The Green Wave

Friday night found me in the lakeside home of my new friend, Chris, with her good friend Dawn, and Chris’s yellow lab, Chelsea (a powerful singer in her own right), for an evening of shared music. Fun! We improvised and collaborated, traded songs, and crafted some lovely harmonies on the spot (with the occasional yelp or yodel from me, still learning the art of it). At one point, Dawn asked a question that, like other great questions, seems simple at the start and sort of blooms into complexity the more you think about it. “Why do you do music? What’s in it for you?”

The warmth and glow of the room around us, the merry company, the yellow lab, the nearby lake, the sangria in our glasses – all of these helped us answer the question. Our responses varied but these are the common themes: “Connection. To share. To make something happen for someone else. To help. To feel part of a community.”

I added that I’m also looking for a sense of freedom, a word that occurs to me especially when I listen to virtuoso playing or singing: “That person has complete technical mastery and freedom to express anything and everything they wish.” In other words, achieving mastery of your instrument through long training, practice, thought, devotion, and yes, love, grants you freedom to do what you like. I’m working on this one!

And then there is another aspect of freedom, which encompasses the emotional permission to explore and express aspects of yourself and your relationship to the world. A certain freedom is necessary to look inside the whirling grab-bag of your soul and make something out of what you find, and another kind of freedom to bring your discovery before the ears of the world. I’m working on this one, too.

But why do it at all? Why not just make your songs in private, and grow in proficiency and skill at home? Why involve other people at all? Why seek to be public or published? The same can be asked of anyone who writes poems, dances, paints, makes speeches… Anything expressive, really. I’ve been thinking about this lately on the heels of conversations with two friends, one of whom declared herself “above” publishing poetry, and the other who implied strongly that performing or publishing is all to do with ego aggrandizement. (On that note, whoever said that the ego is entirely a malign influence? Don’t we have one for a reason? Otherwise, would we not simply lie on the couch and absorb what’s put before us? You might argue, “You could spend your life helping other people.” To which I would respond, “Even helping involves ego – and that’s not a bad thing, either.” But enough ranting!).

So let me set the record straight. Any musician LOVES to be applauded, stroked, encouraged, listened to, feted, and generally made much of. I do! But I recognize that these things come in conjunction with the goals we discussed in that glowing room by the lake. If through your art and skill, you can assist someone else in feeling delight, amusement, love, wonder, or even sadness, confusion, despair, or danger – then you have done something worth recognition. I certainly feel that in listening to other musicians. They help me feel and participate in the richness and complexity of the world. They open the world bigger and usher me into its wonders. They inspire me to feel or think more.

And in achieving these things, if they enjoy the ripple of laughter or the sound of applause, does that smear the “purity” of their effort? Gracious, no! I notice with amusement that we never have these conversations about the purity of plumbers or lawyers or even piano tuners. Perhaps the difference is really that musicians and other artists often work in an invisible medium: feeling. That “something” we make happen has no tangible form, no working pipe, or huge settlement, or in-tune piano. It’s not quantifiable. It doesn’t conform to a spreadsheet. It varies from person to person. It’s unpredictable. You can’t pin it down or reproduce it precisely. The “product” of a musical performance is magic of a sort. And that means that some people will think it’s sacred, others will think it’s clap-trap, others will wonder what all the fuss is about, others will see it as self-indulgent, others will feel that paying for it diminishes it. And others, bless them, will enjoy it and clap for it.

Why do I, Kate Chadbourne, perform music?
1. To connect. To make something happen for myself and other people.
2. To grow as a musician. Playing for other people is a greater challenge than playing alone. In some ways, it’s the real thing.
3. To test and improve my own songs. I’ve also found that singing or playing a new song in front of people other than my cats “codifies” it.
4. To inspire. Especially kids and young people, but anyone, really. Many people have asserted that one person’s freedom inspires freedom in other people, and I believe that.
5. To be challenged and to overcome fear.
6. To feel ultimate freedom!
7. To be rewarded. Yes, I love to be applauded and complimented. Yes, I love to be paid. Yes, I love to be invited to perform and given all sorts of delicious chances.
8. BUT: Even more precious is my own sense that I have done something worthwhile, that I have given my best. In that sense, I reward myself.
9. To do what I love best and to share the love!

How about you, dear reader? I’d love to hear your thoughts and your own reasons why.

Fridays with Miss Roberts

Music happened downstairs,
never in the shadowy above.
It was downstairs I passed into
like a new ghost in the dark house
and saw my face
yellowed and hollow
in the big gilt mirror,
tossed my coat on the mahogany tree
and passed the time chewing caramels
chosen from the candy chest
fascinating as a harem’s jewel box.
Waiting my turn, hearing notes
dropped like marbles one at a time
on a cold floor
by some other girl
who left them to skitter

A happy purgatory, that room
with its Swiss clock and shocking cuckoo,
its rugs spread over other rugs
and its gleaming banister
that spiraled up into the teacher’s
other life. No pianos up there.
Sometimes I sent a vine of music
upwards to poke and stir those mysteries
but nothing came down.

When the cuckoo leapt out
I was summoned to the bright room.
We worked on my hands,
vaulting them over an egg or an apple
as if building a new roof
over the tunes that would come.
Sunlight angled across the keys
like flying buttresses
holding up the sounds.
Her bent old fingers bent mine
into a new shape,
one with a bright central chamber
and puzzles in the loft and cellar,
accommodation for the fearful,
the saucy, and the sublime,
dwelling place for a whole lifetime –
the house of music.

Talk about great music: I heard aplenty at the Irish Connections (ICONS) festival in Canton, MA this year! It was my first time playing at a big-time festival with a zillion people, giant tents, big-name performers, and all of it sizzling on the skillet of nearly 100-degree heat. But what music! I’ve long been a fan of Cork singer, John Spillane, whose songs are so singable and at the same time so often profound and moving – light and wisdom and a dose of silliness all mixed up together. I also had the chance to hear for the first time Aine Meenahan, an extraordinarily powerful sean-nos singer from Connemara, along with lovely Bridget Fitzgerald and a host of others in the replica Irish cottage which turned out to be the coolest place on the fairgrounds. Paddy Keenan, the piper, knocked my socks off, as he always does, and reminded me of what the early Irish writers said about the best musicians: at a moment they can swivel between the goltraige (weeping music), the suantraige (sleep music), and gentraige (joyful music). Paddy’s music seems to well up from such deep springs that I found myself teary one moment and openly laughing the next. And then there was the divine Eddi Reader, so consummately cool and happy, and such a pleasure to be in her presence. And my old friend and teacher, Niamh Parsons, who has never been in more beautiful voice – rich, deep, soulful, expressive. I think she may be the best singer I’ve ever heard. She’s working with an excellent guitarist, Graham Dunne, who also composes tunes and does brilliant arrangements. And of course Altan was fabulous as always; generous-spirited and energetic.

What a feast! I took great inspiration from all of this, not to mention great pleasure!

But closer to my heart is the circle of musicians and singers who are my friends and colleagues here in New England, and it was wonderful to be among them and to hear them. My dear friends, Michael O’Leary and Tom Maguire, bring their great, funny, powerful songs to every stage, and both very kindly helped me out with some bodhran on a few tunes. When I first walked into Tir na nOg, the kids’ tent, I heard Jen and Bob Strom (fiddle and guitar), Dave de la Barre (pipes and whistles), and Michael (voice and bodhran) playing all together and my heart lifted on the spot! Then, too, my friend Susan Ott, shared a few songs with me quietly in the desserted Irish greyhound tent (yes, it’s true!), and this private exchange is one of the nicest memories of the festival. And finally, I had the chance to chat with lots of old friends and new ones. I found lots of reasons to sit in the tea tent!

Oh, and did I mention I also played and sang? Lucky, lucky me!

Just a quick note to say that I’m enormously pleased that one of my poems, “How does he know?”, is included in the latest edition of “Goblin Fruit,” an on-line journal devoted to poetry of the fantastic. When I first found this site, I felt I’d walked into a glade filled with kindred spirits – and that includes the editors who are friendly, generous, and quirky, and the poets whose work makes me shiver and smile. Here’s a link to the summer edition: www.goblinfruit.net/summer07/ Enjoy!

I’m just back this week from a glorious holiday that took me for about a fortnight to Ireland and another to Scotland. Music of all kinds met me, sustained me, intrigued me, opened me up. First, of course, there is always the music of the world itself, and the new melodies of unfamiliar birds and voices, and the old melody of the wind ruffling the Clady River in Gaoth Dobhair or stirring the rocks of Gairloch in northwest Scotland. But there is also the music of certain times and places – irreplacable, unique, alive. In Gaoth Dobhair many nights after supper I sat listening to the voice of my new friend Seán Ó Baoill (Johnny Boyle), a singer of great power and beauty – though he himself modestly deferred compliments: Níl ionam ach seanphréachán!, he would say. “I’m only an old crow.”

Hardly! What a pleasure to meet someone so heartily in thrall to songs, so eager to sing them, to share and teach them. He showed me the bulging binders in which he’s collected dozens of songs, and out of these storehouses he drew songs he thought I should learn. Now that most cars are built with CD players rather than cassette decks, his collection of live and taped recordings is harder to access. He’ll have to switch over to CD, he knows, but it’s not that easy to duplicate what he has on cassette. I came home with a handful of those cassettes, too. And better still, Sean allowed me to record him on mini-disk, and now I can listen to him singing anytime and learn some of the songs in his impressive repertoire.

But of course that’s not the same – not by a long shot.

What’s missing? Seán Henry, our host, and Roisín, our hostess, leaning in the doorway, smiling at their old friend singing. The table still crowded with teacups and teapot and the last of the supper which was, every night, plentiful, bountiful, home-cooked and delicious. A crowd of us lingering there to listen. The evening still fully alight outside the window, and the promise of light for many more hours in the northern night. And Irish spoken and sung, alive in that house in that place.

Better than anything bought from a giftshop, stowed in a suitcase, hauled on a plane: songs and singers!