Dirty Linen

This is an excerpt from the print edition of Dirty Linen #129 (April/May 2007).
The full article is in the magazine, available on newsstands, by subscription, and at the Dirty Linen webstore.

Mediaeval Baebes

At the Ren Faire with Mediæval Bæbes

by Steve Winick

In their everyday lives, they have been fashion models and art photographers, novelists and comedy writers, physical therapists, Irish step dancers, and nursery school teachers. Several of them have fronted rock bands. But put them in outlandish costumes fit for fairy princesses, give them a Middle English lyric or a traditional Scots ballad to sing, and they become creatures of another time, nothing less than a bevy of Mediæval Bæbes. Backed by an arsenal of folk and medieval instruments including hurdy-gurdy, dulcimer, cittern, fiddle, and recorder, they play with sounds that live on the borders of early music, European folk, and pop. In October 2006, the Bæbes played several concerts at the Maryland Renaissance Festival, where Bæbes founder and musical director Katharine Blake and singer/recorder player Maple Bee explained the history and music of this most unusual girl group.

The first thing they did was set the record straight. Mediæval Bæbes are often accused of being a flash-over-substance act created by record company executives with an eye toward making lots of money, along the lines of Boyzone or the Bæbes' original labelmates, the Spice Girls. But Mediæval Bæbes was a group born of artistic inspiration, not marketing acumen, and it was formed by Blake, not by a record company or management team. Blake was classically trained at the Purcell School, Britain's oldest specialist school for gifted young musicians, and was a successful rock bandleader and singer before creating the Bæbes in 1996. Furthermore, the individual band members do a lot of textual and musical work on each song, adapting the lyrics and often writing and arranging the music themselves. Blake points out that it's a misconception that they perform mostly medieval music. In fact, the bulk of what they perform is medieval poetry of various sorts, set to entirely original music written by band members.

The seeds of Mediæval Bæbes were sown in two projects Blake had been involved in long before the band's formation. One was a band called Synfonie, which performed music of Hildegard von Bingen. The other was Miranda Sex Garden, a goth-rock outfit that began as a trio of women singing Elizabethan madrigals. According to rock 'n' roll legend, the members of Miranda Sex Garden were out busking in Portobello Road, singing madrigals, when they were spotted by Barry Adamson of the Bad Seeds. Adamson invited them to perform on a soundtrack he was composing for the 1991 film Delusion. On the strength of that performance, they got a record deal, and recorded the first Miranda Sex Garden album, Madra [Mute Records]. This work strongly foreshadows Mediæval Bæbes, consisting simply of Blake, Kelly McCusker, and Jocelyn West singing Elizabethan art songs in unaccompanied harmony. Some prominent critics loved it, with the Evening Standard commenting, "the tabernacle in which we sit is transformed by sheer dint of harmony and poise into another place, where the sky lies like a canopy of blue velvet and the brightest stars are Miranda Sex Garden."

[cover #129]