| Kaleidoscope Interview on BBC
Radio
Broadcast on "Kaleidoscope", BBC Radio 4, UK, 23rd December, 1996
Transcribed by Robin Hall
Here's a transcription of the LM interview on Kaleidoscope on BBC Radio 4.
For background - Radio 4 is the
"voice" channel of the national radio service in Great Britain, and
Kaleidoscope is the daily "arts" programmed.
The interview was conducted by Lynn Walker with Loreena sometimes finding it
hard to get a word in!"
Notation:
Lynn Walker = LW:
Loreena McKennitt = LM:
[...] denotes musical interludes
*...* include non-speaking additions
[5 seconds from The Bonny Swans]
| LW: |
She hails from Manitoba in Canada, and her
childhood ambition was to be a vet. Her name is Loreena McKennitt and her
unique blend of Celtic, folk, pop and world beat has launched her
sky-high. She hijacks Shakespeare and Tennyson for lyrics, mixes
traditional and original melodies, and spices up the mainstream with an
eclectic range of musical echoes from far afield. With nearly four million
copies of her CDs sold world-wide, it's definitely "Goodbye
livestock, Hello big time singer, song writer, harpist". I caught up
with Loreena McKennitt in Peter Gabriel's Real World recording studio in
Box, Wiltshire, making her sixth album with a host of international
musical guests. |
[5 seconds from God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen]
| LM: |
I think with the "God Rest You Merry,
Gentlemen" I thought it would be interesting to bring some of the
Middle East back into the carol, and the whole Middle Eastern dimension
is something that I have been exploring for some time. And so we brought
in some musicians who played in that idiom and so it's to conjure up the
Three Wise Men. *laugh* |
| LW: |
I love that bit, actually, where the Three
Wise Men set out on their journey and the music goes off at a tangent
as if it really is on a journey - it's so oriental sounding. It works
astonishingly well. You would think that with a carol like God
Rest Ye which is so terribly traditional and sort of
English-sounding and yet when you put this exotic quilt behind it, it
takes on a whole new life of its own, really. |
| LM: |
Well, and that's been at the foundation of
my quest with regard to music - it's to take some of the pieces that
seem at first glance to beckon a more conventional treatment and then
take them elsewhere in a cultural sense or an ethnic sense. It's
difficult because it boils down to idioms and very specific
instruments and finding players who have those idioms. |
| LW: |
I am interested in how you actually
research this, because you do take it all terribly much upon yourself
to research it. Others might just wait for someone to hand the music
and suggest some ways of doing it, but you actually go on
archaeological digs. You have taken it all very seriously, haven't
you? |
| LM: |
Yes, it's driven by my own curiosity and I
am very loath to set myself up as some kind of authority, because I 'm
not. But it's more in the kind of capacity of a travel writer, how you
look at a certain location and you are reading different books and you
are meeting different people who can throw different lights on those
corners of that history. And then I use that as a creative
springboard, so what ends up in my music is really like an
Impressionistic painting |
[30 more seconds from The Bonny Swans]
| LM: |
I got very interested in the Celtic music
about late 70's, early 80's, and I traveled to Ireland and sat in on
some music sessions, learned how the music sprang from a very
indigenous kind of need and informal kind of capacity. I became so
interested in it that in 1985 I borrowed $10,000 from my family and I
recorded my first cassette in a week, and I ran off maybe about fifty
cassettes and I went down to the market in Toronto on Saturday
mornings and busked on the streets and sold the cassettes. By 1989 I
was traveling across Canada with three musicians and sound engineer. I
had sold nearly 35, 40 thousand copies at that point. By that point I
was already able to make a very good living in so far as that I was
able to do what I liked, what I found interesting on my own terms. |
| LW: |
And then you now have the facility where we
are today, Real World in Wiltshire, which seems to be an idyllic place
to be making recordings, swans going past outside the window... |
| LM: |
Yes, yes, Well, I mean, it's a culmination
of a very brick-by-brick kind of a process and I have invested in the
ability to be able to do this now. I took it upon myself to teach
myself as much about the business as I could. One of the great books
that I used was the one called How to Make Your Own Record *laugh*
by a woman, Diane Rapaport, but it was brilliant. It was a fantastic
map of all the processes involved, all the mechanical processes, but
also publicity, copyright, all those tangential issues. |
[8 seconds of recording studio action of a new piece (I certainly didn't recognize
it) - no vocals, just a one-two-three count and a snatch of drum rhythms]
| LW: |
When you are working on a CD, as you are at
the moment, and you have got lots of different musicians, it's almost
as if you are just, well, throwing sounds very callous, but you are
putting different styles into the melting pot to see what comes up. Do
you see that as being World music? Do you see yourself as an exponent
of World Music? |
| LM: |
Well, I think categories are an unfortunate
necessity within the business. But standing back from what I do, I
suppose that it is a kind of World music that I am weaving, Irish
pipes with the East Indian tamboura or the Middle Eastern dumbeg or
now the viol de gamba with electric guitar... |
| LW: |
And the hurdy-gurdy I heard you say... |
| LM: |
Yes, and a hurdy-gurdy, that's right. Many
of the instruments can function in particular ways so, for example,
the drone element of the tamboura, the East Indian tamboura,
corresponds with the drone from the Irish drums, or corresponds with
the drone from the hurdy-gurdy. And so when I am looking at something
which I need to have the function of the drone, I will look at each of
these instruments and their idiom or the impression that they give
people, the cultural or ethnic impression. |
[Five second snatch of an unrecognized instrumental - more new work?]
| LW: |
Tell me very briefly about the album that
you are making here at Real World at the moment. |
| LM: |
The title, I am convinced, will be The
Book of Secrets and part of that inspiration has come from
different corners. One has been the Islamic Brotherhoods. I was
reading a book called Science and the Secret of Nature and it
goes into the whole history of information and how through the ages
there have been people who have wrestled over what information should
be kept secret and what information should be available to the public,
and how that might be mishandled and so on. I have been very
interested in the whole Sufic world. There is another piece that I
have written based upon the monks, off in their remote cells off the
West coast of Ireland, copying out these illuminated manuscripts. So
there is that tack, of these monks then coming back to the continent
and reintroducing them. So, coming at it from different corners. |
[Closing ten seconds - Snow from A Winter Garden]
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