like fruit, are delicious, enjoyable and sweet in the flesh of them, healthsome for performer and listener alike. But fruit are not just made for the pleasure of their flesh; they have an agenda all of their own. For fruit contain seeds, from which all future fruit shall spring. It is the seeds, not the fruit, that make new life, ensuring growth.

Just so with singing: each time you take in a song, not just to consume it, but to receive in your fertile depths, you’ll be ensuring the seed of song may adapt and survive. You will be hosting it in new soils and conditions, to guarantee its journey onwards.

By re-interpreting, invigorating, and sharing song-traditions, in the only available context (the here and now), songs are refreshed, and reborn as a modern configuration of meaningful associations. Songs are repositories of complex DNA. They replicate and evolve with each new-grown expression, while simultaneously retaining their core identity as a storage point of culture, information, history and knowledge.

Each new engendering of a song is a natural and unintentional hybridization of the originally learned version. Depending on the soil in which it is grown (the singer’s proclivities, voice, and influences), a new (but fundamentally similar) variant of ‘the song’ is created, which (if successful) becomes ‘the song’ itself.

in Bradford on Avon

We can carry the comparison further (which doesn’t mean we should, but we shall), in saying that recorded songs are like chilled, frozen or juiced fruit, a once-living thing that has undergone a process of stabilizing, preserving or homogenizing. Transported far from their home soils, there is necessarily a slow steady loss of original flavour, character, and fertility.

For recorded music always involves money. Expensive studio processes, skilled people, marketing and packaging, need cash repayments. But money introduced to musical transmission brings a new focus, and creates a less naive, more complex societal procedure. In this light, songs and music profit from their unavailability, keeping them in controlled channels.

We are trying to say that a recorded musical event is very different, in many ways, to a live spontaneous song sung in a village pub, or at home, by a mother to her child. Technically, it is the same song, thus the same thing. But the motivations, processes and the actual results are all very different. It’s a bit like walking and driving a car – you could say they are both varieties of travel, only at different speeds. But they too are vastly different events, like a tree and a table.

The Orchard at Large

The basic premise we’re peddling is that humans are gardeners, custodians of land and culture. That’s what our species is here to do – take care of other things, and create beauty. We are all part of the cultural landscape, and if we wish for our song-gardens to grow, we need to care for the songs that choose us as hosts, by singing them as often, as well, and to as many people as possible.

Llandeiloes Singing

The best way to make a song grow is to lovingly introduce it into your musical garden. Overheard on some wind, the seed is taken, planted, propagated, protected, and enjoyed. Then we, and our children, can enjoy the fruit onwards. So, we’re saying, if you want more good fruit bushes to grow, you must reward a really wonderful berry by pooing it outside somewhere, in good soil, and fair light. Don’t just wash its seeds away in Thos. Crapper’s flushing devices.

If this sounds strange, well it is only recently anything but utterly normal, right across the metaphor. For most of human time, on hearing a brilliant song, we’d have gone off singing it to friends and family. But today, the ‘normal’ behaviour is to take music inwards, to consume more and more of it on headphones, on mp3 and radio, and very rarely to spread it by raw analogue song output. We instead replicate perfect digital simulacrum of the same song, in the same way, by the same artists, passing recordings about, each in separate silent spaces, each imagining we are really there and the song is sung for us.

This is disempowering, and boring. It makes us punters, the entertained, rather than creators of culture. People (folk) make music. It is not an elite game, but is common as brambles and free as breath. But in our culture of industrial music consumption, output is most usually a perfect replica of the original, copied on disks for listening, but not singing. Like a banana plantation, every tree is a clone of the next.

gig

Of course, it’s still great to get bananas in England, even though they must be paid for, and cannot be found wild or grown. But there is a quality in native wild things, in songs that have been sung through human throats for generations, over those downloaded onto mp3 players. Wild food is undoubtedly stronger and more potent than its deviant cousins, the domesticated foodstuffs of mass monoculture.

Supermarket food is enslaved food, which grows solely by the will and technology of human owners. Wild food grows by its own self-motivation, by its ancestral expertise, by the same means as the first of its kind. Against all odds, in spite of all difficulty, it lives and thrives.

Just so, the value of wild-song, those old songs sung by people around you, right in front of you, is much greater than hearing something recorded on the radio, all complicated and polished, solid in its form, and seedless. Wild Song is the fundamental and original magical technology of music, available for anyone to use and enjoy, when and where they like.

As such, songs become valuable and exciting things. Holding and singing them makes you the direct carrier of a core tradition, and puts the song’s future in your own hands. Anyone can take part – and everyone does. Just by learning and singing an old song, you join the huge number of people who previously sung and changed and upheld the song. It is like suddenly being part of a new hereditary clan, and being given a whole new set of ancestors, who stretch into the past and future.

welsh botanic garden entry

The Long Journey Somewhere

Who knows why songs, fruit, traditions and people take such long paths, through so many constantly adapting forms? Who knows why some songs become lodged inside certain skulls, while others bounce off unwanted? They fall on ears, to settle, grow, and form new adaptations, to encode and cause further generative releases. In other places, they leave only an indent, the memory of a feeling, and nothing more.

Who knows where the song goes? Who knows what motivates a tree to make fruit? Is it a blind robotic impulse to survive, or is there some destination waiting ahead, a strange attractor set in an irresistible future? To create such delicious fruit, such unique and refreshing flavours, seems to indicate a tree’s passion and intelligence. And the same is true of songs. They seem to have an internal intelligence, a clever survival method and a destiny being pursued. The life of a song is very long, an unknowable journey of cultural osmosis. Who knows what paths a song has taken, before it reaches you? And yet – it has arrived here, in your head this morning, on your tongue this afternoon, obeying an internal impulse all of its own.

Songs move in mysterious ways. A big showy performance might bounce right off, while a passer-by’s hummed melody can haunt for years. Songs operate on levels we do not fully understand. How many times have you been thinking of a lyric, only to hear someone else start to sing it? Being born into an unknowable past, by mysterious people whose stories we cannot know, traditional songs have followed the most miraculous of paths to reach us today.

We are just their stepping stones, evolutionary moments in their greater development and life-cycle. We are their vehicles, and they use to continue and spread themselves. And every song is travelling on its own journey, toward the right time and place, when the right person will sing them, to achieve exactly the right thing.

Frampton Court Songs

How this may happen, the awaited destiny of the songs we sing, is of course entirely conjectural. History doesn’t write such things down. But the cumulative steps of destiny, the entire series of happenings that have caused the song to get where it is today, defy chance and coincidence. Despite such long odds, every song has passed such a process, step-by-step, right through hundreds of lives throughout every living moment of history.

And perhaps it will be you, holding the song at its great moment of release. That little number you’ve sung while washing up with for the last 10 years, is maybe just waiting for you to sing it out, give it breath, release it, and let it do its work. It may then effect another’s mind, with its deep soul magic, to change the world we live in. This is not mystic cherry-chat, but a solid nod to the mechanistic ‘cause and effect’ of cultural influence. A lament about fishermen, sung in the ears of a future executive planning-officer, could make a serious difference to the reality of life for coastal communities. A song can definitely change the world.

Please, then, take seriously the eating of fruit, and the receiving of traditions, and songs. Take them in well. Share them. Do not just consume one and demand another. Ensure they are growing well in the wild, and in your garden, till such boundaries are overrun. Be grateful for the joys that the old songs will provide throughout your life, so freely and so merrily.

And do not forget, that you yourself are the expression of deeds done before, like the apples, like the songs. You are the outcome so far, of every season’s growth and death, every pain, hope, passion and disaster that has occurred before you. You are the purpose, the result, of everything that has come before. We all are. All of us, alive, the freshest fruit of evolution, and each of us singing in the good old future.

We look forward, and hope to see you there.

]]> http://www.awalkaroundbritain.com/knowledge/culture/arts/the-songs-we-sing/feed/ 6 http://www.awalkaroundbritain.com/journey/video/songs/secret-britain http://www.awalkaroundbritain.com/journey/video/songs/secret-britain#comments Tue, 17 Aug 2010 18:09:42 +0000 Branching Arts http://www.awalkaroundbritain.com/ Sunday 15th August, the BBC broadcast the first in their new series, called Secret Britain.

Here is the clip. If you’d like to hear more about the filming, and the things left out, please press READ MORE.

The songs sung were: My Son John, Harvest Song, and Sorrows Away.The first 2 are available on the CD album, and the second may be on our next album (more said soon).

The show seemed to be not so much concerned with secrets, so much as ‘interesting’ things and places in Britain, pointing to and glancing at some fascinating layers of landscape and history.

The first episode was called ‘Crowded South’, and they asked us to come make a ‘postcard’ film on the South Downs. They didn’t mind Holly puppy being on stage too. We thought it a grand opportunity to talk more widely.

The day was very tiring, as every shot had to be taken from various angles, so that we appeared to have multiple cameras, when there was really just one.

The crew of 2, the cameraman and director, were very good at bringing information out of us. The director was ever so encouraging, in nodding and smiling, waiting for our answers. She reminded us of a really good primary-school teacher, always positive and encouraging, and we felt a sort-of early-school compulsion to volunteer the right answers, and win approval, which helped probably.

They were kind, it was the cameraman’s birthday, and they bought us lunch, and of course it was educational to find out the processes of making such a thing. They are hard-working people, and stayed out for hours longer than they get paid for.

Unfortunately, much of the good stuff was cut. We really feel the need to fill in the detail as to what did not make the final cut, as there is much more to this landscape than we edited to say. This is some of the info that didn’t make it in:

Stick-fighting at an ancient 5-way footpath junction, a hundred yards past Hampshire’ hollow-lanes;

Nature Plasters (greater plantain leaves chewed and applied to wounds, covered with intact leaves, and tied around with grasses – also exciting for children);

Silverweed sock stuffing sessions, to keep hot feet cool and blister-free;

Ghost-stories – we had stayed late in East Meon village on our last walk, talking with the manager of the pub. At about 1:30 am, having seen the church get locked at 8pm, we tried the main door anyway, on a whim. It swung open, and we were immedaitely struck by unseen presences, the certainty that something big, and powerful, was there in the dark. The font was all lit up in the moonlight, and was far more visilbe than it had been in murky daylight. We knew the font was a thousand years old, made of Tournai marble, a gift from William the Conqueror’s grandson. It showed Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, and their expulsion for being naughty. We saw the iron clasp on one side of the top, once a way of shutting the font, which was kept full of holy water, preserved with salt and maybe herbs (horsetail?). This water was apparently often stolen, by ‘black-magicians’, so a thick wooden board was attached to the iron clasp, and locked tight. When Puritans came to rule Britain, they deemed that there was no such thing as Balck Magic, so the covers were denounced as superstitious and ungodly nonsense, and removed. Anyway…we were inside the church, which should not have been possible, as we saw it getting locked. And the hackles on our necks were rising horribly, and we both felt the growth of panic, a fight or flight, screaming fear approaching fast…so we sang a song, called the Leaves of Life, the day being round Easter time, and the song surely suitable. Instantly calming, like butter to a burn, we crept off 5 minutes later, with a sense of peace won, and slept on the hill above the church. In the morning, the caretaker told us he had the only key, and it was locked when he got there in the morning, so he had no idea how it could have gotten unlocked between 8 pm and 8 am. So that was a story we told the tv people. But it did not make it onto the show;

There was also an obscure disused military complex (HMS Mercury), a building that’s technically a boat, at one point a top-secret communications centre, and now strangely desolate and tumbledown. We reckon there’s tunnels in them there hills…;

And East Meon itself, we told the camera, was once a hugely busy place, a thriving centre of trade. It was built in the middle ages in an early grid shape, indicating plans to expand it. A large population, good farming, an accessible river, and 6 water mills, made it a likely bet for growth. But it never happened, and a village it remained. Perhaps this is because of the Church, who owned the village for a long time, under the Bishopric of Winchester. It was once King Alfred’s village too. And it was also once the land of whoever lived on Old Winchester Hill, an iron age hillfort on the South Downs above. It was also once the land of the Bronze Age burial mound diggers, whose barrows are found within the hillfort, and even for the people of Neolithic times, whose oval barrow is the earliest sign of inhabitation in this area;

There was even the Sustainability Centre, arguably the most important living event in the area, with woodland burials, loads of courses and books and yurts and ecological work galore. There was a new Ben Law classroom just built, which we itched to go and see. But time, we were told, goes fast when filming…

None of this cool information could get put in. 2.5 minutes is not long, and the show was more about lovely images and quick hints, rather than the sharing of intense detail we had naiively anticipated. They had only an hour to cover a third of England. And we were just guests, it was not our party. So we were really grateful they let us on at all, and didn’t make us look too silly (as any editor could do). They even sent us a little card afterwards.

We were also pleased that the programme starred Simon Carley Smith, the canoeist at the start, who’s an old school friend of ours. So that was a good thing.

And although we realize we forgot to mention the CD album, or the website, it seems that people can find things all on their own. So thank-you too.

We were flattered, because it was of us, and it was very good.

To find out more, please read on…

This imago-weaver is called Trystan Mitchell, an illustrator of great skill and renown. His images grace all sorts of books, and he is (we believe) even writing his own Wooden Book. He sign-wrote the Rick Stein fish restaurant in Padstow, the Speaking Tree in Glasto, and is a remarkable source of meaningful coloured lines.

We say: Trystan is a sculptor in the medium of story. To understand this, grab a look-see round his webbles:

Red Bubble

Studio Bigfoot

Bigfoot Blanket Blog

Flickr

One of the more surprising good things Trystan did for us, was to create these cut-out paper models, depicting us cartoonly.

copyright Trystan Mitchell

They are part of his range of ‘Noggins‘, paper-toys and action figures. Trystan has made a whole society of these papery peoples. They can thrive in all sorts of scenarios, and with a little ventriloquy, they’ll sing too.

To download the instructions to make these cut-outs, press HERE. Trystan recommends that they are printed on medium-weight card.

We like such cartooning. It reminds us that our journeys represent simpler shapes and older symbols than we can see. It tells us that the archetypes we sometimes inhabit are not ours, that this rambling life is not our idea, that we’re just borrowing it awhile.

For other prompts in the art of the being alivehuman, keep looking at Trystam’s other works.

And to buy images of the good old future, the wayward past, and the rum denizens of all their borderlands, have a hunt around HERE.

Sincere respect to Trystan Mitchell.

So he’s done a lot of knife sharpening, trying many configurations and possibilities. Always, his trials are informed by a thorough grounded understanding of the tool itself, and the job it has to do.

Man at Spoon

And having found a good way to ensure a sharp blade, Barn on this video shares with us his findings in keeping a knife keen.

Many thanks to Barn the Spoon. Look out for him on a footpath somewhere, fresh green spoons lining his smock, small knives glinting in the wooded sunbeams.