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Four people holding musical instruments.
Skye Consort and Emma Björling: Simon Alexandre, Emma Björling, Amanda Keesmaat, Seán Dagher.

Skye Consort and Emma Björling: Homegrown Plus

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Welcome to our latest post in the Homegrown Plus series, featuring the Skye Consort and Emma Björling, an eclectic group performing British, Irish, Canadian, and Scandinavian music and songs in a variety of traditional and modern styles. Just like other blogs in the series, this one includes a concert video, a video interview with the musicians, and connections to Library of Congress collections. (Find the whole series here!)

Four people onstage playing instruments.
Skye Consort and Emma Björling: Simon Alexandre, Emma Björling, Amanda Keesmaat, Seán Dagher. Photo by Stephen Winick.

Skye Consort & Emma Björling perform traditional music from Scandinavia, Ireland, Britain, and French Canada, along with some of their own compositions. They find enchanting traditional songs and tunes, then arrange them with influences from European folk and chamber music. They use their voices, fiddle, nyckelharpa, cello, bouzouki, and percussion to deliver whirling polskas, compelling reels, passionate love songs, stirring hymns, and original compositions. Hear their concert in the player below!

In our interview, I talked with Emma Björling, Seán Dagher, Amanda Keesmaat and Simon Alexandre about some of the experiences they’ve had leading up to the band’s formation, and also their experiences as a band. We talked a little about other projects too: La Nef, an early music ensemble that brought the band members together; Emma’s other groups, two of which have already appeared in the Homegrown series, and Seán’s exciting work bringing traditional sea shanties into the online gaming world via Assassin’s Creed. See the conversation in the player below!

You can find both of these videos with more bibliographic information on the Library of Congress website. You can also find them on the Library of Congress YouTube channel.

Simon Alexandre plays nyckelharpa while Emma Björling sings.
Simon Alexandre plays nyckelharpa while Emma Björling sings. Photo by Stephen Winick.

Collection Connections

If you enjoyed the concert and interview, check out the Collection Connections below.

The Skye Consort and Emma Björling

Scandinavian Connections

We covered Scandinavian connections earlier this season in this blog about Northern Resonance–find copious links to concerts, blogs, and guides there.

Irish and British Connections

We covered Irish and British connections earlier this season in this blog about the duo Rakish–find links to concerts, blogs, and guides there!

A man plays a bouzouki
Seán Dagher plays Irish Bouzouki. Photo by Stephen Winick.

French Canadian and French American Connections

Cello Connections

We’ve been seeing more and more cello in Celtic and Canadian folk music of late. In the last few years we have featured cello in the following concerts:

Sea Shanty Connections

Seán Dagher is known for his shanty performances outside the group, and “Clear Away the Morning Dew” was sometimes collected as a sea shanty. So even though Skye Consort isn’t a shanty group, we’ll drop some links here in case you’re interested!

Thanks!

As always, thanks for watching, listening, and reading! The American Folklife Center’s Homegrown Concert Series brings music, dance, and spoken arts from across the country, and some from further afield, to the Library of Congress. The idea of the Homegrown Plus series is to gather concert videos, video interviews with the musicians, and connections to Library of Congress collections together in one place for our subscribers. (Find the whole Homegrown Plus series here!) For information on current concerts, visit the Folklife Concerts page at Concerts from the Library of Congress. For past concerts, including links to webcasts and other information, visit the Folklife Events Online Archive.

 

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