Late spring and early summer: a time of graduations, engagements, weddings. relocations, and other sorts of moves.
Musicians sometimes address these changes directly, and at other times they choose indirect ways to go about it.
Ian & Sylvia chose the song Circle Game, a story of watching a child go through seasons of change, which was written by Joni Mitchell. Ian and Sylvia (he from western Canada, she from Ontario) met in the folk music scene of Toronto, and formed a musical partnership that saw them travel far beyond Canada with their music. Both fine songwriters themselves, along the way they brought the work of other Canadian musicians, among them Joni Mitchell and Gordon Lightfoot, to wider audiences, too.
Though they eventually went their separate ways, their work, both in sound and in songwriting, remains a distinctive part of music history in Canada and beyond.
Mary Black chose to look back at an earlier time through her take on the song Schooldays Over, which was written by Scottish musician Ewan McColl. Black grew up in a musical family in Dublin, Ireland. She always loved singing as she was growing up. She has said that as a fairly young girl, singing Schooldays Over one time so that her brother could use it to work on his recording equipment, she began to think about the meaning of the song, the story it tells. That thinking about meaning became a foundation for Black's song choices as her career went forward.
Shannon Heaton composed the tune Last Days of Fourth Grade, which she plays on flute with her husband and musical partner Matt Heaton on guitar. It's a tune she composed some years back to mark, well, the last days of their son's fourth grade year. The waltz tune pairs well with two jigs they've chosen to make a set.
Matt and Shannon Heaton are based in the Boston area.
So too is Hanneke Cassel, from whom the tune Trip to Walden Pond comes. Hanneke's instrument is the fiddle with which she draws on Scottish and Cape Breton music and composes original music, as well. This is an original one, a joyous one too, which honors a very special trip. Hanneke's husband, cellist Mike Block, proposed to her while they were visiting Walden Pond. They both tour in the US and internationally from their base near Boston.
Wild Mountainside is a song which talks of friendship, nature, love, courage, coming home. True, that's a lot to put into the few minutes of a song, but songwriter John Douglas is well up to the task. So is Eddi Reader, who sings it here.
They are both from Scotland. Eddi had been living in London for a while, for her music work. She really missed Scotland, though. John wrote the song to encourage her to come home.
It worked; Eddi has been based in Scotland for some years now. Eddi and John got married, too. On her recording of the music of Robert Burns, Eddi included several pieces by contemporary Scottish folk musicians, including Wild Mountainside. It stands well in that company.
May the work of these artists be a good companion to you through the changes of this and other seasons.
Thank you for staying with us through this journey. Below, you'll find a link that will take you to an article which has a bit more backstory on the series. It also has links to a number of the stories, including ones called Listening for Community, Music for Winter's Changes, and The Geography of Hope.
Kerry Dexter is Music Editor at Wandering Educators.
You may find more of Kerry's work in National Geographic Traveler, Strings, Perceptive Travel, Journey to Scotland, Irish Fireside, and other places, as well as at her own site, Music Road. You can also read her work at Along the Music Road on Substack.