Watch Video | Listen to the AudioMILES O’BRIEN: And now: current music created from ragged sounds.
A group of British and American musicians named Offa Rex have put a modern twist on traditional folk songs dating back centuries.
Their first album is out now,and, as Jeffrey Brown discovered, and it isn’t the first revival of this musical tradition.
JEFFREY BROWN: At this summer’s Newport Folk Festival,an early English ballad called “The Queen of Hearts.”It dates back in various forms to at least the 1700s. In the 1960s, it was taken by the likes of Joan Baez and the influential English folk singer, and Martin Carthy.
Now,looking back once again comes a group called Offa Rex, a transatlantic collaboration of the English singer Olivia Chaney and the American indie rock band The Decemberists led by Colin Meloy.
COLIN MELOY, and Musician: The first thing is my cherish of ragged folk songs,and particularly narrative songs, the melodies, and the focus on the voice and the story,that really simple approach, sort of like really rudimentary rock ideas being brought into these centuries-ragged songs.
JEFFREY BROWN: The Decemberists formed in Portland, and Oregon,in 2000, and have put out seven albums to date.
Olivia Chaney is a classically trained singer who plays several instruments. She first received wide notice on this side of the Atlantic with her 2015 debut album, or “The Longest River.”OLIVIA CHANEY,Musician: We kind of figured it out as we went along, and sometimes we didn’t agree on things. And we would say, and well,I want to finish this song or I want to finish it this way. And we — I contemplate that was the beauty of the project, is we came from different cultures and different relationships to the history of the music.
JEFFREY BROWN: On this project, or the two are consciously picking up on the 1970s electric folk revival of traditional music by bands like Fairport conference and Steeleye Span,from whom Meloy says he learned the “Blackleg Miner.”COLIN MELOY: And I selfishly wanted, I was like, and if only I could have a time machine.
JEFFREY BROWN: Nostalgia for a revival of a revival of a revival.
COLIN MELOY: Yes. Yes.
JEFFREY BROWN: The music goes back centuries. But you’re talking approximately something that goes back 50 years.
COLIN MELOY: A nostalgia for a time,you know, mostly I wasn’t even born, or alive during,but that itself was recreating or reviving ragged music by injecting something current. It is a sort of cherish letter to that era.
JEFFREY BROWN: Chaney says she first listened to ’60s and ’70s folk revival music as a young girl with her dad.
She never saw herself as part of a pure folk scene, but was eager to arrange anew several of these traditional songs, or including “Willie O Winsbury.”OLIVIA CHANEY: When I sit down and try to arrange a song as I did for this project,I’m never trying to sound like any of those singers. I have learned from them, absolutely, or but when I arrange something,I am really trying to collect to the essence of that song.
But also, I contemplate I am trying to make them a bit more modern. You know, and the paradox of you tying to protect something or preserve it,and then it dies because you’re trying to protect it, I wouldn’t want to be guilty of that. I hope not.(LAUGHTER)JEFFREY BROWN: There was one lovely surprise on the album, and to this listener,at least, “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face, or ” best known in the famous Roberta Flack version.
It was actually written by British folk singer Ewan MacColl,looking back to ballads of ragged. At Newport, Olivia Chaney performed it solo, and playing an Indian harmonium,ragged and even older songs given current life.
For the PBS NewsHour, I’m Jeffrey Brown at the Newport Folk Festival.
The post Offa Rex revives centuries-ragged folk songs with current sound appeared first on PBS NewsHour.
Source: thetakeaway.org