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“This record is a little like equipping yourself with a
Eurail card,” says Loreena McKennitt of her new studio recording, An Ancient
Muse. “It’s like saying, ‘I don’t know where I’m going to go to on this
trip. I’m just going to get on board the train, and allow each encounter to lead
to the next.’
Prepare to join that musical journey! An Ancient Muse is now available in
music shops worldwide.
“If I may be so bold as to have ambitions for this recording,” Loreena says, “it
would be to whet people’s appetite, to broaden the scope of their awareness of
our collective past… I primarily see myself as being like a travel writer,
because the best ones are those who serve as conduits and catalysts, rather than
saying that it’s all about them.”
Aptly, it is an echo of Homer’s timeless Odyssey that
introduces Loreena McKennitt’s seventh studio recording, the latest volume of a
project she describes as “musical travel writing”. This time, the journey takes
her in search of the Celts’ easternmost paths, from the plains of Mongolia to
the kingdom of King Midas and the Byzantine Empire. Along the way, she muses on
the concepts of home, of travel in all its incarnations, of the cultural
intermingling that underpins human history and our universal legacies of
conflict and hope.
Recorded at Real World Studios and
featuring a host of acclaimed musicians, the album proffers a treasure trove of
instruments, from harp, hurdy-gurdy and accordion to oud, lyra, kanoun and
nyckelharpa (the Scandinavian keyed fiddle). Highlights include the seductive
rhythms and Silk Road influences of first single “Caravanserai”; “Penelope’s
Song”, a paean to steadfast love; and Loreena’s musical setting of Sir Walter
Scott’s poem of star-crossed romance, “The English Ladye And The Knight”.
Together, the nine songs that comprise An Ancient Muse conjure up a wide
world’s worth of human stories that are as unique as they are unforgettable.
The first stepping stone on
this journey of discovery was my exploration of the Celts and their history, and
the many roads leading off from theirs, both historically and geographically. It
is with an eye on this history that this musical document evolved, with
ruminations on the universal human themes of life and love, conquest and death;
of home, identity, the migrations of people and the resulting evolution of
cultures. Our paths may differ but our quests are shared: our desire to love and
to be loved, our thirst for liberty and our need to be appreciated as unique
individuals within the collectivity of our society.
Travels in preparation for
this creative endeavour have encompassed the hospitalities and acquaintances of
people in many places: a nomadic family in the inner reaches of Mongolia and the
Uighur people in North-west China where the predecessors of Celts are believed
to have been found; on the great plains of inner Anatolia and Ephesus in Turkey;
amongst the intoxicating orange blossoms on the Greek island of Chios; and, in
Jordan, amongst the echoes of Circassian voices and the stones of the ancient
city of Petra.
Ever-mindful of the weight of
history behind us that allows us to draw lessons from its ancient voice, I have
not wavered in my conviction that we are a culmination of our collective
histories and that there should be more to bind us together than tear us apart.
Nor have I ceased to hope that in striving toward harmonious, integrated
diversity, we will be guided by collective beliefs that will be life affirming
at their core.
– Loreena McKennitt
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