The highest quality of chamber folk music, 'How to Raise the Wind' is the second album from the pair, following on from 'Sølvstrøk'). However, the Norway based Scottish/Finnish duo Sarah-Jane Summers and Juhani Silvola have played together for fifteen years and released four critically acclaimed albums in that time.
Combining Scottish & Scandinavian traditional music with classical and contemporary classical music, the poetically titled ‘How to Raise the Wind’ is inspired by Scottish and Norwegian folk tales, integrating composed chamber music with the duo’s idiosyncratic traditional sound. Add in a twist of contemporary music and jazz, and you get the gist.
Transversing various moods and melodies, it seamlessly links sound to the power of nature – hence perhaps – the title – ‘How to Raise the Wind’. Stirring, rampaging through wildly changing musical landscapes, the first few tracks delightfully titled ‘Trolls Resent a Disturbance’ and ‘Polkadots & Moonshine’ to the ethereal, even eerie third track called ‘Visitor from the Sea’, styled as a meditation on a coastal ghost story.
Track 5 – ‘Let me Stay till I Dance this Reel’ – is a set of traditional Highland dances, with a nod to Stravinsky’s ‘Rite of Spring’ – where classical and traditional ‘fusion’ takes place. This classical/folk duality continues with the Baroque polyphone inspiring track 6 ‘The Coriolis Effect’.
The Gaelic influences stand strong in track four – ‘The Enchanted Sons of Kings’ and the beautiful closing track – ‘Psalm (How to Raise the Wind)’, bringing the closure to calm waters after the intense storm.
Keeping alive through instrumentalism the folk tales of North-Western Scotland, where fishermen and their families rolled with the rough elements of the sea and the wind for survival, it is allegedly believed that the people of the Western Isles, have an anecdotal method of raising the wind – something the fishermen of Caithness do not like, as it affects the herring catch.
In essence what happens is this – the women left at home put a number of knots on a woollen thread. Towards the end of the fishing, or earlier of not successful they undo the knots one by one, with the result that the wind begins to rise. They take care not to undo the knots at too great a rate, lest the wind should arise too suddenly, for the loss of their loved ones might be brought about.
Who knows if its true or k(not)! There’s more things between heaven and earth than we can ever know – but there’s something magical when the folk tales of old are resurrected for contemporary musical exploration and hence, ‘How to Raise the Wind’ seems to capture just that.