Cultural extinction is pretty hard to deal with. Cultures evolve. They gather mutations as they are passed down over generations, some parts morph, become something new, good parts stay and become reinforced. Over centuries and millenia an endless diversity of human cultures have arisen and disappeared. But similarly to the ongoing mass-extinction of the globe's biological diversity, traditional cultures are also currently experiencing extinction at about a billion times the natural background rate (I haven't got the exact numbers). Modern culture spreads, tempts, engulfs the traditional ones quicker than the village elder can say "what's a TV?". People urbanize, centralize, depopulate. Some cultures actively oppress, forbid, censor other cultures. Inevitably, any or all these forces can eventually lead to the extinction of a culture. A language is never spoken again. Traditions are forgotten. And a body of music is lost forever.
I almost put The Lost Songs of St. Kilda on my 2016 list. It's a gentle, haunting album based on songs that were recorded on a £3 microphone at a Scottish old folk's home. Trevor Morrison sat at the piano and played some tunes he had learned as a kid from his aging piano teacher during the war. His piano teacher was one of the last people who lived on St. Kilda, a small archipelago in the Outer Hebrides, which was depopulated in 1930. So these centuries old songs hadn't been heard anywhere outside of Mr. Morrison's head for about 60 years, when they by a bonkers stroke of luck were committed to tape by a quick-thinking nursing home volunteer. The story really resonates with me. They say you can hear the mist, the isolation, the rugged cliffs in the tunes. I don't know if it's just that I have the narrative in my head, but I hear it anyway.
Well, if you think that's a tear-jerker, try Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa. This is an album of contemporary classical rearrangements of Wolastoqiyik indian traditional songs. Jeremy Dutcher is an operatic tenor, and for his debut album he chose to record a fading piece of his cultural heritage. A language with less than 100 remaining speakers, Wolastoqey has a rich body of songs that was dying out with the current generation. So when Jeremy, a young Wolastoq indian, went to the Canadian Museum of History and came across a collection of wax cylinder recordings of tribe members singing, playing and dancing to traditional tunes, he couldn't stand the thought of the recordings fading away in the museum cellar, and spent hours listening to and transcribing the songs. Despite many damaged recordings of songs now lost forever, Dutcher found a handful of still-audible recordings, and used his classical training (and some creative freedom) to create a collection of Wolastoqiyik songs for the twentieth century and beyond.
The fate of the wolastoqiyik echoes struggles faced by indigenous peoples all across America (and the rest of the world), and Dutcher provides a voice for all of them. For centuries following colonialization, practicing their culture and speaking their language was punishable by law. For Dutcher's mother growing up as well. Although the legal situation is less hideous today, it's a meager solace considering that so little of these cultures remains that they're perfectly capable of dying out on their own. Unless something extraordinary happens. Which is why it's pretty badass that Dutcher opens his album with "Mehcinut", which I've come to understand means "death chant". Wolastoqiyik culture has long been dying, but "Mehcinut"'s triumphant climax may be its rebirth.
I love how Dutcher incorporates the original recordings throughout the album, both at the beginning, middle and end of songs. Not only does it illustrate how tricky his creative journey has been - the songs sound rough, atonal, not at all fitting smoothly into a 4/4 time signature or the modern 12-tone scale of Dutcher's piano - but we also hear how scratchy and fragile they are, literally vanishing before our ears. There's even a segment where we hear damaged, inaudible recordings, and Dutcher or a museum technician saying "number 14, broken". When we in the next second hear "number 15", followed by the song that Dutcher turns into the majestic "Sakomawit", it illustrates just how enormous the difference between existence and non-existence is for this culture.
Besides the emotional punch, this album is really a unique musical journey as well. It's amazing to hear all the elements of classical music (ignoring the slightly off-putting modern drumkit) supporting vocals sung in such a different language. Italian, French and English opera all have different sounds to them, but they ain't got nothin on Wolastoqey. I'm not sure how well it works with the crazy diphthongs and phrases ending in awkward q's and k's, but if it weren't for this album I would never even have pondered the question. And Dutcher's vocal performance is, almost in spite, wonderfully confident and convincing. (For some insane language porn, check out how effortlessly he pronounces the album title - do it repeatedly, while reading the title. It's almost as satisfying as this gem.) His voice is spine-chillingly good, whether it's lifting songs like "Essuwonike" and "Sakomawit" to stunning climaxes, or capturing rhythmic chanting on "Nipuwoltin" and "Ultestakon". This album won the Polaris Music Prize - a big fucking deal - and it's for its contents, not its cover.
I think I've gone on westernsplaining this thing long enough. I don't even understand this shit, so why am I even talking about it? As Brightly Off-Colored Discophile puts it, this ain't my party. It's completely irrelevant to the Wolastoqiyik how I rank their songs on my albums of the year list, and this album is for them, not for me. But still, I'm loving it. If extinction is hard to deal with, witnessing a rebirth of such a scope warms my soul to the core. It's like watching those near-extinct Arctic foxes raise excited young pups in the Scandinavian mountains. Here's hoping for less extinction and more rebirths in the future
Best tracks: "Mehcinut", "Essuwonike" and "Sakomawit", because of those huge, Disney widescreen feels. If that's your jam, head that-a-way.
I almost put The Lost Songs of St. Kilda on my 2016 list. It's a gentle, haunting album based on songs that were recorded on a £3 microphone at a Scottish old folk's home. Trevor Morrison sat at the piano and played some tunes he had learned as a kid from his aging piano teacher during the war. His piano teacher was one of the last people who lived on St. Kilda, a small archipelago in the Outer Hebrides, which was depopulated in 1930. So these centuries old songs hadn't been heard anywhere outside of Mr. Morrison's head for about 60 years, when they by a bonkers stroke of luck were committed to tape by a quick-thinking nursing home volunteer. The story really resonates with me. They say you can hear the mist, the isolation, the rugged cliffs in the tunes. I don't know if it's just that I have the narrative in my head, but I hear it anyway.
Well, if you think that's a tear-jerker, try Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa. This is an album of contemporary classical rearrangements of Wolastoqiyik indian traditional songs. Jeremy Dutcher is an operatic tenor, and for his debut album he chose to record a fading piece of his cultural heritage. A language with less than 100 remaining speakers, Wolastoqey has a rich body of songs that was dying out with the current generation. So when Jeremy, a young Wolastoq indian, went to the Canadian Museum of History and came across a collection of wax cylinder recordings of tribe members singing, playing and dancing to traditional tunes, he couldn't stand the thought of the recordings fading away in the museum cellar, and spent hours listening to and transcribing the songs. Despite many damaged recordings of songs now lost forever, Dutcher found a handful of still-audible recordings, and used his classical training (and some creative freedom) to create a collection of Wolastoqiyik songs for the twentieth century and beyond.
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| This is one amazing album cover. Probably the only album cover of this millenium to feature wax cylinders. Check out Brightly Off-Colored Discophile's analysis, too. |
The fate of the wolastoqiyik echoes struggles faced by indigenous peoples all across America (and the rest of the world), and Dutcher provides a voice for all of them. For centuries following colonialization, practicing their culture and speaking their language was punishable by law. For Dutcher's mother growing up as well. Although the legal situation is less hideous today, it's a meager solace considering that so little of these cultures remains that they're perfectly capable of dying out on their own. Unless something extraordinary happens. Which is why it's pretty badass that Dutcher opens his album with "Mehcinut", which I've come to understand means "death chant". Wolastoqiyik culture has long been dying, but "Mehcinut"'s triumphant climax may be its rebirth.
I love how Dutcher incorporates the original recordings throughout the album, both at the beginning, middle and end of songs. Not only does it illustrate how tricky his creative journey has been - the songs sound rough, atonal, not at all fitting smoothly into a 4/4 time signature or the modern 12-tone scale of Dutcher's piano - but we also hear how scratchy and fragile they are, literally vanishing before our ears. There's even a segment where we hear damaged, inaudible recordings, and Dutcher or a museum technician saying "number 14, broken". When we in the next second hear "number 15", followed by the song that Dutcher turns into the majestic "Sakomawit", it illustrates just how enormous the difference between existence and non-existence is for this culture.
Besides the emotional punch, this album is really a unique musical journey as well. It's amazing to hear all the elements of classical music (ignoring the slightly off-putting modern drumkit) supporting vocals sung in such a different language. Italian, French and English opera all have different sounds to them, but they ain't got nothin on Wolastoqey. I'm not sure how well it works with the crazy diphthongs and phrases ending in awkward q's and k's, but if it weren't for this album I would never even have pondered the question. And Dutcher's vocal performance is, almost in spite, wonderfully confident and convincing. (For some insane language porn, check out how effortlessly he pronounces the album title - do it repeatedly, while reading the title. It's almost as satisfying as this gem.) His voice is spine-chillingly good, whether it's lifting songs like "Essuwonike" and "Sakomawit" to stunning climaxes, or capturing rhythmic chanting on "Nipuwoltin" and "Ultestakon". This album won the Polaris Music Prize - a big fucking deal - and it's for its contents, not its cover.
I think I've gone on westernsplaining this thing long enough. I don't even understand this shit, so why am I even talking about it? As Brightly Off-Colored Discophile puts it, this ain't my party. It's completely irrelevant to the Wolastoqiyik how I rank their songs on my albums of the year list, and this album is for them, not for me. But still, I'm loving it. If extinction is hard to deal with, witnessing a rebirth of such a scope warms my soul to the core. It's like watching those near-extinct Arctic foxes raise excited young pups in the Scandinavian mountains. Here's hoping for less extinction and more rebirths in the future
Best tracks: "Mehcinut", "Essuwonike" and "Sakomawit", because of those huge, Disney widescreen feels. If that's your jam, head that-a-way.
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