Like a Bug in a Rug: Capercaillie and "Puirt a Beul/Snug in a Blanket"

Capercaillie performs our random tune for today, called Puirt a Beul/Snug in a Blanket. A Scottish folk band formed in the 1980s, Capercaillie are named after the Scottish wood grouse. Capercaillie performs traditional Gaelic songs along with songs in English of their own composition or by others, and often mix traditional songs with modern recording techniques, rhythms and instrumentation. At first sticking fairly closely to traditional styles and instrumentation, in the 1980s they added funk bass lines, synthesizers and electric guitar to traditional songs. In 1992, their EP A Prince Among Islands was the first Gaelic language record to reach the top 40 of the UK singles charts They have since been moving back toward the more traditional while retaining a slight fusion sound. Puirt a Beul/Snug in a Blanket is from their 2006 album Crosswinds and on their 2007 CD Heritage Songs.

Listen to songs like this and more on the KUNM Global Music Show every Monday night from 10 pm - 1 am Mountain Standard Time. Live streaming, program information and the two-week digital archive can be found at http://www.kunm.org.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capercaillie_(band)

You Could Put an Eye Out: Gaelic Storm and "Slingshot"

Performed by Gaelic Storm, today's random song is a medley of tunes called Slingshot. Gaelic Storm. Gaelic Storm is an American Irish band formed in 1997 in Santa Monica, California. They play traditional Irish and Scottish music, as well as original music in the Celtic and Celtic rock genres. Gaelic Storm got a huge break in 1997 when they were cast as the steerage band in the blockbuster movie Titanic. They have burnished their resume by touring aggressively and adding new instrumentation to their ensemble, such as Uileann, Highland and Deger (electronic) bagpipes. Slingshot can be found on their 2006 album Bring Yer Wellies.

Is There Anything Else For Dinner: Capercaillie and "The Haggis"

Today's random tune is by Capercaille and called The Haggis, referring to a Scottish pudding consisting of sheeps heart, liver and lungs, minced with onion, oatmeal, suet, spices and salt, mixed with salt and encased in a sheep's stomach. Sound unsavory? The tune isn't! Capercaille is a Scottish folk band formed in the 1980s and named after the Scottish wood grouse. They perform traditional Gaelic songs along with songs in English of their own composition or by others, and often mix traditional songs with modern recording techniques, rhythms and instrumentation. At first sticking fairly closely to traditional styles and instrumentation, in the 1980s Capercaille added funk bass lines, synthesizers and electric guitar to traditional songs. In 1992, their EP A Prince Among Islands was the first Gaelic language record to reach the top 40 of the UK singles charts They have since been moving back toward more traditional music while retaining a slight fusion sound. The Haggis is from their 1987 album Crosswinds.

An Unrequited Love: Capercaillie and "Am Buachaille Ban"

Today's song's theme is made up of heartrending lyrics of unrequited love. It is brought to you by Capercaille, a Scottish folk band formed in the 1980s. Capercaille are named after the Scottish wood grouse. They perform traditional Gaelic songs along with songs in English of their own composition or by others, and often mix traditional songs with modern recording techniques, rhythms and instrumentation. At first sticking fairly closely to traditional styles and instrumentation, in the 1980s they added funk bass lines, synthesizers and electric guitar to traditional songs. In 1992, their EP A Prince Among Islands was the first Gaelic language record to reach the top 40 of the UK singles charts They have since been moving back toward more traditional music while retaining a slight fusion sound. This song, A Buachaille Ban, is from their 1987 album Crosswinds,

A Big Wet One: Gaelic Storm and "Kiss Me, I'm Irish"

A repeater song for today by Gaelic Storm, an American Irish band formed in 1997 in Santa Monica, California. They play traditional Irish and Scottish music, as well as original music in the Celtic and Celtic rock genres. Gaelic Storm got a huge break in 1997 when they were cast as the steerage band in the blockbuster movie Titanic. They have burnished their resume by touring aggressively and adding new instrumentation to their ensemble, such as Uileann, Highland and Deger (electronic) bagpipes. This song, Kiss Me, I'm Irish, can be found on their 2006 album Bring Your Wellies.

Kill Your Daddy: Old Blind Dogs and "Young Edward"

Father's Day was just a few days ago, so if you're now thinking of offing your daddy, Old Blind Dogs have a caution for you in today's song, the murder ballad Young Edward. Old Blind Dogs were formed in 1990 when the three founding members met on a "buskers holiday" in the Scottish Highlands. The band was originally distinctive as it represented the music and traditions of Northeastern Scotland and sang in the dialect of Aberdeen and the region. The band focuses on traditional Scottish and Celtic music, with influences from rock, reggae, jazz, blues and Middle Eastern rhythms. Young Edward can be found (as Edward) on their 1999 CD The World's Room, and in this live version (as Young Edward) as heard on their 2005 CD Old Blind Dogs Play Live.

Where the Wild Things Are: Old Blind Dogs and "A Wild Rumpus"

Old Blind Dogs provides the tune 'o the day with A Wild Rumpus. Old Blind Dogs are a Scottish band which plays traditional Scottish and Celtic music with influences from rock, reggae, jazz, blues and Middle Eastern music. They are known for performing songs unique to northeast Scotland and singing in the unique Doric dialect of the Aberdeen area. "A Wild Rumpus" can be found on their 2003 album The Gab O May, and on their 2006 live album Play Live.

Rockin' Newfies: Great Big Sea and "Fast As I Can"

In the late 1990s, I was very excited one evening. I had recently been turned on to a group called Great Big Sea, from Newfoundland in Canada, and I had learned a few days prior that they were going to be playing the House of Blues in New Orleans, where I was then living. I persuaded a few friends to go with me, including a guy from Ireland, a woman from England, and an Austrian friend. I told them about the band and how good they were. I had almost worn out my CD of Rant and Roar, their US-only compilation release, and now I was in the House of Blues with wife and friends and waiting for them to start. They came out and gave a great show, in my opinion, including their light-speed version of REM's End of the World. After it was over, I asked my friends what they thought, and to a person they said the band was terrible. They not only didn't like Great Big Sea, they hated them. I was thunderstruck, literally floored. They were all annoyed that I had dragged them to this concert And for a long time after I didn't share my musical interests with my friends again.

One thing about doing this daily random tune is that I once again can share my musical interests with others, but the nice thing about the Web is that people can decide whether or not to listen to a particular song. However, I notice that a huge sea change has happened in music sharing since I was younger. Back in the 70s and 80s we often shared mix tapes - cassette tapes where the recorded songs were an expression of a person's interest or what they thought was important. Nowadays, with the advent of the iPod and personal listening devices and cell phones, music has become a much more private pursuit. People make the equivalent of mix tapes for themselves by ordering their playlists and listen on their headphones. I've found also that people are less willing to venture into the unknown. As I have become more and more immersed in global music, I am astounded by the variety and the incredible musicianship outside of the United States, and yet getting many of my friends to even give a listen to a fantastic song from another country has been like pulling teeth. I'm not sure if it's related to the fact that the music isn't of the United States, or if it isn't sung in English, but I suspect the aversion goes deeper than that. Our electronic media, rather than encouraging community around particular things, actually sets us apart in a lot of tiny ways that in aggregation becomes very big and noticeable. I think music and the sharing of music is one of those casualties of our age. I may be wrong, and feel free to argue against my point, but that's how I feel at present.

Great Big Sea was formed in 1989 under the name Newfoundland Republican Army and has become known for its rock interpretations of Newfoundland folk songs drawing from the island's Irish, Scottish and Cornish heritage. Every year between 1996 and 2000 they won East Coast Music Association's Entertainers of the Year until they stopped submitting their name to allow other bands to compete. They have also been nominated several times for the Juno Awards, Canada's top music awards. They have released nine studio albums, three compilation albums, and three live albums. Fast As I Can is from their 1995 album Up, and is also included on their 1998 compilation CD Rant and Roar which was released only in the United States.

I'm going to trust that you won't hate them.

The Band That Started It: Capercaillie and "Puirt a Beul/Snug in a Blanket"

I've told the story on this blog before. How I was persuaded to go to Milwaukee's Irish Fest by Megan back in the late 1980s. How I dissed Irish music in my ignorance, believing that all it consisted of was schmaltzy ballads sung by accented tenors. How we walked in to the festival grounds and I heard something that I'd never heard before - traditional music with rhythms that were almost modern. That band was Capercaille, at the beginning of their career which has now stretched almost 30 years.

It was Capercaille that really started me on the road to appreciate world music. Back then world music was, to me, Celtic music: the smattering of songs that Peter Gabriel put out that had African singers and rhythms (I didn't even know the name of the singer, Youssou N'Dour, on Gabriel's In Your Eyes nor of his fame until many years later), and Ladysmith Black Mambazo's contributions to Paul Simon's Graceland album. My music world was small, limited to 70s and 80s rock, new wave, pop and a smattering of disco and funk. I had no idea when I walked into the festival grounds that day that synthesizers, a bass groove and a modern guitar accompaniment over traditional Gaelic tunes would lead to a sea change in my openness to other cultures and other artistic styles. And, this change occurred gradually. But it happened, and I have Capercaille to thank for that.

Capercaille is a Scottish folk band formed in the 1980s. They are named after the Scottish wood grouse. Capercaille performs traditional Gaelic songs along with songs in English of their own composition or by others, and often mix traditional songs with modern recording techniques, rhythms and instrumentation. At first sticking fairly closely to traditional styles and instrumentation, in the 1980s they added funk bass lines, synthesizers and electric guitar to traditional songs. In 1992, their EP A Prince Among Islands was the first Gaelic language record to reach the top 40 of the UK singles charts They have since been moving back toward the more traditional while retaining a slight fusion sound. This song, Puirt a Beul/Snug in a Blanket, is from their 2006 album Crosswinds.

Piping Hot: The Rogues and "Pipes in Space"

Call me crazy, but I really enjoy bagpipes. I know that there are some people that literally feel like bagpipes are the musical equivalent of running fingernails over a chalkboard, and I can understand why. They are loud, they have this underlying hum that you can't escape, their upper registers can sound like cats screeching a tune. And yet...

One story I was always told about bagpipes is that they were used by Scots to frighten the enemy before battle. I don't know if this is true or not, but I can easily imagine that if you were camping and you heard a Scottish regiment marching with bagpipes blowing and a large drum pounding, you might think the gates of hell had opened upon you.

But, the bagpipes are not just a Scotch instrument. There are numerous types of instruments made that use the same basic design - air blown into a bladder of some kind is then squeezed and forced out through pipes that can be played. And, they've been used all over the world. They are found throughout Europe (I have a tune by an Italian group named Fiamma Fumana that uses a particular bagpipe native to Italy), Northern Africa (I have another tune by Algeria's Cheb Mami that uses a bagpipe that interestingly does not compete with his Arabic lyrics, they must have muted it a bit), and the Middle East.

Once about three years ago, the Battlefield Band appeared on our Global Music Show. We got them into the studio, and they started to get ready to play a tune. One thing I never realized was just how loud even one Scottish bagpipe can be. The guy playing the bagpipe moved over to the corner of the studio farthest from the microphones, and when he let loose on that thing, it left my ears ringing.

Scots and Texans probably don't seem to have much in common, but I think they do. They are both proud people, tend to value their independence and sovereignty, and their cultures are known for fierce battles and martyrdom. When I discovered a Scottish group in Texas that played the bagpipes, I wasn't surprised. The Rogues were founded in Houston by Lars Sloane in 1987. They released their first recording in 1995 at the Texas Renaissance Festival on cassette. They figured they needed to sell one cassette a day to break even, and they sold 140 on the first day. They have received critical acclaim since, and have shared the stage with the likes of Steeleye Span, The Battlefield Band and Natalie McMaster. They have also performed with the full Air Force Symphony Orchestra. They still travel the renaissance fair circuit and released their latest album, 3 Lbs of Rage, in 2010. This song, Pipes in Space, is from their 2003 live album Made in Texas.

Where's Your Daddy? Old Blind Dogs and "Young Edward"

Randomness is strange thing, especially when it doesn't seem so random. In my previous post, I made mention of murder ballads. Today I did my random selection of a song for the day, which is kind of an elaborate process. I use a random string generator to come up with a random letter of the alphabet. With that letter, I go to my iTunes and I count the number of songs I have that begin with that letter. Let's say "E" has 252 songs. I then generate a random number between 1 and 252, and whatever that number is (let's say 136), I count from the first song in the "E" list to song number 136. If the song isn't a world song, I pick the world song nearest to it. It's a pretty random process. But when I mention murder ballads the day before, and a murder ballad comes up as the next day's song...I'm versed in statistics and probability as a political scientist but say what you want, the randomness argument seems weird. Did I influence events by thinking about murder ballads? I don't know.

What is a murder ballad? Murder ballads are traditional songs that describe the event of a murder. In particular, they often have a lead-up, a reveal, and the aftermath. Some are told from the point of view of the murderer. For example, one that Americans may know is the traditional ballad Banks of the Ohio, where a young man describes how he has taken his true love for a walk on the banks of the river, murders her for refusing his marriage offer, and then is taken away by the sheriff the next day as he laments killing his one true love. Or, Americans might remember Tom Dooley, sung by the Kingston Trio, about a man sentenced to hang for the murder of a young woman. Others tell the tale from the victim's point of view. The genre started in England, Scotland and Scandinavia, and later American versions of the same ballads started popping up, for example the American-Appalachian murder ballad Knoxville Girl came from the Irish Wexford Girl, which in turn came from the English Oxford Girl. New murder ballads are still being written and can be performed by almost anybody. Two of my favorite murder ballads are new - Lyle Lovett's LA County is a murder ballad about a man jilted by his lover and the horrific consequences when he shows up to her wedding. On the world scene, The Chieftains did a murder ballad on their holiday album The Bells of Dublin, with Elvis Costello singing the lyrics, called The St. Stephen's Day Murders in which a pair of sisters named Dawn and Eve Christmas do in their entire family with poison on the day after Christmas. Humans have always been both revolted and fascinated with murder, its motives and its consequences, and I like to think that the traditional ballads were both the soap operas and the moral lessons of their day, s sort of Grimm's Fairy Tales for adults to warn us of our baser natures and of the toll it takes on us and the wider world when we give in to those hatreds and jealousies.

So the murder ballad you are being presented with today is Young Edward by Old Blind Dogs. The ballad begins with a mother questioning her son. Why do you have blood on your sword, she asks? He goes through a whole set of excuses before finally revealing the bloody truth. The great thing about this ballad is that there isn't one revelation, but two! The mother questions her son closely about what he will do now, and at the end asks what will happen to her, to which Edward replies... Oh, but listen to the song and read the lyrics that are on the YouTube if you click the About link.

Old Blind Dogs were formed in 1990 when the three founding members met on a "buskers holiday" in the Scottish Highlands. The band was originally distinctive as it represented the music and traditions of Northeastern Scotland and sang in the dialect of Aberdeen and the region. The band focuses on traditional Scottish and Celtic music, with influences from rock, reggae, jazz, blues and Middle Eastern rhythms. Young Edward can be found (as Edward) on their 1999 CD The World's Room, and a live version (as Young Edward) can be heard on their 2005 CD Old Blind Dogs Play Live.