um, Joanna, I think you have some 'splainin' to do.
Sitting in on the sessions for this 1978 Dorothy Carter album was the experimental musician and instrument-builder Robert Rutman, also known as U.S. Steel Cello Ensemble
Some of the spidery metallic shimmers produced by the weave of her dulcimer and psaltery with his contraptions remind me a tiny bit of A.R. Kane's "The Sun Falls Into the Sea"
This interface between experimental music and an interest in pre-modern music, folk, traditional music, Early Music etc is a syndrome worth pondering...
See Folkways's unexpected line in tape music and electronic composition (which I wrote about here) or Laurie Spiegel's doubled interest in Appalachian shape-note music and computer music. There's many more examples.
Possibly something to do with an antipathy to the present? Delving deep into the past, plunging into the future = ways of getting away from NOW.
Both involve an exoticism of time... distance of either kind entails an imaginative projection which distances oneself from the contemporary... the ghostly lost and the unimaginable unknown-to-come beckon, their allure luring you from the topical, the mere here-and-now
I suppose it's no different from the way that aged 9, I wanted to be an archaeologist, but within a few years I was obsessed with science fiction
Or equally, being a music writer who bangs on about DA PHUTURE endlessly, while also feeling the romance of the olden days (reviewing reissues, profiling legendary cult bands from yesteryear, writing history books).
postscript: somehow escaped my notice, this snippet via Wiki! Not so obscure a figure as I'd thought
In the 1990s Carter returned to London and founded the all-female revival group Mediæval Bæbes with Katherine Blake of Miranda Sex Garden. The group's 1997 debut album, Salva Nos reached #2 on the classical music charts.
More on Mediæval Bæbes!
As of 2010, the group had sold some 500,000 records worldwide, their most successful being Worldes Blysse with 250,000 copies purchased....
Undrentide, (co-produced by John Cale)...
Each album features traditional medieval songs and poetry set to music, mostly arranged by Blake specifically for the ensemble, alongside varying numbers of original compositions. They sing in a variety of languages, including Latin, Middle English, French, Italian, Russian, Swedish, Scottish English, German, Manx Gaelic, Spanish, Welsh, Bavarian, Provençal, Irish, modern English and Cornish. Their vocals are backed by medieval instruments, including the recorder and cittern, played by the singers or fellow musicians.
The Bæbes' musical pieces run the gamut from extremely traditional, such as their version of the "Coventry Carol" on Salva Nos, to songs that feel traditional but are much more modern, such as their rendition of "Summerisle", a song written for Robin Hardy's 1973 cult film, The Wicker Man. John Cale added non-medieval instruments, including saxophone and electric guitar, to some of the arrangements on Undrentide, although with subsequent albums the band returned to more traditional instruments.
In 2005, the Bæbes contributed Mediæval Bæbes music to the soundtrack of the BBC period drama The Virgin Queen, which portrays the life of Elizabeth I of England, including the title music, which is a poem written by Elizabeth set to music by Blake.
.... In 2023, the Baebes collaborated with Orbital on the latter's single "Ringa Ringa", a version of the children's rhyme "Ring a Ring o' Roses" referencing the COVID pandemic. The song appeared on Orbital's album Optical Delusion which released February 17, 2023
Dorothy on lead vocals on this track from Worldes Blysse
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