Singing Women in Lesotho

Today the Piano Rocketship is visiting Lesotho.  

 We spent a memorable week at the Malealea Lodge in 2005.  Imagine being surrounded by spectacular scenery, smiling locals and the more than occasional playing of music.

 We were rather humbled to be invited by Gillian Attwood (on the right in the bottom picture), to sit in on an inter-village quiz on HIV/AIDS.

Gillian was involved with community development projects in the Malealea Valley with the Malealea Development Trust. 

As far as I remember, at that time, there were monthly quizzes. It was part of the ongoing support and education work of the Trust. After the quiz, the women sang and danced. Andrew and I did a duet in return.  He played his recorder and I sang...what more could we offer at that moment?

Photography: Andrew Kay of Invisibules.org.
 

La Serena - If the sea was milk and the boats were cinnamon...

Sephardic songs are very piquant!  Andrew and I had a duo called Wildruby
a while back to perform Sephardic and other music too.  This is a track from our  CD, Saffron and Sapphire. I did all the vocals and he played flutes, viol and dumbek.  We recorded it at home and hung blankets and duvets on the walls to improve the sound.

  I remember I had been struggling to get the vocals right on La Serena. Then Andrew began to record this take. The bulky, earmuff style, headphones started to slide slowly down my face. Then he made a silly joke. I can't remember what it was, but standing surrounded by duvets and sliding headphones, I started to giggle and laugh. How ridiculous everything was. By this time, the intro was coming to an end and it was time to sing or stop recording. What the heck, I thought. I sang the take. I liked the sound of it afterwards, so we used it. I hadn't listened to it for years and put it on yesterday. I still like the sound of the track. Is ridiculousness the key to singing? Could be.

Lift off! A live performance of The Siren Song. A winter's tale of love and origami.

A jaded siren, weary of heroes who always want something, goes on a quest to find a nice guy.

This is a recording of a live improvised performance from a gig with the marvellous Oxford Improvisers orchestra at The Old Firestation in February this year.

I was both guest artist and orchestra member that evening. I gave the players a melody line as a starting point and we went from there. The Siren Song exists in a number of forms, the common ground is the set original lyrics. Players - Malcolm Atkins, Jill Elliot, Bruno Guastalla, Karen Kay and Pat Thomas.





Siren Song (c) Karen Kay