The Pogues Play “Lorca’s Novena”

Listen to this track by Anglo-Celtic folk-punk banner bearers The Pogues. It’s “Lorca’s Novena”, a cut taken from their 1990 album Hell’s Ditch, their fifth record. By this point in their career that had started as an amalgam of punk rock aggression as it met with Irish traditional music and instrumentation, they began to wander farther afield stylistically speaking compared to their past albums. Rather than the Irish counties or London streets peopled by members of the Irish diaspora, many of the songs on Hell’s Ditch are set in more exotic locales.

“Lorca’s Novena” conjures the landscapes and histories of Almería in southern Spain, a region with a troubled history not unlike that of Ireland. Pogues frontman and primary writer Shane MacGowan’s time there to film Alex Cox’s Straight to Hell in 1987 helped to shape the song’s creation and expand on the band’s storytelling reach. Speaking of that movie, its star Joe Strummer sits in the producer’s chair on Hell’s Ditch. Strummer also appeared live with the band on the ensuing tour as a temporary member. “Lorca’s Novena” would appear on the Grosse Pointe Blank soundtrack, a movie for which Strummer would also provide the score.

This song preserves the band’s traditional music meets modern rock influences. It’s characterized by mandolins, acoustic guitars, harmonicas, and accordions matched with the rumbling bass guitar lope and the menacing march of the snare on the intro. There is a distinct tonal shift on this tune when compared to many of their songs on past albums. It’s darker and foreboding rather than reflecting the buoyant aggression for which the band had become known by then.

As this song begins, it feels like a soundtrack to an unfolding drama about a coming menace that represents danger and struggle. Seeing as this tune conjures the violence of the Spanish Civil War and the oppression by Franco’s fascists, it stands to reason.

The “Lorca” in this song refers to poet and playwright Frederico Garcia Lorca (1898-1936) who was assassinated by Franco’s Nationalists when the fascist movement swept through Spain in the late 1930s and stayed in power until 1975. Before the war, Lorca had been a key figure in literature and art in Spain. Although he was celebrated and successful for many years, he was privately tortured in not being able to present himself as a gay man and a socialist without endangering himself. His country’s increasingly hostile atmosphere of strict social definitions of identity and political loyalties justified his fears.

The exact circumstances of Lorca’s assassination remain unclear. For one thing, his body was never found. When mystery, art, repression, and death characterize a story like this, folk mythology usually isn’t very far behind. It’s this poetic hook that MacGowan picked up on in writing this song about a tortured artist at the forefront of culture who is overcome by forces with the power to silence him.

Perhaps that sense of alienation was reflective of MacGowan’s own position at the time. He’d been in a downward spiral for a few years due to his worsening addiction issues. He’d missed shows and gave erratic performances that made him a liability to his bandmates at a crucial time in their development as their audience expanded. At the commercial peak of their career, having an unreliable frontman must have been a major source of tension. By 1991, MacGowan was out of the group that he once helped define.

Despite the personal turbulence in place when MacGowan wrote this song, it’s more likely that the themes found in “Lorca’s Novena” have more to do with how all artists must meet their times in relation to the state especially during times of political instability. The song is a reflection of the injustice and tragedy of Lorca’s death. But it’s also elegiac as a celebration of a voice that expressed the spirit of the nation despite the destructive political tides and social upheavals that threatened it.

The words really do suggest a novena, which is a series of rituals and prayers in the Catholic tradition to seek favour on behalf of the deceased while in a period of mourning. “Lorca’s Novena” conjures the suggestion of protecting the very things for which the departed once stood.

Mother of all our joys
Mother of all our sorrows
Intercede with him tonight
For all of our tomorrows

~ “Lorca’s Novena” by The Pogues

Even without the historical context, “Lorca’s Novena” makes a powerful statement about the integral role that artists of different perspectives and experiences play in the health of cultures and nations. It also suggests the idea that artistic works and expressions are powerful enough to threaten the hold that violent and oppressive forces have on citizens and the futures they strive toward. Why else would they ban books and demonize and even murder artists? Why else would they try to invalidate whole groups of people for whom their art was made?

Artists and their works are a reflection of and a path toward that future for which all citizens hope. They express visions of worlds better than the ones we’re in, and that dictators and their minions would prefer to keep from manifesting for fear of losing their power. Even when the artist is struck down, the ideals they stand for are that much more difficult to kill.

In 2001 and after a five-year span apart, The Pogues re-grouped as a live act with Shane MacGowan in front again. They stayed together off and on from then until 2014 before they called it quits again.

Shane MacGowan died in 2023. The following year, principal members Jem Finer, James Fearnley, and Spider Stacy regrouped under the Pogues name for a continuing series of shows.

You can learn more about Shane MacGowan at shanemacgowan.com.

For more about how important MacGowan was as an artist who gave voice to those of his culture and experience particularly in relation to power structures, check out this article that talks about all that, with selections of MacGowan’s songs to enhance it.

Enjoy!

Enya Sings “Orinoco Flow”

Listen to this track by Irish singer-songwriter and queen of the ethereal soundscape, Enya. It’s “Orinoco Flow”, a perhaps-unlikely smash hit song from her 1988 record Watermark, the follow-up to her self-titled debut a year earlier. The single was released in October of 1988 and heard on the radio side by side with singles from Terence Trent D’arby, Madonna, Soul II Soul, Paula Abdul, and other dance-pop acts of the day. Needless to say, it stood out for all kinds of reasons even beyond that stylistic contrast.

While undercutting expected pop conventions, “Orinoco Flow” spent three weeks at the top of the charts in Britain. It won Grammys for Best Video and Best New Age Performance after becoming a bona fide global sensation. Its success also helped kick off a trend of atmospheric music into the next decade, with a wave of atmospheric “new age” sounds becoming a mainstay in the early Nineties in particular. Like any genre of music, there was some good stuff and some also-ran material to be found in that mix. But there were and remain to be many elements that set “Orinoco Flow” apart from the breathy and synth-y herd.

One of those is that, despite its seeming defiance of pop song conventions, it actually adheres to the structure of a traditional radio pop song quite handily. For instance, the song is built on a distinct and downright playful syncopated rhythm that becomes a powerful musical hook. The phrase sail away, sail away, sail away that catches the ear is yet another hook that’s so effective that the single was titled “Orinoco Flow (Sail Away)” on the single sleeve art in some regions. Additionally, “Orinoco Flow” follows a standard pop song structure that includes a bridge (turn it up, turn it up …). And finally, it has a conventional and very relatable pop song theme: escape. This is a song about getting (or specifically, sailing) away from it all.

That’s right: “Orinoco Flow” is the new age “Thunder Road”.

Within those expected conventions, Enya and her co-producers Nicky Ryan and Ross Cullum put enough of the unconventional in there to make this song the singular achievement it remains to be. As a piece of music, instead of being densely packed as most pop songs of the era are, it allows for a lot of space instead. It breathes. And coming out in an age when dance pop ruled the airwaves, “Orinoco Flow” has no traditional backbeat. Instead, it relies very confidently on that aforementioned syncopated pulse to keep it rhythmically enticing.

The run of synthesized notes in between verses are flourishes that provide painterly variance without being distracting. The multitracked wordless vocals sound as if they’re coming from a druidic chorus rather than from a single vocalist. They also help to keep time in place of a backbeat as part of the rhythm section! The sung lyrics are draped in a kind of sonic muslin, making the listener lean in to hear them until the minor chord that finishes this song about a fantastical getaway comes from out of nowhere, being intriguing instead of jarring. That ghostly, almost eerie ending suggests a question: what dark clouds are on the horizon during this journey sailing around the world?

In many ways and despite how unconventional it was as a hit single in 1988-89, “Orinoco Flow” is still a product of its times, decidedly not because it sounds in any way dated. When she signed to Warner to make Watermark, Enya did so on the proviso that she and her small team of collaborators in co-producer Nicky Ryan and lyricist Roma Ryan be allowed full creative control, with no touring obligations, and no album deadlines. Imagine a relatively new artist carving out demands like that today. The deal was sealed with the chairman of Warner UK, Rob Dickens, who is cheekily namechecked in the song’s lyrics:

We can steer, we can near
With Rob Dickens at the wheel
We can sigh, say goodbye
Ross and his dependencies …

The “Ross and his dependencies” is a punny reference to both a region of Antarctica and co-producer Ross Cullum, of course. Who says a bit of goofy humour can’t be a part of an ethereal, fantastical soundscape of a pop song?

But the point is that Dickens signed off on Enya’s terms because he was a fan of the music and wanted to make sure as many people heard it as was possible. He was brave and savvy enough to let an artist be herself on her own damn record and generally keep his nose out of her process. And what do you know? Enya sold A LOT of records.

The result was more than just about (significant!) monetary gain, of course. This track and those that followed from her both anticipated and inspired the next decade’s sounds, while also standing apart from the late-Eighties era in which she produced this single. It helped provide a bridge not only to new age music early on in the next decade but also to the chillout music and downtempo scenes that became popular in the late Nineties, too. Hip hop artists from The Fugees to The Weeknd have sampled her music. Film composer Howard Shore kept her voice in mind when writing the soundtrack to 2001’s The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. Enya would record a song for that movie, too – “May It Be”, which won her an Oscar for Best Song.

In all that music and in her own career, she’s remained to be a singular musical presence, despite no tours and with some spacious gaps between records.

Convention, con-schmen-shun.

As for “Orinoco Flow”, the song is a masterclass in balancing conventional pop structure with unconventional arrangement and textures, while also establishing a signature sound for the artist. In fact, the new age tag feels reductive. This is Enya music, mixing classical piano with choral music, electronica with Irish traditional music. With the possible exception of Clannad, her family’s band of which she was a member from 1980-82, no other artist sounds like Enya. This is because of her ear for arrangement and for her approach to production that made this record, and subsequent ones, so vitally distinct.

On first hearing “Orinoco Flow” on the radio alongside more conventional pop songs at the end of the Eighties, it was as if one dreamed of hearing it and woke up once it was over. But unlike a dream, it stays with you. It is equally provoking as it is soothing as a listening experience even today.

Enya is a practicing musician and composer, putting out records whenever she feels like it while otherwise generally keeping to herself.

To learn about the Watermark album and its continuing impact, check out this 2013 article from The Quietus.

For more of Enya’s music from the Eighties to the present, check out the Enya YouTube channel.

Enjoy!

#80sMusic #ambientMusic #Enya #Folk #IrishMusic #IrishSingers

Listen to this track by Irish singer and too-soon departed iconoclast Sinéad O’Connor. It’s “Mandinka”, the second single from her debut 1987 album The Lion and the Cobra. The song was a top twenty hit on the UK charts where it peaked at number 17 in February of the following year. It did even better in Ireland, where it scored a number 6. The album won a top 40 placement on the Billboard 200.

Launching her professional career, O’Connor’s debut album had the curious distinction of sporting two different sleeve covers between the rest of the world and North America. Both of them featured her head-and-shoulders image. When buying this record outside of the U.S and Canada, O’Connor greets the potential listener with mouth open, her young features caught in an expression and posture of defiance to a party somewhere out of shot. On the North American cover, her eyes are downcast and submissive, almost penitent. The contrast between the two is striking. It may be easy to suss out the strategy of these two record sleeves aimed at two markets, particularly in retrospect.

In both cases, O’Connor’s distinct lack of a hairdo would gain her inches in the music papers at the time, even before anyone heard a note of her music. With that in frame, what is “Mandinka” about, and what does it reveal about an artist who was just starting out by the time this song appeared on the charts?

The song is a rocker, marked by loose and ragged Keith Richards-like chopping guitar chords which O’Connor plays herself on this track. The song seems to suggest the attitude of punk that’s absorbed and assimilated the gloss of late Eighties production and claimed it for its own. And as for O’Connor’s voice, listeners are treated to its full range, from the dulcet to the feral, and with a distinct hiccup that would go on to influence so many vocalists from The Cranberries’ Dolores O’Riordon to Alanis Morrisette and beyond. On this song, and as always, Sinéad O’Connor made her mark on her own terms.

“Mandinka” gave listeners an early glimpse of O’Connor’s tendency to speak her mind, particularly in an era when a woman with a solo career in the music industry without some Svengali lurking behind the curtain was thought of as the exception to the rule. I mean, what’s with the shaved head? What kind of image is that and who approved it? Was it a statement of some kind? How could she not see how aggressive and threatening that makes her look as she stands there in the spotlight? Doesn’t she know how lucky she is to be there at all?

Lucky or not, Sinéad O’Connor knew the score. And this song proves it.

I don’t know no shame
I feel no pain
I can’t see the flame
But I do know Mandinka

-“Mandinka”, Sinéad O’Connor

“Mandinka” refers to a people in West Africa featured in Alex Haley’s novel Roots and who represent a mosaic of cultural groups who still live in that region of the world today. By the sixteenth century, the European slave trade turned these people into commodities, robbing many of their descendants of their culture and lineages along with their agency and full humanity for centuries after. This violence, loss, and sickening injustice was the spark to write this song, likely coupled with O’Connor’s awareness and experience of Ireland’s own bloody history in being systemically oppressed by the British Empire.

This early hit song isn’t a reference to any of that directly. But when she says “But I do know Mandinka”, she’s singing about the knowledge that she has something precious to defend and to lose, something intrinsic to her identity that others would seek to use, control, or even destroy for their own gain. This is a song that tells the world that she is ready to face all of that on her own terms with her mouth open and shouting, very much aware that exploitative forces will seek to quiet her voice, and to make her cast her eyes downward in apology if it gets too loud.

In this song, she knows all of this. She knows what she’s getting into.

***

“Mandinka” is less about protesting historic oppression and violence, and more about how she’s planning to confront it in her own life as it remains ongoing in the present. “Mandinka” is the sound of Sinéad O’Connor planting her feet in the earth expecting that a hard rain is going to fall. She knows that she’s in the spotlight, doing the dance of the seven veils as any charting musician or public figure must do to gain an audience. She wants us all to pick up her scarf; to listen what she has to say. But not at any cost. There are some things to which she won’t raise a glass. As it turned out, she’d take that glass and smash it on the floor if she had to.

No one can say that she didn’t warn us.

There have been many stories of her struggles throughout her career and life, many of those stories coming directly from O’Connor herself. Some of those sprang from her struggles with mental illness, which are well-documented. Even in those struggles, she always spoke her mind and remained true to herself in her art. In this, “Mandinka” was always her personal agreement with her audience that she would do just that, which she did and sometimes to her own detriment. That’s not a criticism against her, but rather against a world that wasn’t as ready as she was for such a confrontation.

Sinéad O’Connor died in 2023 at the age of 56, grieved by a generation of music fans who love her voice and appreciate her honesty, candour, and bravery.

You can listen to her music and buy her autobiography Rememberings at sineadoconnor.com.

Enjoy!

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#80sMusic #IrishMusic #IrishSingers #protestMusic #SineadOConnor #songsAboutBeingFamous