Sam Lee

Boats of breath carried stories between people, and then you would breathe it in.

There are often traditions that are still extant, especially in, I know, traveling communities in England that A friend of mine, Sam Lee, has worked with, he shared that he was working with one of these elders and before he would begin singing the songs, he would breathe in the ancestors because he didn't believe that anything was coming from him.

It came from that intake of breath into the body where the ancestors were allowed to enter him and his lungs, his pneuma.

And So for me, it's about remembering that stories always begin and are stored and kept alive in the body.

So it seems like many artists these days do features and collabs, Stornoway being no exception.

I loved your, your track with our aforementioned mutual friend, Fyfe Dangerfield, on the last album, and also Sam Lee as well.

But I think you've almost become known for not just going for Olivia Dean or Pitbull or whatever.

You, you know, you're bringing in a, a red grouse or a Brent goose.

... and we all care deeply even though we've got different ways of talking about them.

Brilliant.

One other thought on that is when we were with Sam Lee in the, singing with nightingales in, in the woods back in, uh, um, mid-May before we went to South Africa, there was obviously the, um, the UK perspective on the nightingale and specifically its, uh, problems it's facing, like journeying over the Congo where the air is increasingly hot, and, uh, making these, um, migratory paths that are just becoming, uh, less and less reliable, then coming back to a habitat depleted of suitable, um, nesting areas because of the wild deer that are so rampant in the UK.

So to come from the context of, like, this beautiful green Slubil wood where the nightingales were singing in the middle of the night, and removing ourselves out to industrial Durban where it's mostly sea birds and, um, uh, whatever can survive in the, in the very crowded harbor of that city, it was just such a contrast, and I feel doubly inspired now to go out and do something special for biodiversity.