Despite I’m into Celtic music, Scottish music and British folk music in general, Siobhan Miller is a fairly new artist to me, I only first heard her music last year! And I thought I’d share this cheerful tune by her today, which seems to be her most well-known song. I’m really quite surprised that I hadn’t come across Siobhan earlier, because she’s a very successful and acclaimed singer, having won the Scots Trad Music Awards THREE TIMES, as well as BBC Folk Awards and she’s also taken part inn the annual Celtic Connections festival multiple times. The song was written and first recorded by Andy M. Stewart of Silly Wizard.
As I mentioned in the last post, the one that was supposed to go yesterday, today is Misha’s birthday, yay! Misha is now 6 years old. They say it’s forty human years! FORTY. FREAKING. YEARs! It’s so ridiculous that I’m not even gonna try to believe it ‘cause my brain would get a permanent freeze!
I’ve already shared two songs on my blog that have Misha in their title. Recently, i was looking for some more that I would like, and, while I haven’t found any particularly interesting new songs about a Misha, I came across an artist whose name instantly sparked my interest – Misha Mishenko. – That is how my Mum sometimes calls our Misha, even though his actual surname is Hhrrru? (Just like how he always greets people) and this is probably the only surname in the world that’s spelt with a question mark. 😀 Moreover, the first song by Misha Mishenko that I saw was called Moment, and that again made me thhink of our Misha. Misha has a lot of alternative names or should we say titles, as well as nicknames, that we make up for him all the time. And one day when Sofi saw him as he was just waking up and looking very cute and smelling like sleep, she went into an ecstasy and called him “a little moment of happiness”. That sounded so beautiful and cute and I really liked that, and sometimes, in very special moments, we still call him that. And then when I heard that Moment song, it turned out it’s a solo piano piece. I strongly associate piano with Misha. First, in my synaesthetic brain, the word Misha feels like black piano keys. And second, when we play with Sofi that Misha can talk and all that, we play that piano music is one of his favourite types of music.
I myself quite like piano music too, but most definitely not all of it, and I feel totally neutral about all Misha Mishenko’s music that I’ve heard. This piece doesn’t really move me very much, though it’s certainly very nice. But I can totally imagine Misha listening to something like this, whenn he’s not listening to very sophisticated jazz, or secretly yet loudly indulging in Russian D&B when he’s sure that no one will overhear.
This time, I thought I’d share withh you two musical arrangements of the same poem, one written by the Irish poet William Butler Yeats. The first of these two arrangements is by the Irish-American Celtic music female group called Cherish the Ladies, which came to life thanks to Mick Moloney, as a way to counteract the fact that the American Celtic music scene was highly male-dominated at the time, and led by flautist Joanie Madden. I’ve been familiar with their music, and this song, for years. The second version is by the Canadian multi-talented musician Loreena McKennitt from her album Lost Souls, whose multiple songs I’ve already featured in this series. She has released a series called In Her own Words, in which she explains the origins and inspiration of every song on the album that a given installment covers. Loreena quite clearly has a strong bond with nature, and, as she says herself, has always had pets, and wanted to be a vet at some point in her life. Therefore it’s not surprising that she’s felt drawn to this poem and how it shows the connection between humans and animals, specifically dogs.
My Misha’s not a dog, but he’s still an animal and we do have a very strong connection and can often sense each other’s state of mind to a varying degree or so it seems. I originally wanted to post this yesterday, on the eve of Misha’s birthday but was unable to in the end, but it’s even more fitting on this very day instead.
While I like both of these arrangements a lot and each has its own advantages, I think I slightly prefer the Cherish The Ladies version. As a bit of a fun fact, I donn’t know if the melody to which their version is set is something they came up with or sung it to this melody first or if more people have used the same melody, but the Irish traditional song
Today I want to share with you a beautiful, meditative piece in Welsh, from the Welsh-Scottish singer and harpist Gwen Màiri Yorke. It comes from her album Mentro (Venture) from which I’ve already shared quite a couple songs. On this album, she is accompanied by one of my faza people – Gwilym Bowen Rhys – on guitar and mandolin, as well as another prominent Welsh folk musician – Jordan Price Williams – on cello. This song is actually a poem written by Gwen Màiri’s mother – E. Mary Jones – about the beauty of stillness in life.
Today I’m sharing with you a song for which I have really mixed feelings at this point. This song is the single from Declan Galbraith’s (aka Child of Mind) second album “You And Me”, released in 2007 when he was 15. And already when I had a faza on him, I noticed that, especially in Germany, where this album was recorded, and where he was most well-known as far as I’m aware at that point in his career, whenever they talked about this album, it was like the only song worth the attention from it was “Ego You”. While I liked it, I thought it was a bit unfair that it’s only “Ego You” getting all the attention. And then I sort of mildly infected Sofi with my faza (if I’m counting correctly I was about 14-15 at that time so Sofi must have been 4-5) and “Ego You” became her favourite song by Declan, and she’d sing it over and over again with her made-up English words and constantly asked me to play it over and over, she also really liked something about its official video but I can’t remember what that was. So I started feeling mildly fed up with it quite quickly. After some time, my faza faded even more suddenly than it appeared, giving way to the new one, on Cornelis Vreeswijk (the contrast of this still kills me 😀 ), but Sofi wasn’t done with “Ego You” yet so I’d become even slightly more fed up with it until I came up with a golden idea of introducing her to Alexander Rybak. I still can’t listen to his song “Ooah” without yawning. Currently, Sofi really dislikes Declan, and she absolutely hates “Ego You”. While I wouldn’t say that I dislike it, I still haven’t gotten over the fed up feeling entirely. But in general, as I’ve said on here before, now I much prefer Declan’s more recent music that he has made under the name of Child of Mind. Back when I had a faza on him, I came across an interview that some American guy recorded with him, I believe it was after the You and Me album (I’ve no idea who it was or for which medium) and in that interview, he asked Declan whether he ever gets fed up with any of his songs when he has to hear or sing them over and over. I have no recollection of what he said in response, and also my English was barely starting to develop in any more serious way at that time so understanding natives speaking was a challenge, but I’d be surprised if he also hasn’t ever felt fed up with “Ego You”. 😀 That being said, now I totally see why it was “Ego You” that was chosen to be the single, it definitely fits this purpose best out of all the songs on that album. Still, I do have a lot of nice memories with “Ego You”, and I decided I’d share it. Perhaps someone else will fall in love with it just like Sofi did.
Time for some Suomipop, or simply Finnish pop, if you prefer! 🙂 This singer whose song I want to share with you today is very popular in Finland, particularly as a former member of the band PMMP but I think she’s widely recognisable due to her solo career as well. Her full name is Paula Julia Vesala, although apparently she used to go by Paula Anneli Kivivuori, she’s originally from Kärsämäki, and aside from being a singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist with a degree in music, she has also studied drama and is a playwright and actress. She used to be in a relationship with the vocalist of The Rasmus (also a very successful Finnish band whose song “In The Shadows” achieved success also in other countries, to be honest that’s the only thing I know them for 😀 ) Lauri Ylönen.
I am not crazy about her music, but I do like most of it and I think it’s nice to listen to. I generally find most Finnish pop that I have come across very nice to listen to even if I don’t necessarily fall in love with a lot of Finnish pop songs to any spectacular degree.
To introduce just a little bit more variety to my song of the day series, today, just like I did yesterday, I am sharing with you a song by Child of Mind, aka Declan Galbraith, from this very same album from which I picked a song yesterday – his live recording from Shenzhen in 2017, cuz why not? 😉 It’s a cool album, isn’t it?
Today, I’d like to share with you another song from Child of Mind, previously known just under his actual name Declan Galbraith or simply Declan. As Child of Mind, to the best of my knowledge, he has not recorded any full-length studio album, but he did tour a whole lot. I find it slightly paradoxical – though I’m sure this is not some kind of coincidence but business/contractual stuff involved or something like that – that he seems virtually unknown in his native UK, whereas seems to enjoy quite a bit of popularity in countries like Germany and China. In China, schools use songs from his debut album (recorded when he was 10) to teach children English. He also had a big tour there in 2007 or 2008 promoting his third album “You And Me”. And now, as Child of Mind, he has sung there as well. And this song I want to share with you today comes from his 2017 concert in Shenzhen. A fair bit of his Child of Mind music evolves around kinda existential topics, and this song is no exception. It is not available on YouTube, or at least I don’t know about it and SongWhip doesn’t see it either, so for those who don’t use Spotify but use something else where it’s available, I’m including a SongWhip link as well.
For today, I have a shanty song for you! As much as I love folk music in general, and despite I have a close connection to the sea due to having lived close to it,, I’m generally not into shanties at all. Except this song I want to share with you today, if I wouldn’t have known that it’s a shanty from what I read about it, if I didn’t know what its title means and didn’t understand some bits and pieces of the lyrics, I probably wouldn’t have figured it out. This song was very popular with Welsh sailors working in Liverpudlian docks, and I really like Georgia Ruth’s rendition of it. I am not including the translation because you can find it in the description of the video, as well as the Welsh original lyrics.
The music of Norwegian singer, songwriter and producer Travelle (aka Trollguten and probably a dozen other things) has become a regular thing on my blog, so I figured I’d share yet another song by him. As you can easily deduce from both the title and the lyrics, this song is inspired by his visit to Cuba. It seems like, in line with his stage name, he does like to travel a fair bit, and according to what I read about this song, he was interested in visiting the country because he often heard people talking about how beautiful it is and that it’s worth experiencing. He didn’t have huge expectations going there, but still ended up surprised by a lot of things and talked a lot with the local people about what it’s like to live there given the political situation, which he – I think quite rightly – considers romanticised by other countries who have not actually experienced a regime like that.
I think the song itself, musically, is very cool. Extremely catchy, but in a good way because at the same time it is not cliché and doesn’t give you a deja vu-like state upon first listening to it that would make you feel like you’ve heard something very similar before.
Even though I generally really like Sámi music very much, there hasn’t been much of it that I’ve shared with you guys on here. Moreover, I think I haven’t ever shared any Sámi music from Finland on here, so it’s time to do it now. Ulla Pirttijärvi was actually the very first Sámi singer that I came across. I had just fallen in love with Finnish language, and wanted to look up some Finnish folk on Last.fm, and Ulla Pirttijärvi’s music was the first thing that Last.fm decided to show me and, while technically it wasn’t exactly what I was looking for, because when I went looking for Finnish folk I was thinking, you know, Finnish-language, “actual” Finnish folk, I loved her music straight away because it was so different from anything I’d ever heard before and really beautiful. I didn’t even know that it wasn’t the “actual” Finnish music. I mean, I could hear that this didn’t quite sound like the Finnish language I was accustomed to hearing so far, , I knew that Finnish doesn’t even really have letters like “g” or “b” which I could hear in her language, but, who knows, maybe they have such distinctive dialects, or something? I didn’t have a clue about such a thing as joiking at the time either. I don’t know when exactly it was that I ended up actually learning about Sámi music and culture and what joiking is and that it’s a separate thing from Finnish, but for sure when it comes to my love for the Sámi language and interest in Sámi music, at least some of the credit for sparking that in me must go to Ulla Pirttijärvi.
And this song is one of my favourite songs by her. I must say that I am not sure what its actual title is. Spotify says “Boares Gietkka/Lullaby” other places say just “Gietkka”. What I’m quite sure of is that gietkka likely means cradle. I’ve even found a
Today I have a brand new single for you from this great, indie pop/rock band from Norway. I really like their music, I really like the vocalist and lyricist Ingrid Helene Håvik. I’ve already shared one song from them years ago, called “Five Million Miles”. I saw this song in my Release Radar on Spotify this past week and I liked it right away. It’s really catchy so it got really stuck in my brain after listening to it just once. Most often, I don’t consider this a very good quality in a song, but there are exceptions, and, well, like I said, I do like this one. I think mostly because, while being catchy, at the same time it’s also quite raw. I believe this single is the first one from their upcoming album of the same title or that’s what I’ve heard, so if that’s the case I’m really looking forward to it.
This mournful piece I’d like to share with you today was composed by Turlough O’Carolan, an Irish harper and composer whose many compositions, played by different harpists, I’ve shared on here so far. Nadia Birkenstock is also someone whose music has been featured on this blog a couple times before. This time round, she plays this together with the French cellist Roxane Genot. I love the combination of harp and cello so much, though cello always makes me sad because it reminds me of my late friend Jacek from Helsinki who played this instrument. As for Owen Roe O’Neill, he was a soldier and leader of one of the Irish Catholic revolts against the rule of England.
Today I have an interesting piece for you from the Anglo-Welsh group Aberjaber, one of whose members was Delyth Evans (currently Jenkins), the harpist whose solo music I’ve also shared quite a lot with you on here. This piece, as you can see in the title, is called Madog’s Journey in English, and I don’t know that for sure, but it feels quite safe to assume that the Madog is the Welsh prince Madog ab Owain Gwynedd, who is said to have sailed to the Americas some three hundred years before Columbus.
As much as I don’t really care too much for Sinéad O’Connor as an individual, and don’t even like all of her music, I really do like some of her songs a lot, and especially many of her renditions of Irish folk songs are absolutely great. I really like this one, too. I’ve already shared it in two versions, a harp instrumental by
so this is yet another one, and totally different from the both previous ones, also in that it’s actually from a female perspective which I also really like.
For today, I picked a classical piece for you, more exactly its harp arrangement. Pavane for a Dead Princess was composed by Maurice Ravel and dedicated to his patron – Princess de Polignac. – Despite its title though, I’ve read that its not really a tribute for any “dead princess” in particular, rather, it was simply born out of Ravel’s interest in Spanish customs and traditions, and he simplly titled it this because he liked the sound of it. That’s a great reason, in my opinion. I like things that just sound good, even if they don’t make a whole lot of sense when it comes to meaning. I don’t have a clue who Slobodan Pilic is though, other than he clearly must be harpist, and probably is one of those folks who have some exclusive contracts with Spotify or however that works, because his music only seems to be available there. Perhaps he’s also one of the artists like those whose music is produced by the Swedish Epidemic Sound label, whose music is royalty-free and apparently Spotify used to promote that a lot more than anything else and people got indignant that these artists must be “fake” because there’s no information that can be found about their existence under the names they use on Spotify. I believe Slobodan Pilic is not from Epidemic Sound but it could be some similar thing perhaps. But that isn’t really relevant, I think this piece sounds great on the harp.
Let’s listen to some Scandipop today. But, for a change, it will be neither Swedish, nor Norwegian, but Danish. I rarely share any Danish music on here, which is simply because I don’t really listen to it all that regularly. Whenever I do, I think I should start doing it more often and go down the rabbit hole a little bit, because I do have really good experiences when I do it ,but somehow it has never become a regular thing. 😀 Anyways, this is a singer that I’ve recently heard about, and because she cites Emilie Nicolas as one of her favourite artists and influences, I thought I had to give her music a listen, because I really love Emilie Nicolas and I was very curious if I’ll end up feeling similarly strongly about Simone Tang as well. And, well, while of course she’s definitely doing her own thing, the influence can be heard quite clearly imo. I really like this song of hers, this was her debut single.
Today I have an electronic song for you which I’ve known thanks to Spotify for a couple years now and I still really like it. It’s the result of collaboration between the Swedish musician Simon Smiles, and the vocalist Emelie Tängemark.
Today, let’s listen to another piece of harp music by Floraleda Sacchi, from her album Chiaroscuro Harp. As far as I’m aware, it’s her original composition.
Today I want to share with you this very melancholic and nostalgic-sounding folk tune from Norway. Sunnmøre, where it comes from, is a district in Norway. I’ve known this piece for many years now, thanks to Last.fm, and I still love it very much. Bukkene Bruse are a Norwegian folk group that have been around since the 80’s, their name comes from “Tre Bukkene Bruse” the Norwegian title of the fairytale “The Three Billy Goats Gruff”.
My Inner MishMash 