Radio interview  with Gary Wilcox at the Quiet Revolution – ancient music, alternative tunings, found instruments, singing into the late autumn silence

Radio Interview: Jonathan Day talks ancient music, found instruments and singing into silence

Live on Kailash maanke, in a mountain storm

Kailash Maanke Mountain Music Festival - Sea Song a long way from the Ocean

A faint falling light on Kailash Maanke Mountain Music Festival

BBC interview with Jonathan

This is an early version of a song from the forthcoming album VAGABOND LANGUAGE, recorded in Fingal's Cave in the Hebrides. The cave is carved by the ocean into columnar basalt. The six sided columns reaching from the sea into the vault overhead create the most wonderful acoustic environment. Magical. I talked with an ancient man on the road from Tarbert to Hushinish on Na Hearadh in the Hebrides. He told of me of the tiny whaling ships sailed by local people as they worked to raise a living from their demanding Northern place. It chimed with 7th century gaelic poetry I was reading - about the wild, wide world as seen through those tiny-population, long-ago eyes. A recent Hebridean Whale and Dolphin Trust funded study shows that the Minch and Sea of the Hebrides Orca families are genetically distinct from the wider population. Unlike the sea eagle, the great auk, red squirrels and so many others the Orcan ancestral lines survived the arrival of men. It is a deep joy for me to think on that. So there is the chorus - a dreamed of and awaited healing, when we can again walk in harmony with the world that is ours - and theirs - the animate and inanimate, that belongs to us and them, as we belong to it and each other.

Vagabond Language

A Grampus Swims In Fingal's Cave

I was in Russia once, playing some gigs as a tiny act of support for those damaged by the Tschernobyl radiation. The deep white winter, memorials everywhere to those loved ones lost in war, a collapsing Soviet world all around. I was falling in love with a dancer as a widow wept in the same hotel lobby...

08 Carved In Bone

There is a mystery at the heart of us, that center or essence which cannot be pinned in one place or organ. This is a celebration of meeting and learning about some of those others who have filled my life. Thankyou.

She Walks In Silence

Sometimes the briefest of meetings leaves a seemingly permanent trace on me... something carried deep, shaping and re-making me in some way. Here are four of so many moments - a beggar child in Aswan, the huge, gentle story-telling car park guardian where I lived as a child in Africa, a homeless family in Indonesia and a friend in England...

Strange Meetings

I have always been captivated by the vagabond-pilgrim life. St Francis' choice of field over palace, Saddhus in India, the aspirant Bodhissatva I've met in China and Thailand. Life as a journey rather than a stockpile. This is a song from the early years of that journey, struggling wobbly towards the light.

Canticle

Fingal's cave, in the wild sea of the Hebrides, is carved by the ocean into columnar basalt. The six-sided columns reaching from the sea into the vault overhead create the most wonderful acoustic environment. Magical. I talked with an ancient man on the road from Tarbert to Hushinish on Na Hearadh in the Hebrides. He talked of the old days when he was a boy and watched his people's small ships sail past. It chimed with 7th-century Gaelic poetry I was reading – about the wild, wide world as seen through that tiny-population, long-ago eyes. A recent Hebridean Whale and Dolphin Trust funded study shows that the Minch and Sea of the Hebrides Orca families are genetically distinct from the wider population. Unlike the sea eagle, the great auk, red squirrels and so many others the Orcan ancestral lines have survived the arrival of men. It is a deep joy for me to think on that. So there is the chorus – a dreamed of and awaited healing, when we can again walk in harmony with the world that is ours – and theirs – the animate and inanimate, that belongs to us and them, as we belong to it and each other.

In memory, a crossing of great seas (grampus)

Jonathan Talks to Genevieve Tudor about his American Tour and previews songs from his forthcoming album.

BBC Sunday Folk November 2012

Ancient music, found instruments, singing into the silence

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