FOR FREE DOWNLOAD CLICK 'BUY' BUTTON ABOVE
"They set sail from the coast of Libya..."
A.k.a. 'The Ballad of Lampedusa' this song tells the story of a tragic accident in the Mediterranean: an overcrowded migrant boat, sailing from Libya to the Italian island of Lampedusa, sank in October 2013 with the loss of over 300 lives. A terrible tragedy at the time but alas commonplace since.

First recorded in 2015 for an EP  'I crossed the sea' with singer-songwriter and fellow oud player, Patricia de Mayo, and produced by Mercury Music Prize nominated Gerry Diver. I played it at Sam Lee's Unamplifire earlier this year 2018 in a set with traditional style singer Catherine Earnshaw where Syd Bolton of Last Rights heard it and asked if I had a recording. So I decided to re-record it and here it is. Played on oud (Arab lute) mostly in an unorthodox finger style 

Last Rights: creating a new framework of respect for the rights of missing
& dead refugees and migrants and bereaved family members
http://lastrights.net/home/4592071170

Pic: Syd Bolton, 2016

Journey to the Promised Land

Song evoking an idyllic week spent in Ilfracombe, a Devon seaside town, with the great love of my early adult life, a young North African woman whom I’d met while teaching in Algeria. But the idyll was short lived. At Heathrow a few days later we kissed goodbye.  I never saw her again. 

The melody is my take on a half-remembered Kabyle (Algerian Berber) folksong and the song’s harmonic structure is, I suppose, quite Mediterranean in style. The accompaniment is played principally on an oud (Arab lute) in an unorthodox finger style and the solo instrument is a mondol, a hybrid instrument invented in Algiers in the 1940s by the great ‘Shaabi’ songwriter and composer Hajj El-Anka. In recent years the mondol has become more widely known outside Algeria through the brilliant playing of Hakim Hamadouche, sideman to the late great Algerian rocker Rachid Taha.

Long Years Ago

Song from the point of view of a formerly wealthy woman whose husband, a Highlander, has died fighting on the losing side at the Battle of Culloden (1745). The woman is now reduced to begging on the streets of a lowland Scottish town, 'the low country'.
  The lyric, originally a Gaelic lament for the ruin that followed that defeat - and with it the destruction of the Scottish clan system, was collected and embellished by Robert Burns in the late 18th century. It was later quoted in Walter Scott's 'Chronicles of the Canongate'(1827).
   Set to the Scottish folk tune 'Geordie', I originally arranged this for my former storywheel partner Patricia de Mayo to sing unaccompanied, stripping out the Burns' additions. Patricia included it on her 2017 solo debut album 'Artichokes and Cauliflowers': see www.patriciademayo.com/patricia-de-mayo.html
   On this version I'm singing and playing the oud (Arab lute)with flugelhorn by Matt Winch: http://www.mattwinch.com/

The Highland Widow's Lament

http://www.storywheelmusic.co.uk
storywheel - originally an oud (Arab lute) duo formed by Patricia de Mayo and ex-Natacha Atlas sideman Keith Clouston -  is now Keith Clouston solo. Mixing traditional folksongs of the British Isles with own songs and influences from North Africa and the Middle East. Atmospheric, intimate, funky, songs of love, loss, piracy, fanaticism & geometry. The duo's debut EP 'I Crossed The Sea' was produced by Mercury Music Prize nominee Gerry Diver (Sam Lee, Lisa Knapp, O'Hooley & Tidow). Keith now performs regularly with traditional style folk singer Catherine Earnshaw.

storywheel

Popular tracks