Fiddlesong
Anne Lederman
Falcon Productions
2002
11 tracks
Like some mythical spider, Anne Lederman draws the world into her parlour, serves up tea and biscuits, and invites the world to jam. Lederman bows her fiddle, its magic drawing from the potential discord of diverse cultures the collective and beautiful sound of one world in harmony. A respected performer and scholar, Lederman creates something both traditional and new, and it's a thing of beauty. This is Fiddlesong.
Anne Lederman is a talented and innovative multi-instrumentalist as well as a singer in half a dozen different languages. On this release, Lederman's talents are enhanced by the support of a dozen other talented musicians drawn from Canada and around the world. The result is a delightful melding of cultures and world musics into one joyous sound.
Some of these songs are symphonic in their scope, taking a simple song or medley of simple songs and building on that theme, musically transforming a village into a universe. There is a richness here that, outside the work of such composers as Charles Ives or Aaron Copland, is rarely heard in what is, at root, folk and traditional music.
This music blends fiddle, played interchangeably in a variety of Canadian and European styles, with guitar, bass, piano, electric piano and electric guitar, saxophone, accordion, harmonica, kit drums, a wide variety of traditional hand drums and other traditional percussion instruments. This music is way big and shows a great potential for cacophony, yet it all holds together and the resulting strains weave together to form a seamless fabric.
Lederman's vocals have a raw edge to them. Her voice is not quite folk or country or pop, but it carries emotion well and is meant to tell stories. There is a charisma here that approaches but perhaps doesn't quite attain the levels of a Marlene Dietrich or Edith Piaf, instead residing perhaps closer to a Merrilee Rush or Bonnie Tyler, had they been folk singers. These vocals are not meant just to be part of the musical affect but to fully express the story being told.
"Cactus and Cranky Cats" stands out among these story songs. While the rest of Fiddlesong, however full it may get instrumentally, still sounds like folk music, this song comes across more like something from American musical theatre. The score is rich and jazzy, the vocal shifts from mood to mood, is sung big and powerful, then sweet and sensitive, then almost conversational. The backing vocals sound like they belong on a Broadway stage. As much as to folk music, and perhaps more, "Cactus and Cranky Cats" seems to owe a lot of its lyrical content and musical sound to big musicals like "West Side Story."
Lederman's "African Suite" takes up four of the tracks on this release. Based on a Ghanaian rhythm Otofo (a girl's coming of age ceremony), the four movements incorporate rhythms of West Africa with sounds drawn from the Metis, the Scots, and French Canada, building a complex tapestry of the fiddle and the drums interweaving to complement one another. The effect is dramatic and moving as the international elements become one under Lederman's hand.
By contrast, "Carl's Waltz" is a simple, old timey waltz played on fiddle with straightforward bass and drum accompaniment. This is music one would have heard at many a barn dance a half century ago and long before that. This is a lovely, reminiscent piece of nostalgia.
A traditional Cape Breton milling song, "An t'alltan dubh/You tell me" has a sound many now insist on calling Celtic, whatever that may be. The sound of the first, traditional, half is clearly Scots and as Lederman sings it in Gaelic is a very emotional and moving piece. The second half, written by Lederman and likely influenced by her Canadian prairie upbringing, has the more mixed North American Scots sound found in much of our Canadian folk music.
Not just a fine writer and composer, Lederman is also a talented programmer who knows just how to select and order her songs for best effect. "Tamarack'er Down" and "The Fiddler's Alphabet/Carl Grexton/Will's Reel" are the perfect numbers to respectively open and close this set.
There's a lot more to hear and a lot more to discover in the music of Anne Lederman's Fiddlesong but, as with a well-written novel, it will spoil the tale if I reveal it all here. I recommend that anyone whose interest has been whetted rush right out and buy a copy of Fiddlesong.
If you'd like to know more about Canadian writer, composer, and performer Anne Lederman and her music, visit her home page at www.AnneLederman.com. Read a review of Anne Lederman's 2000 release 7 Cats, also on Sound Bytes.
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