All is quiet on the northern front here in Chaco, though wider spheres of politics & culture have been beating their incessant drum. Tipperary's last bard, Shane MacGowan, passed away, Argentina now has an anarcho-capitalist president, Javier Milei, and there is even talk of war on the shores of South Americay, way up in Guyana.
As for my own machinations, I've been busy organizing the logistics of recording in Buenos Aires. Besides my own contributions, multi instrumentalist Facundo Flores will be both recording and playing on this album “Exile and Adventure.” The amount collected hasn't moved alot from the last update. Though we have tipped over the €4000 mark, its still quite a distance from the hoped for amount that would see both the album and film completed. As it stands, both projects will be wholly funded by those that support this campaign. The work will come to fruition as much from the support of those who dig what I'm doing as from my own volition.
From the generous contributions already received I have money to pay Facundo and have rented an apartment near his home for the month of January. Thank you all kindly for your belief and support of the rekindling of the fire in these Irish-Argentine songs of old.
Resurrecting in songs, spirits long gone
This ballad below “Bleak is the Pampa” had no obvious air, have a listen to the one I composed for it in the ‘song sketches’ above. Bleak is the Pampa nods to the ancient isle of Hy Brasil in the lines
“had I ne'er quitted my own island dwelling, in search of a phantom in lands far away.”
Raised €4026
GOAL €9800