drop no.1.5 ~ a world fiddle day special
on inspirations and influences, a.k.a. a glorified listicle of the TOP 10 VIOLINISTS & FIDDLERS WHO ARE BREAKING THE MOLD
I thought about including this segment with this month’s drop but as the influences started to pile up, I realised that would be impossible. (I have a different theme in mind for that letter anyway. 🌈)
The third Saturday of May is World Fiddle Day and I thought it’d be a good excuse to share some of my favourite fiddlers/violinists who have come to inspire my own playing and music. 🎻
For this letter, I’ll be defining “fiddle music” as any violin-centric music that borrows influences from ethnic, folk, jazz, blues and country music (so I wouldn’t consider pure classical/pop music like Paganini and Clean Bandit as fiddle music in this sense).
I started playing the violin by learning and practising classical repertoire when I was a child. At a certain point in high school, I had already been playing the violin for almost 10 years and was starting to get burnt out by the restrictive playing style endorsed by classical music. Despite performing regularly with orchestras, I was in a rut, I could feel myself gradually losing interest in what had previously been my passion. I was beginning to get rooted in the belief that the instrument I was playing was holding me back.
That’s when a teacher I respected greatly shared a video of a violinist which subsequently changed my life and my world as I knew it. My eyes were opened to the possibilities of this instrument that I had yet to fathom, which were reinvention, and creation; instead of just mere reproduction.
Here are some musicians who have inspired me with not just how well they integrate the violin into their music, but also how vulnerable and honest they are enabled to be in their music by this instrument.
I’ve compiled all the videos I’ve shared in this letter in this YouTube playlist.
Gaelynn Lea
Discovering Gaelynn is what gave me my own breakthrough moment in violin performance. I was entranced by her performance of her song “Someday We’ll Linger In The Sun”. I had been trying to compose one more song to perform for my college recital and I briefly considered covering it but it didn’t feel right. The music was very beautiful but it wasn’t my story to tell. Eventually, I chose to take inspiration from the way she looped layers of violin in between singing and came up with a performance piece where I looped violin parts in between a monologue stitched together from discarded lyrics and diary entries. This performance was so important in my growth as a musician and as a person. It was the first time I felt completely in tune with my instrument (even if the notes I played weren’t). It was the first time I finally found the courage to share my true feelings with the world. It was the first time I performed something that was honest, that was true, that was real, that was me. And I thank Gaelynn for giving me the courage to take that first step.
Andrew Bird
Another fiddler with a looper, and probably the one who has had the biggest influence on my own playing style. It’s hard to describe exactly what style Andrew Bird’s music falls under; certainly, he draws influences from folk, jazz and country music, but as soon as you try to pin a genre to one of his releases, his next goes in the completely opposite direction. He also constantly reinvents his songs, an example is “Gypsy Moth”, which is an instrumental rework of his song “Roma Fade” for his Echolocations: River album, which is part of a series where Bird would play in an uncontrolled environment (usually in nature), see what frequencies the space liked to hear, and let that shape the music he created (eg. “The Canyon Wants to Hear C Sharp” from Echolocations: Canyon).
Time For Three
The title of their song “Joy” is aptly named, it’s the word that comes to mind when I think of them, and you can see how much joy making music together brings them and it genuinely brings joy to the people who hear their music too. All of them are classically trained but the music they make definitely extends beyond that.
Regina Carter
I’ve known of Regina Carter for a long time but only started doing a deep dive into her discography recently, previously I was too overwhelmed by the sheer bulk of it. Regina has an incredible tone that I admire greatly, even when she’s not playing a lot of notes, she has that soul and grit in her playing. That said, she can also go absolutely ham and kill it! (As seen here!)
Casey Driessen
Yet another fiddler with a looper! I come back to this piece very often because of the meaning behind it. “The Heartbeat Kid” was written to the heartbeat of his daughter when she was still in utero (she’d be around 12 now!), it also has a beautiful melody and catchy groove. Casey has also done lots of cool things including the Chop Notation Project and his “Otherlands” series where he travels to different parts of the world and makes music with other fiddlers and folk musicians, learning and borrowing from their geographic and cultural influences to do so.
A. Kanyakumari
I found her so captivating to listen to, the way she plays and adds ornaments sounds so similar to a singer. She was my gateway into a rabbit hole of Carnatic and Middle Eastern music that has centuries-old traditions that I didn’t know of before and am still trying to understand.
Lindsey Stirling
Moon Trance was the video that my high school teacher sent to me that got this ball rolling. The reason why she had such an impact on me was because Lindsey wasn’t just playing covers of popular songs, she was playing her own music and being very successful in doing so. Despite being told earlier in her career that there was no place in the world for a hip-hop/dubstep violinist, Lindsey has sold out concert tickets across the globe (I actually got to meet her briefly after her Malaysian concert in 2015!). Sometimes, if you can’t find your place in the world, you just have to make your own.
Where I find my inspirations and influences:
While on internet rabbit holes: When I first embarked on this journey back in high school, I tried to find violinists who covered popular songs and that’s how I found out about Vitamin String Quartet (this was years before Bridgerton). Another violinist I found that covered pop songs but in his own unique way was David Wong, whose cover of fun.’s “Some Nights” was my first exposure to improvisation on violin.
My educators: As I mentioned earlier, it was my high school teacher who introduced me to Lindsey Stirling and thus opened the doors for me to find more ways of playing this instrument. Christian Howes conducted the jazz workshops at a string conference I attended when I was 15 (another early introduction to violin improv) and his podcast Creative Strings is a great resource for me to learn about and from incredible violinists. Kailin Yong was my tutor and mentor in college (last year I performed his compositions with him as part of a string quartet at the National Gallery Singapore) and encouraged me to check out the works of Andrew Bird and Casey Driessen when I first started looping with violin.
Back when the Instagram algorithm was actually good: A clip from the video I shared of A. Kanyakumari found me on my Instagram feed (probably under the hashtag #violinists). Other fiddlers I’ve found via IG are Kiana June Weber (an American-Irish fiddler/educator whose Patreon I subscribed to for a while during the pandemic) and Morgan Weidinger (a songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who is living the bohemian life I can only dream about for now).
Abel Selaocoe was shared on the story of another cellist I follow and I found him so unique, I have never heard African music that featured a cello (a very European instrument) so prominently. Ted Gioia is publishing his musicology book Music to Raise the Dead on Substack, I would certainly classify Abel’s music as music that breathes life and could raise the dead. Below is my favourite performance of his song “Ka Bohaleng” so far, but his solo version is also excellent and he really shows off his technical capabilities there.
Soundtracks: I love listening to soundtracks and at some point, I’d like to score a full-length film (I’ve done a few short films and got a credit as an additional composer on my first feature film this year!). You can probably tell from my interest in fiddling that I really appreciate Celtic music and you can’t get more Celtic than Riverdance (which my parents brought me to when I was a child, I still have the programme tucked away on my bookshelf at home); my favourite track is “The Harvest”, where you can hear the amazing Eileen Ivers shred out a solo. The 2008 film Brideshead Revisited has an underrated soundtrack which featured a gypsy jazz-inspired track “Wise Old Wine”, played by Christian Garrick, that I plan to transcribe one day.
NPR Tiny Desk: I watch every Tiny Desk concert that has someone playing the violin in the thumbnail and I have found some amazing musicians who have become my major influences this way (eg. Gaelynn Lea, Andrew Bird and Time For Three). Some other musicians I found and loved through NPR but didn’t mention yet are Kishi Bashi, Mama’s Broke, and Tracy Silverman (who also has a great podcast featuring “progressive string players”, one of the episodes features Christian Howes).
Berklee College of Music: Probably the most famous contemporary music school in the world, and for good reason! Tim Reynolds plays in a way that emulates the human voice and even with this simple instrumentation, he gives me chills with his expressive playing. Another performance I love and go back to listen to often is Orkney fiddler Louise Bichan performing her own composition “Ian”, inspired by a suitor of her grandmother’s (read the full story in the video description).
I referenced the very first essay I wrote in college to write this letter and to conclude, here’s a passage from that essay that still rings true for me today:
What I find truly inspiring about all these musicians is that they don’t completely shun either identity, instead, they draw from both the classical and the contemporary to create their own unique sound, climbing to greater heights. What I intend to do with my violin and my music is to achieve all the above, as well as to find innovative ways to integrate seamlessly with existing genres. My goal is to show that there is a place for the violin in every bit of music.
Self-promo stuff
Last month the trailer for the Hunger Games prequel The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes dropped, I read the book last year and it’s the first book I stayed up all night reading since I left high school. This song is from a scene in the book, I used the same instrumentation depicted (singer, guitar, fiddle, mandolin, upright bass) and wrote this tune to the lyrics written by the author Suzanne Collins. I wanted it to have that blues/folk standard feel so there’s a short fiddle solo section about halfway in.
I didn’t mention it earlier, but I covered Andrew Bird’s “Skin Is, My” for my final performance recital at college.
If you’ve made it this far, thank you! Here’s a YouTube playlist with all the music (and videos) I linked to in this letter. Also, here’s a video of my cat critiquing my playing. 🐱
What’s next for drops of golden sun:
May’s drop (31 May) ~ I’ll be sharing a project I did during the pandemic that also coincided with pride month, along with 3 song recommendations. 🏳️🌈
I found reading my old college essays to help me write this fascinating because my sentiments are still the same even though the pool of influences I draw from is a lot more diverse now. I’m considering doing a critique/commentary of the first essay but I’m not sure if the musings of a dewy-eyed 18-year-old version of me would be something y’all are interested in.
I finally finished recording all the instrumentals for my EP, just vocals for a couple of songs left and then I’m on to the mixing stage. I’ll share another song from the EP in a drop of the month when I get there.
With all the inspiration and enjoyment they’ve brought to me, I could write a love letter to NPR’s Tiny Desk concerts.
LoL (Lots of Love),
rae
The tune is nice and mellow. Great job! 👍🏽