I had a dream...
I have a dream...
...I'm living in a dream where the borders of nations are fluid and cultures swim like schools of fish between vast oceans of experience, sharing, always sharing, taking part in the forever-festival of integration, inter-communication and involved feeling that makes every moment of ordinary life a magical, musical, acrobatic association of inter-connected experiences.
Australia is a weird and wonderful experiment in immigration. A nation with a 40,000 year old native culture that hums drone-like underneath everything we see, hear, think and feel. The Yidaki, sacred instrument of the ancients breathes beneath all our skipping dances and mixed up melodies. Australia, the modern nation, made up of people from nearly every other nation on the planet, home to a vast community of active multi-cultural artists who all strive to make a fusion of the past and the present in order to fashion a future that shines brighter than all our separate histories ever were.
Andrew McNicol is such an artist.
Defining himself as a dancer first, and a musician second, his music is thus informed by the silent vocabulary of the body, which owes allegiance to the human experience, and speaks a truth that carries across all national borders and language barriers. This album, a fusion of African and Aboriginal instruments, is in essence, a grand expression of the truth of modern Australian culture. It is of course, a deeply personal expression of the artist himself, speaking without words of any kind, the story of his long life. Andrew is a white haired gentleman, blessed with the eternal youth and beauty of a man who knows himself, and is a peace with the chaos of the world. The music of this album is representative of that fact.
This album is peaceful, but not sleepy. Its complex poly-rhythmic melodies are intricate and perfectly woven, like spider webs, sharing in that quality of strength and flexibility. This music is beautiful and lovely but does not lack in sadness or gravitas, in fact, it feels like an honest expression of joy; honest in that is does not dwell upon the surface of happy melodies, but dives deep beneath the skin of the world and draws it's beauty from an interior darkness. A darkness filled with many colours. There is rain in his heart, a heart that must swell with pride at the grand and sublime music that it has created. Though Andrew's inventive and clever fingers skip with an inspiring precision and delicacy across the many strings of these African instruments, and though his breath drives the aeon's deep drone of the Yidaki, it is his heart that is the author of this music.
Step inside. Breathe deep.
Dream a dream.
The album, Rain in my Heart can be listened to and downloaded from Bandcamp.
https://andrewmcnicol.bandcamp.com/album/rain-in-my-heart
More information about this diverse artist can also be found here:
https://www.arts-excentrix.com/andrew-mcnicol
