Nigel Shaw

This music celebrates and honours the ancient people of the frozen north, each song wrapped around chants and rhythms from archive recordings of Siberian Arctic tribal people. Gentle pieces alternate with exhuberant dance tracks in a celebration of ancestors of the cold lands.

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£10.00£13.00

This music celebrates and honours the ancient people of the frozen north, each song wrapped around chants and rhythms from rare archive recordings of Siberian Arctic tribal people, as well as fed by inspiration from our own Arctic travels. Some voices were recorded over 70 years ago (one elderly voice belongs to Nenets singer Yelena Susoy who we later met in Siberia) but the ancestral sound memories and spiritual traditions within these songs stretch back to last Ice Age.

Gentle pieces alternate with exhuberant, dynamic dance rhythms in a celebration of the ancestors of cold northern lands. There are stories here about the sun’s triumphant return after long winter darkness, the spirit animals of vast primeval forests, travelling over frozen lakes beneath whispering stars of falling ice and the deep raw call of ancient land.

Siberian tribes represented are Chukchi, Evenk, Ulchi, Korjak, Nenets, Manci, Dolga and Saami. Additional lyrics and vocals by Carolyn Hillyer. Guest musicians: Adrian Utley (Portishead), Brian Abbott and Shaun Farrenden. Donation from every sale goes to Survival International in support of tribal land rights and the protection of the natural world.

TRACKS: Legend of the Solar Tambourine, Gratitude, Fishers on the Lake, The Whispering of Stars, Silver Deer, On the Ice, Dark Drum, Tineneut, Eat the Ancestors, Tnenkeu (Herdsman), Our Earth
Released in 2007.