Battlefield Band's latest disc bemoans the plight of displaced people
By JAMES D. WATTS JR. World Scene Writer
3/23/2007
Most Celtic bands play up the joyful qualities of traditional music -- the jigs and reels, the songs about drinking and damsels and the trouble that comes from mixing the two.
Scotland's Battlefield Band has taken a slightly different tack over the course of its nearly 40-year history.
Sure, this group can throw down a jig with the best the British isles -- or the Canadian wilderness, for that matter -- has to offer. But the Battlefield Band is not afraid to show the very serious side of folk music, with ancient and contemporary songs that speak to the pains of the past, and the sadness of seeing those pains continue today.
The Battlefield Band most recent album, "The Road of Tears," is one of the group's strongest, on a par with the masterful "Celtic Hotel." And for a disc filled with music made by fiddles, bagpipes and acoustic guitars, and featuring lyrics by the 18th century Scottish poet Robert Burns, it is a surprisingly contemporary set of tunes.
"The Road of Tears" is about emigrants -- primarily those people who, because of want or because of force, had to leave their homes for some other, not necessarily better place.
It's a theme that has appeared often in the Battlefield Band's work, but, to
"Immigrants have been, and are still, often treated with high suspicion and even disgust in some host countries," the notes continue. "Or, once established, they themselves have participated in the removal of aboriginal people in these lands they have gone to in search of succor ... Today's cast may be different, but the story remains the same."
The Battlefield Band proves this out with the title track, written by the band's lone founding member, keyboardist Alan Reid. Each verse deals with a different group -- ancient Scots, Irish fleeing the potato famine, American Indians swept up before "manifest destiny."
The final verse speaks to the war in the Middle East:
"They said that we would earn our freedom/And come to see their way is right/But still we weep and we are bleeding/They have not won our hearts and minds/We're on the road, the road of tears."
The band does Woody Guthrie's "Plane Wreck at Los Gatos," about a group of migrant workers killed in a plane crash, dismissed as mere "deportees," and Reid creates new melodies for Burns' "To a Mouse" and "The Slave's Lament."
Even the instrumentals have their inspiration in the idea of people having to leave home, from "The Patagonia Highlanders" to "Ely Parker" to "Mr. Galloway Goes to Washington."
"Many (ancient) tunes have the title 'Gun Ainm,' i.e., 'nameless,'" the band writes, so they arranged one such tune under the title "The Nameless Migrant."
Yet the sobering subject matter of "The Road of Tears" does not distract from the sterling musicianship of this current incarnation of the Battlefield Band, which besides Reid includes bagpiper Mike Katz, guitarist and vocalist Sean O'Donnell and fiddler Alasdair White.
It is a line up that the Washington Post described as the "best Battlefield Band in years ... musicians firmly in command of their art."
The Battlefield Band's two Tulsa concerts are part of the Tulsa Performing Arts Center Trust's Celtic Music series.
The Battlefield Band
When:
8 p.m. Friday-Saturday
Where:
Williams Theater, Tulsa Performing Arts Center, Second Street and Cincinnati Avenue
Tickets:
$22, available at the PAC Ticket office, 596-7111; and www.MyTicketOffice.com
By JAMES D. WATTS JR. World Scene Writer
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