63 f
Mouthmusic has lyrics by Glyn that draw on her experience at Barscobe House. This song is sung in Welsh and Irish and Scottish Gaelic, and the songs throughout are sung in any of these along with Scots and a smattering of English.
The latter is used on the track Morning of Blood, a haunting poem courtesy of McGillivray, inspired by her reading of Oran Bagraidh. She calls it a love song to the murdered prince, himself a metaphor for the death of the language itself.
W
hat’s remarkable about this project is how they bring it to life – and this, says Glyn, relates to where they were staying: “12th-century Gal- loway came alive because of the location: sur- rounded by the hills, early September mists, bird- song and being in that silent place, it allowed you to imagine you were back in that era. There was,” she says, “a timelessness,” which is what her melody brings to the circa-7th-century Welsh lullaby, Pais Dinogad (Dinogad’s Smock).
According to the album’s excellent booklet notes, this text is believed to be the earliest written poem by a woman in these islands… It was found in the margin of an ancient edition of Aneirin’s heroic poem Y Gododdin. In keeping with the zeitgeist, then, (#MeToo) that this has been pulled from the margins of (great man) history into the spotlight of the present.
The awful consequences of refusing a stranger shelter, deny- ing for whatever reason that the stranger is us, told in Duncan’s beautiful offering of Lord Gregory, also speak to right now. As do compositions by Gorman and Mac Mathuna that tell of violence, and the madness that ensues.
The last lines of Clontarf (sung in Irish Gaelic by Mac Mathuna) describe a battle on Good Friday in 1014: “Not one person of the two hosts could recognise another, though it might be his son or his brother… And there arose a wild, impetuous, precipitate, furi- ous, dark, frightful, voracious merciless, combative, contentious, vulture screaming and fluttering over their heads/ And there arose also the satyrs and the idiots and the maniacs of the valleys, and the witches and the goblins, and the ancient birds.” Which is as good a description of Brexit as I’ve ever seen. Apart from the ancient birds.
That this album was created in just six days is incredible, more so given that elemental storms cut the power. Holmes found gen- erators and saved the day, but the time constraints, whilst motivat- ing, could also be frustrating. However, Glyn says, “We achieved a great deal and created a work that I think is very rich, but we’ve only scratched the surface in terms of the wonders that lay undis- covered linguistically and musically. The realisation is of how much more there is to explore and to delve into.”
And Oran Braghaid, the poem that inspired this realisation, is an invitation to us all to dig deep, to delve into and question our ingrained beliefs. However, Oran Bagraidh, this beautiful album from the brilliant group of outstandingly talented peo- ple, is something that we can simply bask in. And how good that it feels, as Glyn says, “like the beginning of something rather than the end…”
The Oran Bagraidh collective will be performing over the sum- mer: see news pages or
oranbagraidh.com
F Lorcan Mac Mathuna
Photo: Jethro Optical
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