Category: Music

“Step outside, take a look at the stars…”

Paradoxically, stones are in stars and stars are in stones. In his book The Planet in a Pebble: A Journey into Earth’s Deep History (2010), British geologist Jan Zalasiewicz tells the story of a pebble’s history, stretching back billions of years. In Chapter One, “Stardust”, he points out how, at the atomic level, a pebble is a microcosm of the Universe, made up of that which goes back to the singularity of the beginnings of everything: 

The pebble, in this respect, is as deep a mystery as is everything else in the Universe. How did the matter of that pebble, and of the…hills it was torn from, and of the world it sits atop – and of the Solar System and of the Milky Way, and of countless galaxies near and far – manage to unpack itself from a point: a ‘singularity’, as many think, of no size at all? (page 7)

A pebble is made of stardust and in it we encounter not only the depths of the Earth but also the heights of the heavens. Looking down is a way of looking up. Looking into a stone is also to glance across deep dark space and even time. In a stone we make contact with that which is closest to home as well as that which is furthest away. 

“Making Contact” by Bruce Cockburn

Step outside, take a look at the stars
Catch a glimpse of the way things are
Making contact…

Smell of sweet fresh oil on skin
When you move on me like the tide coming in 
Making contact…

So many ways to understand
One for every woman and man
Been that way since the world began

I hear the drumming of the surf and I have to dance
Stepping to the rhythm of circumstance
Making contact…

I feel so huge,  I feel so small
I feel so good I want to swallow it all
Making contact…

Making contact
Swimming in an ocean of love
We move together like the waves
Swimming in an ocean of love
Every night and every day
Swimming in an ocean of love
One world, one human race
Swimming in an ocean of love
One kiss from a smiling face
Swimming in an ocean of love
See that sign coming into view
Swimming in an ocean of love
Mother sea welcomes you
Swimming in an ocean of love
Making contact…

“When the stars go blue…”

“When the stars go blue” written and performed by Ryan Adams

Dancing where the stars go blue
Dancing where the evening fell
Dancing in your wooden shoes
in a wedding gown

Dancing out on 7th street
Dancing through the underground
Dancing little marionette
Are you happy now?

Where do you go when you’re lonely?
Where do you go when you’re blue?
Where do you go when you’re lonely?
I’ll follow you
when the stars go blue

Laughing with your pretty mouth
Laughing with your broken eyes
Laughing with your lover’s tongue
in a lullabye

Where do you go when you’re lonely?
Where do you go when you’re blue?
Where do you go when you’re lonely?
I’ll follow you
when the stars go blue

“You run from the river, when it long ran over you…”

I once wrote the following in an article for a Smallfarmers magazine. It was entitled “The Passions and Emotions of Smallfarming: Place, Experience and Meaning”:

I was brought up on a large sheep farm in Southland. It was called “The Mains”, a Scottish term for the farm headquarters. My country childhood involved expeditions to every part – sheds, stables, pasture, river, pond, old railway line, shelter belts, pine tree plantations. I could be cowboy, farmer, hunter, explorer. I spent a lot of time fishing for trout in the river, building tree huts, hunting for rats and rabbits with Lassie, my fox terrier, riding horses, swimming in the river in summer, sledding down the snowy hillslopes in winter, often getting away from everything and enjoying being alone in my favourite grove of old gnarled pine trees or nestled down amongst the high grass not yet cut for hay. In autumn I gathered pine cones to sell to the “townies” to supplement my pocket money…I later bought Waikoha Smallfarm in the Waikato largely out of nostalgia for that long ago childhood – I had lived in cities for the previous three decades. There are many layers to the emotional meaning of my smallfarm, but one of the most basic involves a harkening back to my younger days… A smallfarm as a whole is emotionally-loaded to its owners. A smallfarm provides emotional comfort, independence and security. It enables a rural lifestyle characterised by peace and quiet, space, privacy, freedom and self-expression.

These photos (below) are of the Waikaka River running through “The Mains”, the farm I grew up on. I visited there on a stone-collection trip in April 2016. Gold mining dredges were active there in the late 19th century and again just recently – it is an area of inland alluvial gravel-beds. 

“Beside You” by Dave Dobbyn

Here’s to your garden, here’s to your kids
I heard you were in the neighbourhood
I’ve been a long time on the skids
And baby I’m beside you – you run from the river
When it long ran over you

This is for you standing up to a bone-chilling wind
This is for the failures you collected from my sin
And this is for your lonesome tears I never dried
This is for you hanging in in the hope that it never dies
And baby I’m beside you – you run from the river
When it long ran over you

This is for you waiting up though the call never came
For the milk of human kindnesses you collected from our dream
And this is for your lonesome tears I never dried
This is for you hanging in in the hope that it never died
And baby I’m beside you – you run from the river
When it long ran over you

And now I’m running here beside you
And now I’m running here beside you

This is for the traveller on a blinding desert road
Good fortune smile upon you and may love be your only load
And this is for the only one who could quell my burning rage
To anyone whose been a broken man and anyone seen better days

Baby I’m beside you
And now I’m running here beside you
And now I’m running here beside you

“A Stepping Stone…”

Stones from Birdlings Flat, in the polishing process…

“Windstar Aotearoa” by John Grenell

Windstar Aotearoa
Land of the long white cloud
Windstar Aotearoa
Let’s teach our children proud

We need to do more with what we have
And we can be more with who we are
And to feel the wind blowing upon our souls
And to reach out and touch a star

Windstar Aotearoa
Go forth and let your spirit free
Windstar Aotearoa
Held build a world of love for you or me

Hey let’s live a dream of being whole again
And fly with the hawks and touch the clouds
With spirit’s music played on instruments of nature
To live in harmony and he oh so proud

We can believe in hope, hey let’s believe in our dreams
You see, the rose you hold becomes a means
Each of us will build before our time has flown
A stumbling block or a stepping stone

Windstar Aotearoa
Land of the long white cloud
Windstar Aotearoa
Land of the long white cloud

“Soul of Southland…”

A Southland stone, a Southland song…

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“I heard the boom of a kakapo, the sound of a takahe shrill, as the sun crept over the eastern ridges and warmed the morning hills…” The song begins by referring to two amazing birds. The first, the kakapo, is unique – a flightless parrot, the world’s heaviest parrot, maybe the longest living bird, which is also nocturnal. The male kakapo produces a low-frequency “boom” to attract potential mates, a quiet call to our ears but it can be heard by another kakapo up to 5 kilometres away.  With only about 125 individuals known to exist, the kakapo is critically endangered.

The second bird featuring at the start of John Grenell’s song is the takahe – another large flightless bird, but thought to have been extinct at the beginning of the 19th  century. A small population was discovered in 1948 in the isolated Murchison Mountains in southern New Zealand. Still a critically endangered species, ongoing conservation efforts mean that a population of maybe a couple of hundred exists. These two takahe (below) reside at Te Anau in Southland, and I visited them in February 2016 on my way to the beaches of the Southland coast.

John Grenell “Song of Southland”

I heard the boom of a kakapo, the sound of a takahe shrill
as the sun crept over the eastern ridges and warmed the morning hills
I heard the sound of a station hound as it wakens to the day
I once followed the farm dog’s dreams as I wandered on my way

Back to the soul of Southland and a Takitimu memory
Fills my mind with another time, brings her back to me
Back to the soul of Southland and a Takitimu mountain memory
Fills my mind with another time, brings her back to me

She loved the sound of the banjo ring and she loved those mandolin tunes
As I recall she loved them all beneath the Monowai moon
She loved the soft and the easy wind as it whispred through the hill
And I like to think that if I go back again that she’d maybe love me still

Back to the soul of Southland and a Takitimu memory
Fills my mind with another time, brings her back to me
Back to the soul of Southland and a Takitimu mountain memory
Fills my mind with another time, brings her back to me

The times they come and the times they go, you win sometimes you lose
Hey I love my living in every breath and how I love to sing the blues
When I hear a bellbird’s call, my heart jumps in a whirl
It reminds me of some times I spent with a Mararoa River girl

Back to the soul of Southland and a Takitimu memory
Fills my mind with another time, brings her back to me
Back to the soul of Southland and a Takitimu mountain memory
Fills my mind with another time, brings her back to me

“And the thought becomes the memory…”

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“Maybe Tomorrow” by Goldenhorse

There’s a story I know
We all leave and let go
There is nothing to hold us

In a moment of time
When the fruit becomes wine
And the thought becomes the memory

All of your sorrow
Maybe tomorrow
Will fade away in the air

Trying to please me
Making it easy
It won’t be there
It won’t be there
In your life
In your life…

“The song that is deep in the soul of all people…”

“Sraidean Na Roinn-Eorpa” by Runrig

Chuir mi mo chul ri Lunnainn
An samhradh air m’aodann
‘S mi air sraidean mor na Roinn-Eorpa
‘S mi le mo run, le m’anam, mo bhratach
Mo ghrian mo ghealach ur
‘S sheas mi’s na aiteachan a sheas m’athair
‘S ioma cogadh a tha ann airson saorsa
Da fhicead bliadhna’s an dileab air fhagail
Briaran do linn’s do sheorsa

Baile beag anns a’ Ghearmailt
Gruagach cho boidheach
Le suilean lan sonas is bron
Thuirt i “am bheil fhios agaibh fhein, an t-sochair
‘tha agaibh Tha eallach eachraidh air mo ghuaillan cho trom”
Chrath sinn lamhan, ‘s dh’fhalbh I a’seinn
An dan tha dcmhainn, ‘s gach anam de dhaoine
Dh’fhag mi i le blas beag de mo dhuthaich
Dh’fhag i mi leis a chompanas ur

Tha na brataich a’snamh
An cuan de dhathan
Do chanan binn an cluas na Roinn-Eorpa
Tha na sraidean beo le cainnt’s togair
Sraidean am Babel ur
‘S thusa mo run, tha cothrom mad choinneamh
Tha do chliu air ‘dhol tarsainn an cuan
Thusa tha meanbh, bi ladir, bi alainn
Taisbean do chanan, bi buan

–oOo–

TRANSLATION

“European Continent”

I have put London behind me
The summer is on my face
And I am on the big streets of Europe
With my love, my flag
My sun, and my new moon
I stood in the places where my father had stood
Many are the wars of freedom
Forty years and the legacy is still with me
The words of his kind and generation

A small town in Germany
A beautiful young girl
Her eyes full of sorrow and joy
She said “Are you aware of the privilege you enjoy
The burden of history lies heavy on my shoulders”
We shook hands, and she went on her way singing
The song that is deep in the soul of all people
I left her with a small part of my country
She left me with the fellowship of a new age

The flags are swimming
In a sea of colour
My language melodious in the ear of Europe
The streets are alive with conversation and purpose
Possibilities for a new Babel
And you my love have opportunity before you
Your renown has crossed the ocean
You that are small, be strong, be beautiful
Reveal your great language, be everlasting

 

“Scatterlings of Africa”

I can see echoes of African landscapes in this polished stone from Riverton…

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Copper sun sinking low
Scatterlings and fugitives
Hooded eyes and weary brows
Seek refuge in the night

They are the scatterlings of Africa
Each uprooted one
On the road to Phelamanga
Where the world began

I love the scatterlings of Africa
Each and every one
In their hearts a burning hunger
Beneath the copper sun

Ancient bones from Olduvai
Echoes of the very first cry
“Who made me, here and why? 
Beneath the copper sun”

African ideas, African ideas
Make the future clear, make the future clear

And we are scatterlings of Africa
Both you and I 
We run the road to Phelamanga
Beneath the copper skies

And we are scatterlings of Africa
On a journey to the stars
Far below we leave forever
Dreams of what we were

“Scatterlings of Africa” by Johnny Clegg and Juluka

As an adolescent in Johannesburg’s northern suburbs, Johnny Clegg encountered the music and dances of the city’s Zulu migrant workers. He learned the Zulu language, the maskandi guitar and the dance styles of the migrants. Clegg’s involvement with black musicians often led to arrests for trespassing on government property and for contravening the Group Areas Act. He was first arrested at the age of 15 for violating apartheid-era laws in South Africa banning people of different races from congregating together after curfew hours. He went on to record and perform with his bands Juluka and Savuka. Once, Savuka drew such a large crowd for a concert in Lyon, France, that Michael Jackson cancelled a concert there, complaining that Clegg and his group had stolen all his fans. “Scatterlings of Africa” was Clegg’s most popular international hit. I used to show the video of it in a lecture to raise questions for New Zealand about the difficulty of understanding an African setting and the meaning of an African dance, and the type of research methods needed to overcome those difficulties.

“Day in a Boat: The other world was here…”

A polished andesite stone, from a Riverton beach… Of this earth but other-worldly…

Runrig is a recently-retired Scottish Celtic rock band formed on the Isle of Skye in 1973. Their name is taken from a historic furrow-and-ridge system of farming that was used for hundreds of years in the Highlands and Islands. The land was divided into towns or townships, comprising an area of cultivable “in-bye” land and a larger area of pasture and rough grazing. The in-bye was divided into long narrow strips – “rigs” – which were periodically reassigned among the tenants of the township so that no individual had continuous use of the best land. The music of Runrig is often described as a blend of folk and rock music, with lyrics often focusing upon the locations, history, politics, and people that are unique to Scotland. They are one of the few rock bands whose songs have often included Gaelic. They disbanded in 2018.

Early Runrig. Source: https://www.allmusic.com/album/all-the-best-mw0002480176
Traditional Scottish run-rig system of farming. Source: http://theindepthgenealogist.com/lowland-clearances
Google Maps view of old run-rig strips, Port of Ness, Isle of Lewis. Source: https://www.google.co.nz/maps/@58.4943964,-6.2236151,257m/data=!3m1!1e3
Remains of old run-rig strips, Isle of Skye. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Run_rig#/media/File:Runrigs_-_geograph.org.uk_-_308174.jpg
The end of Runrig’s final concert, August 2018. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runrig#/media/File:Runrig,_farewell_at_Stirling,_18-08-2018.jpg

On sun soaked seas
Baiting the hand lines
Neoscan at the oars
Turning the bows into the Morea wake
For the thrill of it all
Across the middle of the bay
A line of faces in the waiting hour

And I could see
The other world was here
Can you hear it now?
We’re just on the brink

Returning homewards
Together on
Alone

O mollaidh sinn
An gaol ‘s an gras
A thug dhuinn bith
Cho umhail fo ghrein
‘S i dealradh sios
Air reultan cein

It was all there waiting
Just as we reached the door
Just as we reached the door

“Day in a Boat” by Runrig

NASA astronaut Laurel Clark, who died in the Columbia space shuttle disaster in 2003, came across Runrig’s music while stationed at Holy Loch on the Firth of Clyde. While she was in space, a Runrig song called “Running to the Light” from the Album “The Stamping Ground” was played as a wake-up call. She told Mission Control in Houston that it reminded her of her husband Jon and her time in Scotland. Columbia broke up as it returned to Earth, killing Clark and her six fellow astronauts on board. The two Runrig CDs she had brought with her into space, “The Stamping Ground” and “The Cutter and the Clan”, were found afterwards in different parts of the wreckage and later presented to the band by her husband and son.