The Pagan Music List 26
The PAGAN MUSIC LIST is an attempt to create a comprehensive list of Pagan, Heathen, Esoteric, Animist, and related music that we listen to and love. We include embedded YouTube, Soundcloud, or Bandcamp links when possible for each artist.
Previous collections in this series have been archived here, and new collections of reviews will be posted monthly (supporters get early access to new collections—find out more here).
We also provide a constantly updated index of artists that we have reviewed by name and genre.
And if you are a Spotify listener, you can click on the embedded player to listen to the full updated playlist!
Collection 26
Daridel, A Tergo Lupi, Julie Fowlis
Daridel
Medieval/ Folk
Website https://daridel.eu/, also https://www.instagram.com/daridel_official/ and https://daridel.bandcamp.com/releases
Recommended Album: Paganroots
Daridel is an Italian medieval folk band whose music focuses on performance and presence. In other words, they’re more like the traditional performance troupes of Europe, rather than a main-stage, highly-produced modern act.
I’ve a soft spot for this sort of band, and especially for those who play marktsackpfeifen, large bagpipes reconstructed from drawings of medieval German bagpipes.
My favorite (and understandably their most popular) is their song Bodenco:
From a previous album, and fitting for the time of the year this is posted, is their song Samhain (live video:)
A Tergo Lupi
Nordic/Heathen Ambient
Website: https://atergolupi.bandcamp.com/
Recommended Album: Out of the Fence
A Tergo Lupi is a brilliant Nordic ambient project led by scholar and medieval luthier Camilla Ferrari and Fabio Del Carro.
Derived from an old Latin phrase that meant “the abyss in front and wolves behind,” A Tergo Lupi features the same distant dreamscapes as older Wardruna but with a strong “dark feminine” feeling woven throughout.
The atmosphere of the project can best be felt through the song Hoar Frost
Comes the long night, comes
Blowing through our hairs
And it fades all flames
And reveals the shapes
To walk the lines
And find what beats inside
Running with our Samhain theme, the lyrics to the song Kominn Heim speak to the suffering before death and the release when life ends:
Þau sögðu að ég gæti farið núna
Núna er ég loftið
Núna moka ég jörðina
Núna get ég flogið
Núna er ég loftið
Og ég er trjábörkurinn
Og ég er ræturnarThey said I could go now
Now I am the air
Now I shovel the ground
Now I can fly
Now I am the air
And I am the tree bark
And I am the roots
Julie Fowlis
Probably best known for songs performed on a Disney soundtrack (Brave), Julie Fowlis sings primarily in Scots Gaelic with an enchanting, playful voice.
Many of her songs are traditional and speak to the rich pagan history of the Scots. For instance, her song Òran an Ròin (the Seal’s Song) is the lament of a Selkie woman trapped on land who watches in horror as humans eat her kin:
Pity to be in this place,
Where people are eaten as food.
See the chief of the people of the people,
Boiling hard on a fire.
I am the daughter of Aoidh son of Eòghainn,
I was knowledgeable about the reefs.
Pity the person who would hit me,
I am a noble woman from another land.
The thrush comes, the starling comes,
Every bird returns to its nest.
The salmon comes from the sea,
Until Doom’s Day I will not be moved.
A’ phiuthrag ’sa phiuthar,’ also a song in Scots Gaelic, is a lament of a woman trapped in a fairy mound. She calls for pity to her sister from the mound and recounts how she became stuck in Faery:
I am a poor woman
sad and miserable.
I climbed up
Ben Sgrìobain
and Laigheabhal Mhòr
with it’s spotted horsesI didn’t find there
what I wanted,
A girl
with hair like a golden daisy.