We have a special Song of the Day from Dorsetshire duo Ninebarrow whose music we’ve been featuring in the Folk Radio UK playlist recently. We reviewed their album While the Blackthorn Burns back in May and one of the songs we promoted on our Soundcloud page ‘The Sea’ received a staggering 23.2k plays.
For today, which happens to be the Summer Solstice we’ve chosen their song Summer Fires which is perfect as it celebrates the tradition of lighting bonfires on Midsummer’s Day.
There’s a long historical tradition across Europe of lighting bonfires on Midsummer’s Day -sometimes in the high bits of land around a settlement. People would leap through the fire for good luck and sometimes lead their animals around it for the same reason. We just thought the image of people jumping across the fire at dusk was such a beautiful one and that the notion of living for the moment, before the hardships of the shorter days arrive, was one we could relate to. The real place we had in mind when we wrote this were the hills that surround the village of Corfe -one of which is our namesake hill: ‘Ninebarrow Down’.
Enjoy your day!
To purchase the album and to check their gig dates please visit:
http://www.ninebarrow.co.uk