Waveleaplights - A Page of Finnegans Wake Set to Music

For the past few weeks I've been immersed in the wild world of James Joyce's sprawling novel Finnegans Wake. I just released an EP, "Waveleaplights," that took the lyrics of one page of the book, setting it to music of my own devising. Also included in the EP is "The Ballad of Persse O'Reilly" which also appears in the novel. The project was conceived at the behest of the Waywords and Meansigns project, which since 2014 has been setting "The Wake" to music.

In true age of internet style, over the weekend I watched Mary Ellen Bute's film adaptation of the book while binging on various articles and media about, among other things, the tragic life of Lucia Joyce (sunny Jim's daughter). Thats herself below on the cover art of the EP. 

Though I've delved in and out of the book many times over the years this past little while I feel I've been truly baptized in the wide world of water, wave and want that is the wake. After setting one page of the mighty tome to music, the myth of Finagin is ringing loud in my ears. Not least of these echos, is the fact the book was released 85 years ago last Saturday the 4th of May. 

My one page that rolls to the mighty island that is the "Waywords and Meansigns" project is page 571, wherein such gems of words as 

These brilling waveleaplights! Please say me how sing you them.  

Yes, they shall have brought us to the water trysting, by hedjes of maiden ferm, then here in another place is their chapelofeases, sold for song, of which you have thought my praise too much my price. O ma ma! Yes, sad one of Ziod? Sell me, my soul dear!

This Thursday I'm having a free online listening party of Waveleaplights. If there is any poor soul still reading this blog in 2024 ye are more than welcome to join me at 8pm GMT on the link on the image above! Hope to ear ye dere! Lend me yer earwickers!

beir bua,

HCE 

Bleak is the Pampa, Irish folk Song in Argentina

The lyrics to "Bleak is the Pampa" were written by an exiled Irishman in Buenos Aires in 1873. The songs words were published in the corner of a random page of a provincial newspaper in Buenos Aires and then soon forgotten. Unlike many of the other Irish songs scattered among the pages of "El Monitor de la Campaña," Bleak is the Pampa had no obvious melody. That is, the music itself is newly composed. There are illusions to the island of Hy Brasil in its verses, "had he ne'er quitted his own island dwelling, in search of a phantom in lands far away." In 2022 I was approached after a concert at the Universidad del Salvador by Miguel Guarrnochea. Migue had just heard me sing another song from his home town "The Trackless Wild."In the following weeks he furnished me with all the digital archives of the newspaper "El Monitor de la Campaña." Here began a year and a half of going through those pages, lifting out gems like this song.

Last week I did some filming on the pampa wild. I found a beautiful bit of untouched wilderness outside of a little town called "Las Garcitas." Tripping over bones, turkeys, dodging mosquitos and downing rakes of water to keep our motors from combusting, we filmed a sweet three minute video that I hope gives an idea of the vast pampa that is every present in these 19th century Irish Argentine songs of old.