Welsh singer-songwriter, Cerys Matthews, has compiled a musical volume which will induce the opposite of catatonia.
It turns out that the former wild child turned mother-of-three has been collecting songs for around thirty years. Now she’s assembled many of her favourites and put them into a chunky “singalong” book, jauntily entitled Hook, Line & Singer.
It’s the collection I never realised I needed, the answer to the question I’m always asking - “what’s the next line of that song?” Although I play records for a living, I have the memory of a gnat, and can never recall lyrics unless they’re imprinted in the grey matter through the endless studying of album liner notes back in my teenage years. So the songs of Paul Simon and Leonard Cohen are a dawdle - anything since the advent of CDs is a blur (not a Blur).
I frequently burst into song, on my own or en famille - everything from It’s A Long Way To Tipperaray to Whistle While You Work via A Windmill In Old Amsterdam. It’s a kind of musical Tourettes that’s made all the more annoying for anyone within earshot because after a couple of lines it either peters out completely or descends into a general la-la-la’ing where lyrics should be.
Hence the beauty of Cerys’s book - the words and music of everyone’s favourite sing-along songs are all there, and I’m determined to learn as many of them as possible. We’ve been brainwashed into thinking that encouraging children to memorise poetry and songs will put the wee souls off literature and music for life.
Utter nonsense - sensitively taught, there’s everything to gain from doing so - there’s the discipline of memory training, along with the joy of being able to “do a turn” - to be able to stand up and entertain people with a song or a poem, is an enriching experience for everyone.
And, as Scotland’s Machar, Liz Lochhead, and punk poet, John Cooper Clark, have both said to me recently, the act of reciting or performing a poem with its rhythms and cadences, helps clarify the meaning of the words. And once it’s in your noggin, it’s there for life. So, here I go with a spot of Burns... “Fair, Fa’ your honest sonsie face, great chieftain o’ the puddin-race.” Ah, wrong time of year. Lucky you.
A theatre must-see over the next week is a monumental Scottish play, which will be performed in its entirety for the first time in 500 years - Sir David Lyndsay’s A Satire of the Three Estates.
Fingers crossed, the weather holds for the mix of outdoor and indoor performances at Linlithgow Palace and Stirling Castle. It’s an entertaining, provocative, state of the nation play that examines Scottish national identity and how the country should move forward, that will resonate in contemporary Scotland.
Tam Dean Burn, Alison Peebles, Jimmy Chisholm and Gerda Stevenson are among the stellar cast. Full booking details can be found at the National Trust for Scotland website.
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