Loreena McKennitt

“…Who was God? And what is religion, spirituality? What was revealed and what was hidden… which was the mask and which the mirror?” This is the question posed by Loreena McKennitt in the booklet of her 1994 album, self-produced through her own label QuinlanRoad, as is her entire discography.

"The Mask And Mirror" poses universal questions about the meaning of contamination between far-flung cultures, through an evocative musical fresco of 15th-century Spain. A spiritual and spatial quest, then, narrated by the visionary artist herself in a travel diary included in the booklet: "Through Galicia, down into Andalusia, beyond Gibraltar to Morocco… The Crusades, the pilgrimage to Santiago." A deeply literary concept album, rich with possible interpretations like the great chivalric poems: it tells the story of that mercantile crossroads where the histories of Islam, Christianity and Judaism intertwined. The synthesis is faithfully rendered by the rich harmonic structure of the songs: the already-established soprano, refined and lyrical, who has elevated the folk heritage evoked by her Celtic harp onto a cultured, lofty pedestal, also emerges here as a fascinating and remarkable composer. Indeed, bringing to a close the delicate journey begun with the previous "The Visit", the Canadian singer-songwriter manages to blend highly distinctive instruments from the most disparate traditions, creating a happy amalgam of eclecticism, catchiness and folk research.

The journey through space and time begins with an Arabic vocalise, answered in counterpoint by a choir of monks over a hazy electronic backdrop: we hear "The Mystic's Dream", the monks' dream, suddenly energized by tablas (Indian percussion), sitar, oud and, now and again, the fleeting echo of the Asian flute, the ney. The various tributaries eventually flow into the same sea: the sea of a future universal spirituality, amid bagpipes and the return of choirs and synths. Yet, unexpectedly, "The Bonny Swans" resurrects from the past the fairy tale of the two sisters, the swan and the harp, already told in the song "Cruel Sister" by Pentangle, amid the lively waves of cello and electric guitar, with the proud rhythm of the Celtic bodhrán. This is perhaps the most "deadly" track in the entire career of the austere folksinger born in Manitoba.

"The Dark Night Of The Soul", a meditation for fiddle and voice, traces the album's parallel path of inner searching, alongside "Full Circle", a dizzying crescendo of the spirit, "The Two Trees", a river of strings and keyboards opened by fierce Irish uilleann pipes, and "Prospero's Speech", a baroque elegy set to a Shakespeare text that even manages to evoke the solemnity of Nico.

The important episode of "Marrakesh Night Market", meanwhile, is painted with a dramatic, dispassionate litany, accompanied by Arabic percussion, balalaika (a kind of Russian lute) and the reckless abandon of a gypsy violin.

With "Santiago", finally, a true compositional gem, we reach the destination of both the album and the journey: a medieval saltarello that blends, with delightful lightness, Arabic scents, an almost tribal rhythm and an unruly hurdy-gurdy, racing swiftly toward a whirling finale led by the violin. It's all sung in McKennitt's distinctive timbre, luminous and free of cumbersome vibrato, evoking a cross between Caballé, the expressive falsetto of Tori Amos and angelic Celtic technique, but which, above all, steals its secrets from the classical tradition: for the people and with the people.

"I've learned to use pan-Celtic history, which stretches from 500 BC to the present, as a creative springboard," says the Canadian artist in an interview. And it is precisely with this album that Loreena McKennitt's music definitively claims an important role in that process — already begun by Irish artist Enya — of recovering, analyzing and modernizing Celtic heritage in all its many-faceted influences.

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10/07/2011