When most folks think of Appalachia, they think of tobacco-chewing hillbillies picking banjos on a rickety wooden porch. For Canadian Kaia Kater, the banjo-picking part holds up, but that's about it. The 21-year-old Kater, who hails from Quebec and boasts an Afro-Caribbean ancestry, studies Appalachia and its music up close in West Virginia, delving into the history and traditions in order to carry them forward in her own music. Kater's deft handling of both the form and function of roots music has earned her comparisons to Ola Belle Reed.
For her debut album, Sorrow Bound, Kater turned to producer Chris Bartos who has worked with the Barr Brothers and Sarah Harmer in the past. The two captured the recordings over the course of five days. The title track of the set, “When Sorrows Encompass Me Round,” draws its own title (and inspiration) from an old-time Appalachian fiddle tune made famous by Tommy Jarrell, but is otherwise an original Kater composition.
Kater says of the cut, "I was inspired by the beauty of the words 'when sorrows encompass me round.' [That phrase] had a dark, rich complexity to it. As a songwriter, I mostly create characters based on my own experiences or those of others -- I take them from history books and novels. I decided to set the traditional song aside and write based on the feel of the words. 'When Sorrows Encompass Me Round' is the story of a runaway slave who truly knows the darkness of being alone in this world. He's outwardly proud, and is sure that he doesn't need anyone to save him or help him. He's encompassed by hate with dogs running after him ('Take your hounds, chase me down into the big mud'), and he finds himself face to face with the devil -- the white slaver ('Six barrel shotgun, loaded revolver at the gates of hell'). Yet, in every refrain, he is flooded with memories of tender moments with someone in his past. The sorrow of the memory is mixed with the joy of it. He remembers it all."
0 comments:
Post a Comment