Letters from Quotidia 2024 Episode 2

Letters from Quotidia, 2024- Episode 2. Welcome back those who visited Quotidia between 2021 through 2023. And to new visitors- welcome! You don’t need a visa to enter Quotidia. Stay as long as you like. Quotidia remains that space, that place, where ordinary people lead ordinary lives. But where, from time to time, they encounter the extraordinary.

Just a few weeks ago, I encountered another instance of the extraordinary: I was snared by an old photograph which took my breath away. It had been sent out from Ireland from my wife’s older brother who found it while he was clearing out a cupboard at his home in Belfast. My daughter then brought it back from Brisbane where she was visiting her cousins from overseas who were attending a wedding there.  The black-and-white photograph shows my wife with three friends in 1964 when she was just 15 years of age.

They were on holidays during the month of July and staying at a rental property in the village of Waterfoot in the heart of the Glens of Antrim. I had first laid eyes on her at a place in Cushendall frequented by holidaying teens from Belfast and Scotland called Hamill’s Café which had a jukebox which eagerly consumed our coins, spilling out the sounds of the sixties: And what sounds they were!

The first song featured in this post is one I first heard at that teenage haunt, The Animals’ version of The House of the Rising Sun. It’s a phenomenal song: transformative for Dylan- some say, it prompted him to go electric. Now, Dylan had covered this song earlier in 1961, and musical magpie that he is, had stolen Dave Van Ronk’s arrangement which Alan Price then lifted in his arrangement for The Animals whose version knocked The Beatles off the top of the charts and broke the Newcastle group internationally. The Beatles, class act that they were and always would be, sent The Animals a congratulatory telegram.

Of uncertain provenance, this folk song was probably written towards the end of the 19^th Century but may be contemporaneous with the American Civil War. Miners were singing it by the turn of the 20^th Century, and it’s been covered by many artists including Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly, Pete Seeger, Nina Simone, and Joan Baez. But that photograph sticks in my mind, and I wonder if the ephemeral images flooding social media and gulped down in their tens of millions every day have anything like the emotional force imparted by that 60-year-old black and white photograph? Old man shouting at clouds again, eh?

Here is my version of The House of the Rising Sun– I record it in 4/4 time rather than the 6/8 time used by The Animals. I retain the folk-rock vibe that The Animals used to rocket the song to the top of record charts all over the world. [insert song]

In 1975 I bought an album by The Dubliners-entitled Now. It is one of their strongest releases, featuring John Sheahan, Barney McKenna, Luke Kelly and newcomer, Jim McCann, who joined the group after Ciaran Bourke and Ronnie Drew left in 1974. Songs of note include Carrickfergus which McCann made his own from that time on; Luke Kelly’s masterful rendition of The Unquiet Grave, one of the oldest English folk songs; The Old Triangle, brought to prominence by legendary playwright Brendan Behan; and final song of this podcast, The Lord of the Dance.

It was written by Sydney Carter, a formidable presence in the English folk scene for many decades. According to the obituary in The Guardian of 17 March 2004 Lord of the Dance was written in 1963, as an adaptation of the Shaker hymn Simple Gifts.  Later, he said that he saw Christ as the incarnation of the piper who is calling us. He dances that shape and pattern which is at the heart of our reality. Lines of verse he wrote more than 30 years before his death magnify this theme, Coming and going by the dance, I see/That what I am not a part of me./ Dancing is all that I can ever trust,/ The dance is all I am, the rest is dust./I will believe my bones and live by what/ Will go on dancing when my bones are not.//

Many artists- and indeed religions- have used dance as a metaphor. I postulate that our very essence, atoms, dance in and around and through us unceasingly and while our bodies degrade over time, the multitudinous atoms keep dancing in our minds in some sort of quantum engagement that generates consciousness and connection with a wider reality.

John Sheahan, who at the time of writing is the only surviving member of the original Dubliners, aged 85, has this to say about how compositions come about when interviewed by The Irish Times on the occasion of his 80^th birthday, My theory is that when a composer says ‘I’m after writing a new tune,’ well, God knew that tune from eternity, so he’s just after discovering the tune, not writing it, really. I see myself as having been lucky to be in the right place at the right time when a little gem falls out of God’s pocket. As lines from his poem, Signature would modestly have it, When day is done, and evening firelight beckons/When tradesmen all are free from toil and care/I linger in the shadows with my fiddle/And softly leave my signature in air// Yeah, linger in the shadows, I’m pretty confident there is a song or poem somewhere in that phrase. Here’s The Lord of the Dance. [insert song]

The next podcast will dance (or stagger?)  your way on or about St Patrick’s Day. It will be the middle of March and whether there will be any madness about is something to contemplate as the world unravels around us, mmm?

The House of the Rising Sun (trad)

There is a house in New Orleans they call the Rising Sun
And it’s been the ruin of many a poor boy and God, I know I’m one

My mother was a tailor she sewed my new blue jeans
My father was a gamblin’ man down in New Orleans

Now the only thing a gambler needs is a suitcase and a trunk
And the only time he’ll be satisfied is when he’s on a drunk

Oh, mother, tell your children not to do what I have done
Spend your lives in sin and misery in the House of the Rising Sun

Well, I got one foot on the platform the other foot on the train
I’m goin’ back to New Orleans to wear that ball and chain

Well, there is a house in New Orleans they call the Rising Sun
And it’s been the ruin of many a poor boy and God, I know I’m one

Lord of the Dance (Sydney Carter)

I danced in the morning when the world was begun,
And I danced in the moon and the stars and the sun,
And I came down from heaven and I danced on the earth:
At Bethlehem I had my birth.

Dance, then, wherever you may be,
I am the Lord of the dance, said he,
And I’ll lead you all, wherever you may be,
And I’ll lead you all in the dance, said he.

I danced for the scribe and the Pharisee,
But they would not dance and they wouldn’t follow me;
I danced for the fishermen, for James and John;
They came with me and the dance went on:

(Chorus)

I danced on the Sabbath and I cured the lame:
The holy people said it was a shame.
They whipped and they stripped and they hung me on high,
And they left me there on a cross to die:

(Chorus)

I danced on a Friday when the sky turned black;
It’s hard to dance with the devil on your back.
They buried my body and they thought I’d gone;
But I am the dance, and I still go on:

(Chorus)

They cut me down and I leapt up high;
I am the life that’ll never, never die.
I’ll live in you if you’ll live in me:
I am the Lord of the dance, said he.

(Chorus x2)

Credits: All written text, song lyrics and music (including background music) written and composed by Quentin Bega unless otherwise specified in the credits section after individual posts. Illustrative excerpts from other texts identified clearly within each podcast. I donate to and use Wikipedia frequently as one of the saner sources of information on the web.

Technical Stuff: Microphone-songs Shure SM58; (for the podcast spoken content) Audio Technica AT 2020 front-facing with pop filter); Apogee 76K also used for songs and spoken text. For recording and mixing down: 64-bit N-Track Studio 10 Extended used; Rubix 22 also used for mixing of microphone(s) and instruments. I use the Band in a Box/RealBand 2023 combo for music composition.