Singing in the dead of night
Summer musical makeover: Blackbird
Welcome to another summer edition, in which you hear my versions of songs I love.
It’s already late summer here in Switzerland (where did it go?), and we’re spending as much time in the lake near our house as out of it (see photo, below). But there’s always time for music.
This week it’s my re-imagining of Blackbird by the Beatles, which originally appeared on the White Album in 1968.
It’s obvious it’s a Lennon-McCartney song from the very first few notes, but it’s also inspired by a piece by the Baroque composer J.S Bach in a fine example of musical borrowing (and for more on that go to The Borrowers). Bourrée in E Minor was composed in the early seventeen hundreds, and originally written for the lute, a precursor to the guitar.
This is a song that is both delicate and as strong as steel. It was inspired by birdsong heard in India, but also written in response to the civil rights movement of the sixties in the southern states of the US.
I figure the only way to approach a song so well-known and so ‘just right’ in its original form, is to do what feels right for me. I’ve created a piano accompaniment and thrown in a few extra vocal lines (one Kate is never enough 😉).
So here we go:
A photo of the aforementioned lake (Lake Zurich, Switzerland), taken just after an evening swim:
Thanks for reading this summer edition of Discovering Music. Let me know if you enjoyed this post, and if there's anything you're curious about or would like me to explore in future editions. You can comment on this post or send me a message at katepainediscoveringmusic@substack.com ❤️