The term “Celtic music” is often more marketing than historical circumstance. Many of the progenitors of what we often now think of a single genre that features jigs, reels, airs, and sad songs were once played by parlor, castle, and dance hall musicians. Catrin Finch and Aoife Ní Bhriain remind us of the first two in a collaboration titled Double You. Finch is a highly celebrated harper. She has won major awards, recorded more than a dozen and a half albums, once served as the harper for the Prince of Wales, and teaches at both the Welsh College of Music and Dance and the Royal Academy of Music in London. Ní Bhriain is an Irish fiddler with an impressive collection of prizes of her own. Their instrumental duos also depart from associations of Celtic music with New Age music. Finch and Ní Bhriain find the intersections between classical and traditional music in nine serious compositions whose nod to Celtic humor is that all nine titles are one word beginning with the letter W. Most are also longer, because they take their time to establish themes and spin off from them. “Woven” begins with delicate fiddle with Finch’s harp acting almost like a drone in its repetitious delicacy. As if unfolds, though, it’s akin to a suite in several movements that open and close via Ní Bhriain’s bowing. “Wonder” has an appropriate air of mystery, almost as if the harp is walking us through a mist draped with repeated fiddle pulses that scaffold Finch’s precise harp notes and bell-like tones. The appropriately named “Whisper” is quiet, builds, and evolves into something more pastoral before it ends seven minutes later with a return to quiet music with space between the notes. If you watch the videos, know that the album sound is better balanced, but you can see from their respective intensity that Finch and Ní Bhriain are serious about what they do and how they do it.
Le gravetat de Coulomb is a Catalonian trio that between them give a workout to a variety of flutes, accordions, drums, tambourine, and bass clarinet, and voices. Their latest project, L’efecte doppler, indeed involves changes in sound frequencies, but it also references a modulating style of flute playing. Most of the album is devoted to “Gypsy” dances. “El salt de la rata” might be the most familiar as it’s a joyous jota, a folk dance in ¾ time. “Tu” is a chotis but might also sound vaguely reminiscent; its three-voice call-and-response vocal evokes traditional Quebecois singing, though the instrumentation differs. “Una punxa al peu” has a celebratory village feel and invokes visions of a tune chasing its own tail. “Ottawa és més a la vora del món real que del Japó” is an unusual tune that changes flavor and tempo. It’s not on the album, but you can sample what they are like in concert. Hey, you try trying flute and percussion at the same time!
Kumara is the stage name of an interesting collaboration between Uganda’s Samite Mulondo, sessions violinist Sean Harkness, and chamber musician Shem Guibbory or, as Samite notes, a melding of African, jazz, and operatic music with “flow.” If you don’t recognize the plucked instrument on “River Crossing,” it’s a litungu, an eight-stringed Kenyan bowl lyre. The sonics in the background are a combo of violin and electric guitar. In a similar vein, the structure of “Adunga Jam” is set by the tune’s namesake instrument, an eight-stringed–they have anywhere from 7-10–arch harp with wood and leather bodies. As you will hear, it sets a hypnotic pace for guitar and Harkness’ impressive violin work. You can hear splashes of Samite’s vocals on “Conversation in C Minor” and “Forest Music.” I emphasize, though, that this is mostly an instrumental album, not a Samite solo project. You might recognize the tones of the more familiar thumb piano on “Waxed Kalimba,” though the tune itself has a traveling feel. This project is intended as a post-Covid healing effort and the trio’s very name derives from Sanskrit and roughly translates “higher self.” I’m not sure we are post-Covid, but the music has a decided calming effect.
Summerlyn Powers is an Alabama folk/country singer now living in Nashville. She’s young, but as her five-song EP The Hive indicates, she’s poised and ready. The namesake song is somewhere between rock and a boot kicker with Powers’ voice muscling its way through an electric mix. She turns to a bit of rockabilly on “Let’s Roll” and tamps down the noise for the soulful “Healing Like I Am.” The latter sports the line crying when need to/laugh ’cause you have to… hope you’re healing like I am. It’s kind of like Powers in that it’s straightforward but ambiguous–a relationship song that’s somewhere between breaking up and not being ready. Ready or not, Powers is primed to arrive.
Ava Earl is a bubbly singer from Alaska who has been prolific despite her relative youth. Too Much falls into the category of acoustic pop and, to be forthright, just isn’t my bowl of cloudberries. Earl’s vocals are earnest but girly and her lyrics don’t always connect. What would you anticipate for a song titled “For Hell?” Having listened to it several times, it’s still not clear what she’s driving at. At its center is a woman who is five months pregnant, but after that I’m not sure where we’re supposed to go. There’s a musing on tall buildings as secular religion that leads to this: I can’t be too greedy/Cause it’s you that I need/Don’t break my heart. The whole thing is wrapped in a light orchestral backing. “Too Much” has good instincts–a young feminist’s message that it’s okay to be yourself–but it veers into bad luck at romance and hearing loss. (She also explores the latter in “Ears Bleed.”) Yet it’s hard to derive weightiness in such a bright tune that seems to have the dance hall in mind. Moreover, lyrics such as I regret half the things that I said/ I know I talk too much/ I guess I’ll make a fool of myself, until you shut me up isn’t exactly in-your face defiance. In my estimation, message music and bouncy pop are seldom a good mix.
Rob Weir
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