The Sirens/Chris Potter

We're back--and so is Odysseus, a regular visitor to these pages.

Homer's epic hero--featured in Cream's Tales of Brave Ulysses, Steely Dan's Home at Last, Suzanne Vega's Calypso, and many other contemporary songs--has inspired still more modern music, this time a new album by saxophonist Chris Potter, released late last month. “The Sirens draws inspiration from The Odyssey, the ancient Greek epic poem of exile, homecoming and the treacherous path in between," writes the New York Times's Nate Chinen in an interview with Potter.

The album features such tracks as Wine Dark Sea, a title drawn from Homer's poetic description of the Mediterranean; Penelope, Kalypso, and Nausikaa, each inspired by specific characters in the tale; and of course, the title track, about the mythical women whose irresistible song lures sailors to shipwreck on the rocks.

In the Times interview, Potter talks about what drew him to The Odyssey:

I read it in high school and thought it was cool but didn’t go much further than that. When I reread it, I was really taken with the beauty of it and how many of the themes in the book resonate. It’s good and evil, these big decisions — and a lot of stuff about interpersonal relationships, which is rare for an ancient text, I think. It’s very psychological, in a way....A lot of what’s interesting to me is how Odysseus actually interacts with people. He’s in these situations where he has to represent himself. That to me is a big reason why it feels so contemporary. A couple of the tunes that are about women—'Penelope' and 'Nausikaa'—are played on soprano saxophone. In a way that’s them speaking in their voice. It works also because most of the album is on tenor, which is a lower, more male voice: Odysseus.

He also suggests that a working musician can particularly identify with Homer's peripatetic hero: "As universal as the themes in The Odyssey are, there might be some that personally resonate more with me: leaving, and not knowing exactly how it’s going to go, or who you’re going to run into, or what problems are going to arise. Just that being-away-from-home thing, and returning home."

For an additional musical reference to Homer, visit our companion blog Classics Rock! The Sequel.

Helen and Cassandra/Al Stewart

 

Two recurring figures in these pages are Al Stewart, a literate and literary songwriter, and Homer, the shadowy poet of ancient Greece who is credited with writing two of the foundational volumes of Western literature, The Iliad and The Odyssey. They intersect in Stewart's song "Helen and Cassandra," which appears as a bonus track on a 2007 reissue of his 1988 album Last Days of the Century.

Stewart focuses on the events of The Iliad  and, as Suzanne Vega did in her song Calypso, he approaches Homeric themes from the perspective of female characters. The first part of the song deals with the abduction of Helen, queen of Sparta, by Paris of Troy, the event that precipitated the Trojan War. Key figures from the epic make appearances--the warrior Achilles and Agamemnon, king of Mycenae--but the focus always returns to Helen, who is depicted as a seductress (She could have turned the head of Paris/With the gentle sway of her hips).

In the second part of the song, Stewart focuses on Cassandra, who stands in stark contrast to Helen. The god Apollo granted Cassandra the ability to see the future, but for spurning his advances he cursed her so that no one would ever believe her warnings. Stewart presents her as a tragic figure, powerless to prevent the destruction she knew was coming (Gazing at the ruined city/That your warnings could not save/Oh Cassandra, so still and so grave).

Stewart also acknowledges the author of the source material:

It's funny how the story lingers
It's probably a myth of course
A whisper in the ear of Homer
Perhaps there never was a horse

The last line is, of course, a reference to the Trojan Horse. Technically this episode does not occur in The Iliad, but is mentioned in The Odyssey.

The familiar and repeated line Helen, the face that launched a thousand ships derives from Christopher Marlowe's play The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, published in1604 but performed much earlier. In the play Faustus, with the help of the devil, conjures up Helen of Troy and, upon seeing her, says: Is this the face that launched a thousand ships/And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?

For other songs that reference the works of Homer, see these previous posts.

For an additional musical reference to Homer, visit our new companion blog Classics Rock! The Sequel.

Sigh No More/Mumford & Sons

Congratulations to Mumford & Sons for their memorable joint performance with Bob Dylan and the Avett Brothers tonight at the 2011 Grammy Awards. We hope it makes up for being passed over in the two categories in which they were nominated (Best New Artist and Best Rock Song).

The London Evening Standard dubbed Mumford & Sons "The Bookshop Band" and wrote that their music, "like the best bookshops, is intimate, old-fashioned and filled with literary references." For our part, we hardly know where to begin with their debut album Sigh No More. Marcus Mumford told the paper that nearly half the songs on the album are inspired by authors.

Leading the pack is Timshel, inspired by John Steinbeck's East of Eden, published in 1952. The novel makes strong allusions to the Book of Genesis, particularly the story of Cain and Abel. A character named Lee, a Chinese-American domestic servant who spent years studying the Cain and Abel episode, translates the Hebrew word timshel as "Thou mayest"--meaning man is free to choose. Timshel becomes a key point of reference in the book. Lee says:

There are many millions in their sects and churches who feel the order 'Do thou,' and throw their weight into obedience. And there are millions more who feel predestination in 'Thou shalt.' Nothing they may do can interfere with what will be. But 'Thou mayest'! Why, that makes a man great, that gives him stature with the gods, for in his weakness and his filth and his murder of his brother he has still the great choice. He can choose his course and fight it through and win. . . . Confucius tells men how they should live to have good and successful lives. But this--this is a ladder to the stars."

The song's lyrics distill this as: And you have your choices/And these are what make man great/His ladder to the stars. The repeated line As brothers we will stand and we'll hold your hand also resonates as the book focuses on two sets of brothers within the Trask family--Charles and Adam, and in the next generation Caleb and Aron--whose lives parallel those of Cain and Abel in significant ways.

Steinbeck's influence can also be felt in the track Dust Bowl Dance, an allusion to the milieu of his 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath. Marcus Mumford even connects his favorite author's attitude to the experience of touring. "He talked about how a journey is a thing of its own, and you can't plan it or predict it too much because that suffocates the life out of it," he told the London Evening Standard. "That's kind of what touring is like. Even though there's a structure--you know what towns you're going to, and that you'll be playing a gig--pretty much anything can happen."

Other references: The album's title is a quote from Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, and the title track, Sigh No More, includes quotes from that play. Roll Away Your Stone paraphrases Macbeth (Shakespeare's For in my way it lies. Stars, hide your fires/Let not light see my black desires becomes Stars hide your fires/For these here be my desires). "You can rip off Shakespeare all you like; no lawyer's going to call you up on that one," Mumford observes. The Cave includes references to Homer's The Odyssey--as we've seen in previous posts, a favorite literary reference in popular music.

The band's devotion to books extends beyond their music: They took part in a campaign to help save Britain's struggling independent booksellers. And when Marcus Mumford isn't writing songs, performing, touring, or reading, he runs a book club on the band's website.

East of Eden (KindleEdition)
The Grapes of Wrath (Kindle Edition)
Much Ado About Nothing (Kindle Edition)
Macbeth (Kindle Edition)
The Odyssey (Kindle Edition)

Home at Last/Steely Dan

The peripatetic hero of Homer's The Odyssey keeps wandering into these pages--first in Suzanne Vega's Calypso, then in Cream's Tales of Brave Ulysses. Now he turns up in Home At Last, from Steely Dan's 1977 album Aja. "The central metaphor was taken from Ulysses' big problem--you know, trying to get back home," says Donald Fagen in the Making of Aja video, describing the song as "a little blues about Ulysses." A reference to the Greek wine retsina adds some local color, and, as in the Cream song, there is an allusion to the Siren episode of The Odyssey, in which the hero has himself tied to the ship's mast to resist being lured to shipwreck by the song of the Sirens: Well the danger on the rocks is surely past/Still I remain tied to the mast/Could it be that I have found my home at last/Home at last. Perhaps it should be called Homer at Last.

Tales of Brave Ulysses/Cream

The hero of Homer's epic The Odyssey is featured in this song, from Cream's 1967 album Disraeli Gears, but he appears under the Latin rendering of his name, Ulysses: And you touch the distant beaches/With tales of brave Ulysses/How his naked ears were tortured/By the Sirens sweetly singing. The reference is to an episode in The Odyssey, an account of the ten-year journey undertaken by Odysseus (Ulysses) to get home following the Trojan War. His course takes him past the island of the Sirens--mythical women whose irresistible song lures sailors to shipwreck on the rocks. He orders his crew to fill their ears with beeswax, then has himself lashed to the mast so he can hear the music for himself. When he hears the Sirens' song, he begs to be released, but his men stand firm and the ship passes by safely. The girl featured in "Tales of Brave Ulysses" is associated with the Greek goddess of love: Her name is Aphrodite/And she rides a crimson shell. Aphrodite appears in The Iliad, Homer's account of the Trojan War, and can be said to have helped instigate that conflict by enabling Paris's abduction of Helen, Queen of Sparta, the event that precipitated the war.

Submitted by Beth Calamia Scheckel

Calypso/Suzanne Vega

In the context of Suzanne Vega's song, from her 1987 album Solitude Standing, Calypso refers to the sea nymph of Greek myth. In Homer's The Odyssey, Calypso falls in love with the hero, Odysseus, and imprisons him on her island for seven years, until the gods convince her to let him go. Vega depicts Calypso awaiting their final dawn together, when Odysseus will depart forever: Now today/Come morning light/He sails away/After one last night/I let him go.