Interview: Tanya Jackson of Mediaeval Baebes 08/24/2011
Death's GodsonBy Christine Stoddard QuailBellMagazine.com  Mediaeval Baebes - the UK storybook group whose talented tributes to the Middle Ages has earned it the attention of the BBC and Billboard alike - welcomes a new lady to their coven. Her name is Tanya Jackson. Tanya has adored music ever since she was a child and even busked around Australia as a teenager before returning to London. Past musical projects include The Woodlarks, a folk guitar/vocal duo, and T Mandrake, a nine-piece soul/pop fusion by Cream lyricist Pete Brown. In addition to performing for Mediaeval Baebes, Tanya sings for the London Bulgarian Choir. Here are four quick questions that Quail Bell couldn't help but ask this fair maiden: Lovers of your music everywhere have to know: What is your #1 fairytale, fable, or epic tale, and why? My favorite fairytale is Death's Godson, the Spanish version where Death is a woman and becomes godmother to a peasant's son. She gives him the gift of medicine: he becomes a world-famous physician. When he goes in to heal a sick person and she is standing on the left, the person will be healed. When she is standing on the right, there is nothing he can do. On two occasions he betrays the rule, promising life to the invalid because he can't face the alternative. Each time she becomes more and more angry as she has to save these lives. On the third time, when he tries to save his beloved, she is no longer angry and takes him to a cave thousands of miles away, where millions and millions of candles stand burning, all with different lengths. Here she shows him his true love's candle, which is short with a weak flame. And in a final act of 'kindness', she blows out the candle, along with his, so that they can die together. Some might think this morbid, but it makes me feel as though there is some beauty in death – and I like fairytales that reflect and prepare kids for the harshness of life. What's your favorite film or TV show that depicts a place and period prior to the settling of Anglo-America? (How's that for specific!) Any runners-up? My favorite period/fantasy show was "Hercules," which was just absolutely brilliant. I loved the research that went into these Greek myths, and the unapologetic naffness of it. It had the Sam Raimi trademark of being able to laugh at itself. What's your top archaic language? If you could force it to be used anywhere and by anyone, what context would you choose? School? Church? Pubs? Everywhere, all the time? My favorite archaic language is Sumerian. I love Prokofiev's setting of a Mesopotamian cuneiform from 3,000BC, found scrawled inside a temple in Sumer. It is called "Seven, They Are Seven', and the words are bloody terrifying, particularly in Russian. They mean: They hear no prayers They are deaf to all pleading They grind down nations as nations grind down seed They are seven! They are twice seven! Spirit of heaven, conjure them! Who are these seven? What vengeful priest wanted to summon them? Who knows. Sam Raimi liked the language enough to inscribe the pages of the Necronomicon in Sumerian in the Evil Dead trilogy. It's pictorial, and I think it would make a great language for appliance manuals to be written in. I mean, you never read them anyway, so why not make them more interesting? Oh, yeah, and Sumerian is the most ancient language, and surviving traces of it include a recipe for brewing beer. They devoted 1/4 of their crops to it. (that might be more apt than how it sounds translated into Russian.) At Quail Bell, our slogan is that we explore "the imaginary, the nostalgic, and the otherworldly." Out of the three categories, which word appeals to you most and why? Definitely most fond of the otherworldly, although I'm sure our worlds are closer than we think. MediaevalBaebes.com CommentsLeave a Reply | The Real
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