Leeds-based composer and fiddle player Owen Spafford, maybe best known to our readers as one-half of the folk duo with Owen Spafford and Louis Campbell, has announced ‘Welcome Here, Kind Stranger‘ – a live installation exploring memory, culture and community.
This multimedia performance installation is based around ‘the session’, something I’m sure many of you are familiar with – where oral traditions are passed down through an informal gathering of musicians, often in pubs or kitchens. Songs, dances and stories are shared freely in an inclusive, cross-generational setting where communities can remember, learn and be renewed. Owen was seven when he went to his first traditional music session…
“Sessions are a platform for music to be streamed not through Spotify but through centuries of cultural recycling, music that is repurposed by each generation to tell the story of today.”
The work was commissioned by Festival Rainy Days for the Luxembourg Philharmonie with an extra performance at The Royal Academy of Music (26 September). It features Sam Amidon, Brìghde Chaimbeul, Méabh Begley, Mikey Kenney, Louis Campbell and Owen Spafford. See the ticket links and details below.
Owen on Welcome Here, Kind Stranger
“Welcome Here, Kind Stranger invites the audience to explore both the idea and the experience of ‘the Session’, where oral traditions are passed down through an informal gathering of musicians, often in pubs or at home. Folk songs, dances and stories are shared freely in an inclusive, cross-generational setting where communities can remember, learn and be renewed.
“A casual observer may walk into a pub and see a group of musicians huddled in a musical stupor playing ‘diddle dee dee music’, dismissing it as a remnant of a forgotten culture that is no longer relevant to the modern world.
“What I see is a humble yet profound activity that for centuries has quietly defied ideas of consumerism, creative property or international borders. I see a roughly hewn cultural jewel held together by the generous gifts of a still flourishing oral tradition. Sessions are a platform for music to be streamed not through Spotify but through centuries of cultural recycling, music that is repurposed by each generation to tell the story of today. Music which together forms a constantly evolving mycorrhizal network of oral culture that connects working-class communities across continents.”
“… a dreamlike journey along linear time (days, months, years) and circular time (seasons, ceremony, ancestral evocation). Traditional music has never adhered to the constructed boundaries of a governing class. Nor should our sense of ourselve’s.”
Chris Wood, ‘Not Icons But Jewels’
The Installation
The installation will consist of three elements: a free-flowing music Session led by an all-star ensemble, a multi-stereo sound design that digs deeper into the marginalised stories present in folk culture, and a specially commissioned artwork that explores the spontaneous musical conversations between players in a Session.
Young composer and fiddle player Owen Spafford has gathered a formidable ensemble who are at the vanguard of the progressive/experimental folk scene yet are simultaneously deeply immersed in their respective musical traditions. The musicians will be seated around a table as if at home or in a pub, enacting the traditions, culture and norms of a session as you might find it in its natural form, yet subtly edging the music towards a freer, more explorative space.
Owen Spafford collaborated with artist Annabelle Blott in 2023 to produce a series of drawings created during traditional music Sessions in London; these vivid and often abstract portraits explore the malleable boundary between audience and performer as well as the body language and gestures, which are just as much part of Session lore as the music itself. Blott will perform live as part of the London performance, sketching the music as it happens.
“The Tune becomes a family tree. It is a conversation piece, a way of renegotiating lost time. Our knowledge of the past is changed each time we hear it; our present time, imbued with yesterday, comes out with bent dimensions. Slipping in and out of nodes of time we find our circles sometimes intersect with others. Yet there is a wider circle we can only dimly comprehend whose congregation is uncountable, whose brains and hands have shaped this music in ways unknowable to us.”
Ciaran Carson, ‘Last Night’s Fun’
Session Previews
Session #1 – Dreamscape
Owen Spafford with the Ficino String Trio (Featuring field recordings made by Owen Spafford of Eilin and Seamus Begley in County Kerry, 2020).
Session #2 – Field Recording
Field recording by Owen Spafford of a traditional music session at The Harrison, London, 2023.
Welcome Here, Kind Stranger Dates & Details
LONDON – 26th September 6:30PM Angela Burgess Recital Hall @Royal Academy of Music. (https://tickets.ram.ac.uk/sales/categories/tuesday-series/welcome-here-kind-stranger)
The London performance will include Sam Amidon, Mikey Kenney, Méabh Begley, Louis Campbell and Owen Spafford.
LUXEMBOURG – 16th-19th November @Luxembourg Philharmonie. (https://www.philharmonie.lu/en/programm/festivals/rainy-days)
The Luxembourg dates will include Sam Amidon Brìghde Chaimbeul, Louis Campbell and Owen Spafford.