Vishtèn - Horizons

The Guardian 60

(Productions Takashoun)

New year resolutions are often attempts at reclaing our older selves, shoring up the best memories of who we used to be. So how appropriate it feels at the start of 2019 that many folk music projects are reconnecting with older cultures and languages, re-energising them with electrifying voltage. This month alone, the Spell Songs project is taking place in Herefordshire, where Julie Fowlis, Karine Polwart, Kris Drever and others are weaving new music out of Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris’s popular The Lost Words book, which remembers disappearing expressions. The last touches are also being put to the promising Oran Bagraidh album (out 2 February), in which an extraordinary collective featuring Gwyneth Glyn and Welsh duo Bragod celebrate the forgotten language of Galloway Gaelic.

This January also gives us the sixth album from Vishtèn, a long-standing traditional trio from Canada’s eastern reaches, featuring twin sisters Emmanuelle and Pastelle LeBlanc and Pascal Miousse; they play fiddle, guitar, accordion, mandolin, Celtic instruments such as the bodhràn, and sing. They celebrate Acadian music culture, which began when French settlers arrived in the so-called New World in the 17th century, and continued in America’s southern states, where it morphed linguistically and culturally into the glorious sonic soup that is Cajun.