Newsom? Oldsom, more like

 um, Joanna, I think you have some 'splainin' to do. 

Resemblance especially apparent with this first track on the LP, "The Squirrel Is A Funny Thing"

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

x

Tabortastic and Flintlockfabulous

 

A delightful clip of a young June Tabor performing the trad. arr ditty "While Gamekeepers Lie Sleeping" - a song about poaching. From the show Fanfare, which was built around the boy band Flintlock, who'd become popular on 1970s kids TV through appearances on You Must Be Joking and Pauline's Quirkes. 

What I like about this clip, alongside the performance, is the way that the six young lads plus older male presenter respectfully ask Tabor about her vocal craft (how she gets the "decorators" in with all those twiddly bits and ornaments) and the provenance of the song (Dorset, early 20th Century but probably the song is much older) and seem riveted by what she has to say. There's a funny bit about her practicising in the loo, for the acoustics and privacy, and to not drive her mum mad. 

The whole program from which the rendition of "Gamekeepers" comes is below,  complete with June joining in a mass performance of "Yellow Submarine" near the end of the show (from 21.48). Look out for June in a nautical hat at a rakish angle. 

Some more folk-rock on British TV - Steeleye Span (during the period when Martin Carthy was in the band) on an ATV show called Music Room, in 1970.  Carthy in particular looks newborn luminous. You got to love the presenter's trendy get-up.  They're so earnestly middle class and conscientious it's touching. 

June Tabor's first released recording would be with Steeleye's Maddy Prior under the name Silly Sisters

This, her debut proper, is much better

More top Tabor tuneage.... 

Two separate songs about shepherdess maidens in the heather bonny enough to be queens - but quite different in mood. 

 

Have been unable to get the song above, "The Scarecrow" (originally written by Lal Waterson and recorded on the album Bright Phoebus) out of my heads for days now. 

Haunting rendition of "The King of Rome" at around 24 minutes into Ken Russell's doc on the English Folk Song  - plus interview with Tabor. Thematically it's reminiscent of another Ken's work - Kes by Ken Loach.  Relatively recently written, no trad. arr job,  "The King of Rome" is a true-story story-song about a racing pigeon and heroic-ascent-by-proxy for the earthbound working class man. 

I've blogged about this program before, of course - inventoried its peculiar delights. And before that even! This blog, or blog-cluster, has been going so long, I guess it's hardly surprising that I would circle back to past obsessions and talismans. 

Back to June..

Above is another performance of "While Gamekeepers Lie Sleeping", from an outdoor concert in Koln, 1990.

And here's one from the Joolz Holland show 

These boots are made for folking.