Yesterday I recorded the guitar and piano parts for Ca’ the Yowes as the latest edition to my new Burns album, "The Songs of Robert Burns".
I had set aside a few hours to do this, and I had lit the candle. I always light a candle when recording – concentrating on the flame enables me to focus on the feeling of the song without distraction. It allows me to be completely present and in the now.
As I light the flame I always think of Ernest Levy’s book “The Single Light”. Ernest was a Holocaust survivor born in Bratislava. He lived through the holocaust, surviving seven Nazi concentration camps, and losing half his family, including his father, a brother and a sister, before settling in what was to become his beloved Glasgow for the latter 48 years of his life.
I had the pleasure of meeting Ernest who was a great musician and cantor. We spoke of the power that music has to transform suffering into hope. He spoke with such passion and Joy that I immediately went home and bought his Autobiography “The Single Light”. There I read of the imagery of the single flame.
Ernest tells of how, during a forced march to Belsen towards the end of the war, he picked up a sardine tin discarded by a German guard hoping there might be something left to eat. However, instead of drinking the remaining oil, he fashioned a wick and lit a flame round which he and fellow inmates gathered in the darkness to sing the Hanukkah hymn Maoz Tzur. At The Scottish Parliament in Holyrood, he again lit the wick in the sardine tin, telling assembled MSPs and guests: “We sang, and it gave us hope. This tin gave us light.”
The image of the sinle candle burning in the tin has never left me, and neither has the light that shone in that wonderful man’s eyes. There is something about a flame that represents both the eternal spirit and the transient nature of each passing moment. We are here now, and gone, shifting and flickering in form and feature. We are mere messengers of forever. I will never know the suffering that Ernest endured. I do however know that music spoke to him when words failed, and that I can understand.
So – yesterday I lit the flame in peace and silence. The snow outside caught every sound, blanket-soft. For the first time during the recording of this Robert Burns album, John set up the equipment round me so that all I had to do was press the buttons and play. There was nothing to distract me.
And so – I played the guitar and then sang. One take for each. I didn’t even put on the headphones, as I felt guided and safe. Whatever sounds came through me would be the sounds of the song itself.
Within ten minutes, the song was there. The guitar part simply came from messing around with shapes on the fretboard. I have a very limited knowledge of guitar chords, and don’t even know what the finished chords are. I knew that I was looking for a sound that was soporific and perpetual. There is a heaviness about Ca' The Yowes. Robert Burns wrote such beautiful words that sing themselves, almost in sadness. I can’t really explain this, but it feels like beautiful resignation.
The album, The Songs of Robert Burns, and this song, Ca' the Yowes, in particular, I dedicate to Ernest Levy who died in August 2009. The bearer of light, song and hope for so many.
