Daughters of Elvin

HELD in the main foyer and free to the general public, this lunchtime performance by the Daughters of Elvin was one of the best I've seen at the RFH. A sizable group of us met up around midday and made our way through the racks of assorted leaflets and over to the coffee tables in the very modern and rather soulless exhibition area where the band were due to perform.

This gig was described on the RFH website as being comprised of music from the life and times of Dante Aligheri, containing up-tempo ballatas from the 'Codex Rossi' and polyphonic madrigals from fourteenth-century Italian manuscripts. But whilst the latter did form part of the performance, however, the troupe of actors which usually accompanies the DOE to perform Dante's work were absent on this occasion and therefore my preliminary research into 'The Divine Comedy' was in vain. A ballata, meanwhile, is a poetic form of Italian music from the thirteenth- to fifteenth-centuries, it's a-b-b-a-a  structure combined with distinct and characteristic stanzas that make the first and last words rhyme. Polyphonic, meanwhile, relates to music comprised of several parts, both independent and important as one another and not simply there to provide accompaniment.

The members of DOE are Katy Marchant (recorders, bagpipes, pipe and salterio), Dhevdhas Nair (percussion, dulcimer), Steve Tyler (harp, hurdy-gurdy and citole) and Sophia Brumfitt (voice). Tyler, sporting a beard and wearing a maroon jacket and white shirt, is also a member of The Wendigo (see http://rosenoire.org/reviews/wendigo.php) and a brief soundcheck led to him assuming a sitting position and playing the harp whilst Brumfitt - a very striking, Celtic-looking woman with jet black hair and a low-cut crushed black velvet dress set off with a silver-green heart pendant - thumbed through an equally dark songbook and exercised her beautifully wavering voice for the first time. Then, with a clatter of the tambourine and the unmistakable whirr of a hurdy-gurdy, the fluctuating bagpipes instantaneously set the scene for a medieval atmosphere. Nair's tap-tap-crash setting the rhythm above the complexities of the polyphonic sound. Brumfitt sits out this instrumental, tapping her foot patiently until the music stops and she can walk forward and utter a few stanzas about love. Tyler provides the lone accompaniment on the harp, a gentle 1-2-3 plucking system that works like an arpeggio. And, like a scene from 'The Wicker Man', a variety of stunning masks are lined up on the floor in front of them. There is a white unicorn with Celtic swirls, a pig bedecked with black and yellow, a sabre-toothed devil with lime-green horns and green and yellow spots, and a pale pink demon with short horns, long ears and an unsympathetic frown. Marchant, with an array of flutes hanging around her neck, is wearing a maroon jacket, brown suede shoes and a skirt that looks like it might have been designed by Victorian textiles guru William Morris. She very carefully joins the duo on pipe, as the melody rises and falls like an insomniac's sleeping patterns.

Introducing the next song, Marchant tells us that it's based on people dancing on a riverbed when the weather is dry and the river itself has dried up. Nair, in a white shirt and cream trousers, has a distinctly near-eastern appearance and plays two small tambourines. Tyler turns the handle of the hurdy-gurdy, Marchant plays bagpipes and Brumfitt sits this one out again. The hurdy-gurdy reminds me somewhat of the early Albion Band recordings. And then Brumfitt takes centre-stage once again, uttering yet more words about medieval love like a female troubadour in the heart of modern London. Again, this is followed by a sung ballata and Tyler's soft harp-playing. Brumfitt's voice, infused with the Latin dramatics of the 'Codex Rossi', lilts softly like a scene from Tolkien's idyllic Loth Lorien. And now she takes another short break, whilst Marchant and Nair rejoin Tyler, who has now exchanged his harp for the hurdy-gurdy. Rising and falling in time with the bagpipes, things soon get livelier with Nair's side-drums making the whole composition sound like a cross between a market fayre and a Hindu festival. It's interesting to note here, too, that Marchant's pipes are not reliant upon the squeezing of an air bag and seem fully-inflated throughout. With a crash of a drum, the instrumental grinds to a halt.

The next song tells of a young cleric based at the Cathedral of Notre Dame, "who was hanged for debauchery". The words offer advice on "love matters", Brumfitt's French immaculate in both grace and delivery. This time, however, Nair fades into the background as Tyler and Marchant join the sweet vocals with harp and pipe respectively. Next, Marchant dons a huge wooden drum with red strings and, together with Nair and tapping her drum, she plays a pipe solo. The two-part song then erupts into 'La Rotta', as Nair strides across to his original position and becomes more animated than any of the members have been up to now. Marchant then plays drum and flute simultaneously and the effects are electrifying, punctuated with fits and starts. In fact the only disappointing factor in this affair, is the lack of professional dancers.

After a fifteen-minute break the group perform a 'trotto', a fourteenth-century Italian dance with Marchant on both salterio and flute. A salterio, an unusual instrument, is shaped like a four-foot birdbox and worn around the neck. Nair joins her on the side-drums as Marchant puts her stick under her arm and plays two pipes simultaneously in the style of a Roman herald. The hurdy-gurdy is slowly cranked up again, as Tyler returns and Marchant turns her own talents to the bagpipe. Nair, on the other hand, taps a tambourine on what loosely resembles an Irish bodhran. This is followed by a slower piece. Marchant explains that "improvised dance had the power to turn the minds of the wealthy away from depravity" and this improvised Italian dance, known as 'Bellaca', may relate to the word 'bellicose', although it isn't in the slightest and features Tyler (harp) and Marchant (pipe) herself. A few more words from Brumfitt concerning the futility of covering "a face so fair", before Nair and Tyler begin a dulcimer/harp duet. The dulcimer is a raised wooden board containing a series of innumerable pegs, each controlling a horizontal string which is lightly tapped with a pair of curved sticks and it's light clang is slightly similar to the sound made by a sitar. Meanwhile, Nair's percussion is soon pierced by Brumfitt's high lyrics.

All but Marchant play in the next piece and the theme is that to be wrongly blamed amounts to a form of suffering, whilst "too much confidence can often lead to a fall". The droning hurdy-gurdy and a light patter on the side-drums sees Brumfitt's vocals become even more shrill and glorious than before. As the drumbeat increases, the hurdy-gurdy enters a solo mid-way through the song. Eventually, it becomes an instrumental and one of the most enjoyable performances of the afternoon. The final piece, written by Marchant, is dedicated to King Bruder of the Picts and is another instrumental involving the hurdy-gurdy, drum and bagpipes. And pretty damn mesmeric it is, too, like a complex tribal lament for the end of a monarchical era. As the concert comes to a close, the four members link hands and bow to rapturous applause. Meanwhile, the RFH tend to hold these free lunchtime concerts every few months, so if you live in south-east England see if you can get along there yourself and support those at the forefront of our fine musical heritage. The performances are very intimate, too, and children particularly seem to enjoy being able to examine the instruments at such close range. The DOE website, containing a wealth of information about the group themselves, can be found at: http://www.endicott-studio.com/jMA0301/daughters.html