“All of our passions reflect the stars,” wrote Victor Hugo. Perhaps these words provided inspiration for An Ancient Muse, the latest album by Loreena McKennitt? Who knows? What is certain is that for explorers, the heavens have always been a source of inspiration and Loreena McKennitt is a true explorer; an explorer of people’s emotions and different cultures.
The curtain, which is depicted in the foreground on the album cover, is still there, open and ready to welcome us and those who, on the surface appear to be different from us; a mobile container for experiences and emotions ready to move towards what is new. The destination is unknown, because as Loreena says, quoting the Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu, “a good traveller has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving”: what is important is to arm oneself with one’s own musical instruments and good company, an ancient muse, indeed. “…with this new album,” says Loreena, “it’s a bit like having an InterRail pass. It’s like saying: I don’t know where I’m going on this journey. But I’ll climb aboard the train and let each meeting take me towards the next…”. “If I am allowed to have any aspirations for this album,” says Loreena McKennitt of An Ancient Muse, “I would like to whet people’s appetites, expand their knowledge of our collective past by telling them: “During the Crusades, well… it wasn’t just about Richard the Lionheart, but there was also Saladin. After all, I consider myself to be mainly a writer of travel journals, because the majority of these serve as catalysts, as inspiration, rather than works that one uses to say: “This is my story and it is all about me.”
Tell me, oh Muse, of those who have travelled far and wide. An echo of The Odyssey, Homer’s timeless epic poem, and the incipit for Loreena McKennitt’s Ancient Muse, the most recent volume in a project that she describes as “a musical travel journal”. Combining her own voice, the melodic sensitivity of Scottish and Irish ballads with musical traditions from Greece and Turkey, Loreena McKennitt has created a new and enchanting sound that is inspired by travel and the beauty of nature. A bit like one of her earlier albums, The Book of Secrets, which was instead inspired by the work of Dante. This time, the journey, with its Homerian inspiration – recalls The Odyssey – it leads her to the search for the easternmost routes travelled by the Celts, with their history and tradition always at the forefront of the musical quest pursued by this artist, the creator of a genre of music that she herself defines as “eclectic Celtic”.
This is a new stopover on the journey taken by this artist who, by following her own Muse, travels through time, across land and sea, from Homer’s Greece to the Istanbul of the Ottoman Empire to England at the time of the Crusades, recalling legendary places and events that are always amazing. “The first part of this journey was my exploration of the Celts, of their past and the many roads that came out of it, both historically and geographically. This musical document has evolved from an examination of this history, with reflections on the universal human subjects of life and love, conquest and death; the ideas of home and identity, the migration of populations and the evolution of cultures.
I believe that our paths may differ, but our objectives remain the same: our desire to love and to be loved, our thirst for freedom and our need to be appreciated as unique individuals within our collective society.”
“The journeys I took to prepare for cutting this album led me to meet and be the guest of people in some of the most far away places, including a family of nomads in Mongolia’s hinterland and the Uighur people from Northwestern China, the place where the ancestors of the Celts are believed to have originated. I visited the great plains of Anatolia’s hinterland and Ephesus in Turkey; I walked among exhilarating orange blossoms on the Greek island of Chios; in Jordan I heard the echoes of Circassian voices and I saw the ruins of the ancient city of Petra.”
“When I think of all of the centuries of history that allow us to learn from these ancient voices, I am convinced that we are the culmination of our collective histories. I believe there should be more things that unite us than divide us. Moreover, I continue to hope that if we fight for a harmonious and integrated type of diversity, we will be guided by our collective beliefs which provide us with inspiration.”
The geographic coordinates used by Loreena McKennitt, both as an artist and a person, are outlined without any form of continuity, according to the guideline of coherence.
In a speech that she gave to the graduating class of Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada on 1 December 2002 during the graduation ceremony, Loreena McKennitt said: “The degree that we are receiving today represents many things. It represents everything we have learned in our classes, but also what we have learned from friendships, from conversations, during long moments of reflection on ideas or problems, in the connections that we have learned to make between our instincts, education and the world that surrounds us.
It represents our values and those of our families, which have allowed each of us to enjoy the privilege of learning. We are called upon to become responsible citizens of the world, who are able to leave on a journey that may take on different forms.
It is a journey that is best taken with an open mind: to see, to understand, to experience, we must set aside the barriers created by cynicism, by prejudice, and by bias and continue to let ourselves be guided by a sense of curiosity, universality, diversity and love.
I hope that all of you will learn as much as you can from your journey. It’s up to us to imagine it… and to live it ”.
“Coherence” – wrote another traveller (a missionary who works in the Amazon Forest) -, seems to me to be not so much the person who stays on course, even if that is correct, rather coherence describes the person who is able to construct his own history, within living encounters, and uses his own resources to meet others.
Coherence is an obligation to life, not to ourselves or to our pride or to our own well-intentioned plans”.
Loreena McKennitt is someone who can be considered coherent.

An Ancient Muse

1 Incantation (Instrum.)
2:35 anno: 2006 Loreena McKennitt [autore]

2 The gates of Istanbul
6:59 anno: 2006 Loreena McKennitt [autore]

3 Caravanserai
7:36 anno: 2006 Loreena McKennitt [autore]

4 The English ladye and the knight
6:49 anno: 2006 Loreena McKennitt [autore] - Walter Scott [autore]

5 Kecharitomene (Instrum.)
6:34 anno: 2006 Loreena McKennitt [autore]

6 Penelope's song
4:21 anno: 2006 Loreena McKennitt [autore]

7 Sacred shabbat (Instrum.)
3:59 anno: 2006 Loreena McKennitt [autore]

8 Beneath a Phrygian sky
9:32 anno: 2006 Loreena McKennitt [autore]

9 Never ending road (Amhrán duit)
5:54 anno: 2006 Loreena McKennitt [autore]


credits

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