UMC.org Music Review
Loreena McKennitt: An Ancient Muse
Label: Verve/Universal
Sound/Style: World music with ethereal vocals
By Steve Morley
(UMC.org)--Since the dawn of humanity, it’s been our nature to make errors in judgment when first impressions outweigh facts. For example, “new age” music has been associated with nature worshipers and smorgasbord spirituality, and is sometimes regarded with suspicion by conservative Christians. Of course, it’s prudent to question new age philosophy, but when it comes to music, new age is primarily just a marketing label. As the joke goes, new age music is what you get when you play new age music backwards; in other words, floaty, open-ended noodlings--short on structure and big on meditative mood--are the standard. The best-known and most innovative artists in or around the genre tend to take the biggest and most unjust beatings for the style’s worst offenders. Enya, a mesmerizing singer deserving of her success, can rightly be called a new age artist, though she loosely spans the Celtic category. Loreena McKennitt can be found near Enya in the CD bins, but hers is a style rooted more heavily in deep tradition. Her seventh studio album, An Ancient Muse, more or less picks up where 1997’s The Book of Secrets left off, and continues her intrepid journey into musicology, anthropology and history.
McKennitt, a Canadian of Irish and Scottish descent, has the enviable task of globetrotting in search of her ancient Celtic bloodline as preparation for each new recording. Her CD booklets are dotted with observations that ponder our common history as human travelers and the ancient roads that have brought us to where we are. Along the way, she also acknowledges the spiritual forces behind this search for identity, as she does on the Middle-Eastern derived cut “Caravanserai”: “What is this life that pulls me far away/ What is that home where we cannot reside/ What is that quest that pulls me onward/ My heart is full when you are by my side/ Calling, yearning, pulling, home to you.”
The singer’s quest to uncover deeply imbedded cultural roots invariably leads her to the early Christian chapels in Turkey, an archeological hotbed of Christianity where numerous New Testament books were written. Indeed, her first-hand witness of church history seems to impart a sacred essence to certain compositions. The haunting melody of “Sacred Shabbat” was first presented to her by musicians in Greece, and again on a recording she found in Spain. Ultimately, she unearthed the Jewish origin of the piece, which indeed evokes ancient Israel even as it confirms the singer’s assertion of our cultural interconnectedness. While McKennitt borrows from primeval music and centuries-old writings, she personalizes the material by filtering it through her own experiences, even envisioning a link between classic literature and spiritual sensibilities. In her liner notes, she points out that the mystics and other religiously inspired poets reflect the divine through love poems, implying that the devotion of lovers in timeless stories is a quality modeled upon--some would say impossible without--the perfect love of the Savior: “And in the night when our dreams are still/ Or when the wind calls free/ I’ll keep your heart with mine/ Till you come to me.”
Throughout An Ancient Muse, Loreena McKennitt not only traces archaic intersections of human history, but also builds a twenty-first century path on which fellow journeyers can join the tour.
Audio Clips
"The Gates of Istanbul"
"Caravanserai"
"Sacred Shabbat"
"Kecharitomene"
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