50 new things in 2023, part 12/50
Mar. 29th, 2023 10:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kindkitIt's back to music for this week's new-to-me thing; I listened to Jean Redpath's 1973 album Frae My Ain Countrie. It's mostly traditional Scottish songs, with a few Burns songs and modern ones (notably "A' the Week Yer Man's Awa'," aka "The Fisherman's Wife," by Ewan MacColl) thrown in.
It's the kind of thing that you'll like if you like this kind of thing? I do, to be clear, and the album covers all the folk song bases (rejected love, lovers gone away to war, forbidden love, exile, oppression of the powerless by the powerful, and women getting stuck with an illegitimate child while the men get away scot free) in Redpath's incomparable voice. There are even a few surprises, like the rich townswoman in "Kilbogie," who, when faced with the reality of her poor suitor's highland life, hightails it back to town in a coach and six, or the rejected woman in "Farewell He," who survives her jilting via careful application of . . . common sense.
Sadly, there's nothing as mind-bogglingly weird as "The Grey Silkie" (from Redpath's eponymous 1975 album), but it's a good collection and I enjoyed it.
It's the kind of thing that you'll like if you like this kind of thing? I do, to be clear, and the album covers all the folk song bases (rejected love, lovers gone away to war, forbidden love, exile, oppression of the powerless by the powerful, and women getting stuck with an illegitimate child while the men get away scot free) in Redpath's incomparable voice. There are even a few surprises, like the rich townswoman in "Kilbogie," who, when faced with the reality of her poor suitor's highland life, hightails it back to town in a coach and six, or the rejected woman in "Farewell He," who survives her jilting via careful application of . . . common sense.
Sadly, there's nothing as mind-bogglingly weird as "The Grey Silkie" (from Redpath's eponymous 1975 album), but it's a good collection and I enjoyed it.
