Not celebrated, but observed.
Mar. 15th, 2026 07:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustThursday was durham_rambler's birthday. This is not a plea for messages of congratulation: he really doesn't seem interested in celebrating it. I asked him several times if he wanted to take a day out, or do anything special, and never got an answer - and then the weather was horrible, so it's just as well. The most birthday-related activity of our day was organising a card for his sister-in-law, whose birthday is today. Maybe I exaggerate a bit: there were cards, and we opened a bottle of wine with our dinner, but I stand by my title: not celebrated, but observed.
Despite all of that, it did seem celebratory to go out to a concert yesterday: Kathryn Tickell and Amy Thatcher at Ushaw. I don't enjoy all of Kathryn Tickell's projects, and we didn't enjoy Amy Thatcher's Re:Vulva at Hartlepool, but this collaboration is solid Northumbrian tradition, fiddle and smallpipes and accordeon and clogs and just the right amount of chat. Here's a taster - but imagine it without the band lurking in the shadows (the lighting wasn't as good, either):
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I think it was the guitarist John James who said that the Welsh have no folk music, because 'we know who wrote them all'. Kathryn Tickell takes the opposite position: a tune can still be traditional even if you know who wrote it, even if she wrote it herself, because tradition is a living thing. (As the Incredible String Band sing: The opposite is also true.) So we had songs by Kathryn and Amy, songs by the Northumbrian shepherds with whom Kathryn played as a child, Alastair Anderson's Dog Leap Stairway and some genuinely old pipe tunes, and I enjoyed them all. So when I said "solid Northumbrian tradition," what makes it solid is the geographical unity.
With one exception, and perversely one of my favourite pieces: a tune called The Joy of It by Shetland fiddler Catherine Geldard.
durham_rambler's birthday. This is not a plea for messages of congratulation: he really doesn't seem interested in celebrating it. I asked him several times if he wanted to take a day out, or do anything special, and never got an answer - and then the weather was horrible, so it's just as well. The most birthday-related activity of our day was organising a card for his sister-in-law, whose birthday is today. Maybe I exaggerate a bit: there were cards, and we opened a bottle of wine with our dinner, but I stand by my title: not celebrated, but observed.Despite all of that, it did seem celebratory to go out to a concert yesterday: Kathryn Tickell and Amy Thatcher at Ushaw. I don't enjoy all of Kathryn Tickell's projects, and we didn't enjoy Amy Thatcher's Re:Vulva at Hartlepool, but this collaboration is solid Northumbrian tradition, fiddle and smallpipes and accordeon and clogs and just the right amount of chat. Here's a taster - but imagine it without the band lurking in the shadows (the lighting wasn't as good, either):
<
I think it was the guitarist John James who said that the Welsh have no folk music, because 'we know who wrote them all'. Kathryn Tickell takes the opposite position: a tune can still be traditional even if you know who wrote it, even if she wrote it herself, because tradition is a living thing. (As the Incredible String Band sing: The opposite is also true.) So we had songs by Kathryn and Amy, songs by the Northumbrian shepherds with whom Kathryn played as a child, Alastair Anderson's Dog Leap Stairway and some genuinely old pipe tunes, and I enjoyed them all. So when I said "solid Northumbrian tradition," what makes it solid is the geographical unity.
With one exception, and perversely one of my favourite pieces: a tune called The Joy of It by Shetland fiddler Catherine Geldard.
