For those of you that are new to Spell Songs, it is a musical evolution of both The Lost Words & The Lost Spells books by acclaimed author Robert Macfarlane and award-winning illustrator Jackie Morris; creating a listening experience that intersects music, literature, language and art, as a call to reawaken our love of the wild.
In 2015, the author Robert Macfarlane published Landmarks. In its introduction, Macfarlane highlighted how certain words were slowly disappearing from children’s vocabulary and the Oxford Junior Dictionary was “culling” words such as acorn, catkin, kingfisher, lark and willow in favour of words such as blog, bullet-point, committee and voicemail. As previously mentioned in these pages, his work inspired a collaboration with artist Jackie Morris for an illustrated collection of poems, or rather spells and thoughts. Titled The Lost Words: A Spell Book (2017), it and its sequel, The Lost Spells (2020), are enchantments; intended to be shared and savoured by adults as much as by children. The books had an immediate impact on many.
In our 2019 interview with Jackie Morris, she told us:
Almost every day, Robert and I are sent stories about children, reluctant to read, who spend hours in the pages of our book, about children who have turned away from screentime into the book. Robert’s spells have been read at weddings and funerals.
A woman wrote to me and said she had come to the UK to see her 95-year-old father. She lives in Australia now, and he has been living with Alzheimer’s; they thought he had reached the stage where his language had gone. He’d not spoken for a long while. She gave him a copy of the book, and he slowly turned the pages, becoming more absorbed. When he reached the bramble page, he began to talk about blackbirds, about his childhood in Dorset, and later when shown a picture of his wife, he remembered her name. Many people have said they’ve spent rich time with their parents, older relatives, in the pages of the book.
A 98-year-old woman said she had bought one to share with her great-grandchild. She had 19 of them (great-grandchildren – as she pointed out, as 19 of the books would be very heavy for a 98-year-old woman to carry), but this one, well, she loves the natural world, she said. 98, fierce bright and loving life. People have found refuge in the pages of our book at the end of their lives, and what a compliment that is, when you know how little time you have left, but you spend it in the book.
The book has brought us new friends, like Joe, like Diane, who found a place to breathe, a scent of the wild in it.
What does that feel like? It leaves you lost for words. Sometimes broken, but always mended. And every person who brings such a story teaches us more. There’s no one favourite. It’s overwhelming, utterly overwhelming, in a good way, beautiful.
Stitch music into the soul of the book, and I hope together we can reach more people.
The books, in turn, inspired the Spell Songs ensemble and albums, The Lost Words: Spell Songs (2019) and Spell Songs II: Let The Light In (2021).
Spell Songs II: Let The Light In is a rather stunning collection of songs, bringing the spirit of the words and art of Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris vividly to musical life. The ensemble currently features the multifaceted talents and collaborative genius of Karine Polwart, Julie Fowlis, Seckou Keita, Kris Drever, Rachel Newton, Beth Porter and Jim Molyneux (the first ensemble also featured Kerry Andrew) — all renowned musicians in their own right. Together, their music blends a diverse array of sounds from instruments like the kora, electroharp, cello, Indian harmonium and more, which are gorgeously layered with musical and linguistic influences spanning from Orkney to Senegal.
In an earlier interview with Karine Polwart, she told us:
“Many of the musicians involved in Spell Songs had an affinity for The Lost Words before being invited to take part. Most of us already owned the book. Several of us were reading it to our kids. Kerry had already transformed two of the spells into musical pieces (indeed, it’s her beautiful work which sparked the whole project).”
Their new live album, Spell Songs: Gift of Light, will be released on 1st December 2023 via Hudson Records. The live record was produced during the Spell Songs 2022 Winter tour at Birmingham Symphony Hall and within the Hintze Hall of the Natural History Museum in 2021.
“It’s not easy to paint with an audience. Learning the shape of an otter is like learning music. Repetition and looking, looking and learning, as the words and the shape of the otter fit together with the rhythm of the music, and it seems as if something magical is happening”
This is a quote from the Lost Words artist Jackie Morris, who becomes the honorary eighth member of the Spell Songs band when they tour. In contrast to the peace of her coastal studio, Jackie finds herself up on the stages of some of the UK’s finest concert halls. Painting amidst the seven remarkable musicians that make up the Spell Songs band, Jackie becomes a fellow performer – conjuring creatures from paint and speaking their spells. On this special digital live album, you’ll hear her speaking the Otter Spell surrounded by Otter music recorded live at the Birmingham Symphony Hall.
Music for the Gifts of Light album was also recorded at the Natural History Museum during a special live-streamed event, with a unique message of respect for nature at its core, which raised just over £105,000 for the museum’s ambitious Urban Nature Project. Spell Songs performed their poignant music, art and poetry beneath ‘Hope’, the magnificent blue whale skeleton that is currently suspended high up in the breathtaking space of the Hintze Hall.
In the run-up to the Hintze Hall concert, Folk Radio spoke to Jackie Morris, Karine Polwart, Seckou Keita, Julie Fowlis, Kris Drever, Jim Molyneux, Rachel Newton and Beth Porter, as well as the Natural History Museum’s Head of Garden Activities, Lauren Hyams about the Urban Nature Project and the Spell Songs ensemble.
In that interview, I asked them where they felt the power of the Spell Songs lay…
Seckou Keita: “In bringing people together around a common cause. It brought us together- a varied group of musicians, to collaborate and produce something new. I think its also has the power to communicate an important message through the power of different media – also coming together – words, art and music. The beauty of the book inspired so many young people and adults. The music has added another dimension and brought the book to a different audience.”
Beth Porter: “It was clear from the moment we first gathered in a room together that this was a group of listeners. Listening is a very powerful tool and I feel that The Lost Words and Lost Spells encourage us all to do that too. Having a shared inspiration gives a real focus for songwriting and for wanting to share that with the world.”
Jim Molyneux: “The words and paintings in the book are things of such beauty. Music, too, is a beautiful thing (in the past year I have become more sure of that than ever, I have dearly missed live music). These art forms combined with the very topic of nature itself evoke such a strong feeling in people. I didn’t realise until we performed these songs just how strong these feelings are within us, but to me, Spell Songs makes us consider our innate connection to nature, through the means of music, art, and words, and the combination of all of those factors is very powerful. ”
Julie Fowlis: “I think its power lies in the way in which Jackie and Rob’s work within The Lost Words enchanted readers from all over the world – as Jackie described it, ‘protest can be beautiful’. It reached out in the most inspiring way to readers, young and old, and Spell Songs was a musical response to that. The idea of naming and knowing, celebrating and caring, for the natural world around us.”
Rachel Newton: “The power in Spell Songs for me is the fact that we have such rich material to work from with Jackie and Rob’s art, which in turn is inspired by their own deep connection with nature. It’s something that everyone can understand and relate to in their own way. I’ve certainly found myself noticing the beauty and poetry in nature more since being a part of Spell Songs and this year of pause has, if nothing else, granted time in one place to allow both that appreciation to grow and the space to notice. “
Kris Drever: “Where Spell Songs’ power lies is in its mystery, it’s a lot of different things to a lot of different people, but if you try to pin it down, it’ll wriggle off through a hedgerow and snicker at you. Everyone has their own narrative, and everyone interprets the meaning of things differently, but miraculously, it often seems that (what I presume to be) the original intent aligns more or less with the various interpretations, at least those that have come back to me. ” He adds, “Good art is multi-faceted and can say things very powerfully without being overt. That to me, is what Spell Songs has achieved very successfully and that’s down to the open-handed humanity and honesty of its co-authors.”
Karine Polwart: “As musicians and writers, we were gifted amazing source material in the words of Robert and the images of Jackie. So a huge part of its power comes from a solid rooted, heartful place, and I guess what makes it distinctive from the Lost Words and Lost Spells books is its music.
“Music inhabits our bodies and our persons in a different way than other forms of art. It’s visceral, it’s immersive, and it’s an emotional journey, so I think Spell Songs as a piece of work is very emotional, and it’s not afraid of melancholy and darkness. It’s not a dark collaboration, but it’s a collaboration that isn’t afraid to walk that line of melancholy and darkness and sorrow? But it manages to be beautiful at the same time. So I think, by good fortune, it’s tapped into one of the feelings of the time, which is a feeling of loss and lamentation for what’s been lost in the environment around us. Part of its power is that it’s a collaborative work, and it’s much bigger than the sum of its considerable parts, I mean, all the component musicians and writers make beautiful work, and when you bring musicians together for project-based collaborations, they don’t always necessarily produce work that has its own character? And they don’t always necessarily produce work that is greater than the sum of what each individual brings, but, in this case, that is true.
“This feels like a truly collaborative piece of work in which we’ve all managed to stamp our identity on it but also leave space for everyone else. So there is a spaciousness and generosity about the way this project was made, and I think that is reflected in the content and the sound and I think that spaciousness and generosity come from Jackie and Robert’s original work that we took as our starting point.
“I think also it’s been conceived as a journey, so, we’ve put the material as an album and as a live performance in a way that’s designed to be sat with, so it’s a project that rewards continuous attentive listening and in an era where most music is consumed as individual tracks and songs, I think this project is different, it’s designed to be listened to in stillness and as one kind of continuous movement.
“The other thing I would say about the live performances is there’s something which we’re all powerfully aware of now, having not had the experience of live music for a year now; there’s something powerful about being emotionally vulnerable and touched in the company of other people in a room, it’s an irreplaceable experience. There’s something about being moved collectively that I think we’ve been able to capture in the live performances. So, it’s a very special project to all of us involved, and we’re aware that much of that has to do with the quality of what we were offered and some of it has to with the happenstance, good fortune of just how these musicians, writers and people have collaborated and cooperated with each other.”
The album is accompanied by video collages from the wonderful Marry Waterson, featuring beautifully designed ‘Gold Souls’ of Jackie Morris’ Lost Words artwork.
Gifts of Light Tracklisting
- Bird of the Blizzard (Live)
- Thrift – Dig In, Dig In (Live)
- Red is Your Art (Live)
- Otter (Live)
- Charm On, Goldfinch (Live)
- Heartwood (Live)
- Curlew (Live)
- Little Astronaut (Live)
- Heron (Live)
- The Lost Words Blessing (Live)
Taken from the album, listen to Heartwood:
Gifts of Light is a digital-only release on Hudson Records in partnership with Quercus Records. Gifts of Light is available in full on 1st December 2023.
PRE-ORDER & LISTEN LINK – https://hudsonrecords.ffm.to/giftsoflight