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Annette Cantor : Songs to the earth (US,2009)***
Annette Cantor made this album of a partly improvised, a partly prepared session of singing mixed with native American flutes (Patrick Shendo-Mirambal), cello (Michael Kott) and mostly congas (Mark Clark, Mike Chavez and Gregory Gutin). It is very feminine music, and if it would not have found a few progressions to harmonize into a certain common ground of inspiration it would have remained a rather hippie-like idea to sing like native Indians and then some old Latin Gregorian chant, but it works, because thoroughly, even when only slowly changing in its process, the different energies are becoming well combined towards some inspiration. The cello mostly adds oscillating accents to the rhythms. The congas play simple earth-drum-like rhythms, like a simplified tabla to the music. The chords are kept simple at first and there has been some repetition with it, but the native flutes are really good and Annette has a good voice for this sort of music. At a certain stage the medieval song turns into a sort of let’s say something like more common people folk improvisation like a pagan or witches song, as if combining different worlds, from the secular courtly spheres to the purely intuitive, from a real ground towards a loose idea of free spirit, this becomes also a unifying new age. Because all elements are done for real and because of the foundations in the few different worlds the part of the airy freedom still is liberating and causing a concrete enough relaxation of the senses while keeping a few concrete enough anchors of rhythm, melody and sound guided through the associations already given. The music gives a little bit of extras to the functional purposes that were chosen, it will of course also relieve some tensions of the mind with it.
