Doesn’t it always seem like fall weather brings along autumnal feelings? Nothing speaks to this preternatural connection to our environment quite like art, and in our case: music. You see, in my latest mix for LYL Radio I was inspired quite directly by the song and words of Ayuo Takahashi’s “Across The Seasons”.
It was this song, a fusion of eastern and western modalities, of personal and seasonal changes, of age-old tradition and forward-thinking modernity, that (I think) simply encapsulated how folk music can cross bridges in language, bridges in feelings, bridges in time. Nostalgia, that feeling most induced by this period, may come across in various forms but it seems to always come in a few colors that are inherently exclusive to this season.
This hour had to be dedicated to that idea of a “New Albion” that’s mercurial thing flowing wherever the water takes it. But before I get there, I had to share a conversation I had with Ayuo about its creation.
F/S: Can you share some of the story behind the making of or your thoughts/feelings on the song “Across The Seasons” from Nova Carmina?”
Ayuo Takahashi: “Across The Seasons” was written one day in 1978, when I was seventeen years old. I had tuned my guitar to an open D tuning, and was thinking of songs that Sandy Denny wrote for Fairport Convention’s “Rising for the Moon” and “Who Knows Where The Time Goes?”. Although it uses chords, it’s very modal and has a medieval and slightly oriental quality to it.
Lyrically, it’s very simple, and I find it embarrassingly naive. Someone looks back after years of struggling and says, “Now, didn’t our struggle prove worthy?”. “Never lose your spirit because life’s struggles will have helped us in the end.” The line “united each becomes stronger” sounds dated and much influenced by the leftwing politics of the time, and I wouldn’t write lines like that today. I used to visit a Korean-Japanese painter in her studio often around this time, and we used to talk about politics and discrimination in Japanese society.
I was very glad to have the chance to properly record this. I even got Dave Mattacks, who played with Sandy Denny to play on the track.
I arrived at Crescent Studios in Bath, the day before recording. Andy Davis and James Warren (of Stackridge and The Korgis) were in the recording room. Crescent Studios had a B&B type of place to stay, and David Lord told me I could watch some videos before going to bed. I picked “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” and it completely frightened me. (I am watching this in a 17th century old English house in front of a graveyard that people suspect is haunted.)
After watching it, I came down to the studio and asked them to let me stay in the studio for a while because I got so scared and couldn’t sleep. I remember Andy Davis started to laugh. In the ’90s, Andy Davis would lend us studio equipment for my CDs such as “Songs From A Eurasian Journey” and “Earth Guitar”.
Your songlist is interesting because Jorma Kaukonen was one of the first guitarists that I really listened to. I saw him play live in NYC with the Jefferson Airplane, when I was still in the second grade.
When I was in the second grade, my first guitar teacher had albums of The Incredible String Band and Joni Mitchell and I would hear them during breaks. I listened to Therese Schroeder-Sheker’s albums on Celestial Harmonies in the early ’90s. I started to play the irish harp around that time.
F/S: May I ask you why you went with that title? Was autumn itself on your mind when you recorded “Across the Seasons”?
Ayuo Takahashi: Nova Carmina was recorded towards the end of August 1986. It was 7 days of recording and 3 days of mixing. James Warren and Andy Davis were using the studio before me and Andy Partridge (of XTC) was booked to use the studio after me.
I had already written the song in its entirety back in 1978. I can’t recall the season, but I think it was either late spring or early autumn because I recall that the temperature was that of spring or autumn.
I was born in autumn (October 19) and often think of the year beginning from the time of the season when I was born. This must be why I start with autumn. After the leaves fall, there is a season when it’s cold and sometimes snows before Spring comes back again. This image is an easy metaphor for the struggles in human life, easily matching with the chorus of “Didn’t our struggle prove worthy”.
I was also very much influenced by “Who Knows Where The Time Goes?” by Sandy Denny.
“Across the evening sky, all the birds are leaving
But how can they know it’s time for them to go?
Before the winter fire, I will still be dreaming
I have no thought of time
For who knows where the time goes?
Who knows where the time goes?…
So come the storms of winter
And then the birds in spring again
I have no fear of time.”
—
From Taiwan to Mato Grosso and back to Edinburgh, Palermo, and Tokyo, it was this audience that those forgotten bards of the Renaissance plucked that perfect string to and sang that perfect word for, finding ways to speak to a popular tradition that in hindsight would seem forever mutable.
Robin Williamson’s sublime “Innocent Love”, bookending this mix, puts that idea perfectly in simple prose. Nothing truly passes, if it passes to and fro us. Here’s hoping this hour is a bit more proof of that…
Across The Seasons
Tracklist:
Ayuo Takahashi (高橋鮎生) – Across The Seasons
Jorma Kaukonen – Song For The North Star
Andy Davis – Jabe
Phil Keaggy – The Wind And The Wheat
Andreas Von Wangenheim – Calypso
Dagobert Böhm – Für Nana
Ronnie Lane’s Slim Chance – Roll On Babe
Almir Sater – Corumbá
Wind Machine – Rain Maiden
Summer Lei (雷光夏) – 逝
Licia Consoli / Giuseppe Leopizzi – Farewell To Doolin
Therese Schroeder-Sheker – Sedona
Sylvan Grey – Joy Like A River
Robin Williamson – Innocent Love