Desi
Wilkinson
Shady
Woods
Own label DEAS01; 40 minutes;
2001
”Shady
Woods? Sounds like a right dodgy geezer,” I'd remarked when Desi Wilkinson
first told me about the working title for his new album, but then there’s
always been an ingenious element in Desi’s music which surpasses the
imagination of most Irish traditional flute players. The woods in question are
the variety of wooden flutes, some constructed by his home-town flute-maker,
Sam Murray, which the Belfast-born Desi employs on his first solo album for
fourteen years, Shady Woods.
Two
years in the making, Shady Woods is a complete departure for a
flute-player known for playing some of the most hard-hitting music to come out
of Ireland over the last couple of decades, not least with the formidable trio
Cran (whose other members are singer/bouzouki-player Seán Corcoran and the
uilleann piper Ronan Browne). Desi’s first album was an enjoyable, fun-packed
affair, mirrored by its title, The Three Piece Flute. In contrast Shady
is the product of a conscious decision to explore the more mellow sound of the
wooden flute, as Desi puts it, ‘allowing the instrument to dictate the pace
itself, let it make its squeaks and things the way it wants to’. 
For
those who rightly thought ‘Hang on, aren’t most of the flutes used in
traditional music wooden?’ the answer is, naturally, affirmative. The
difference here is that Desi has chosen to use the simplest form, in other
words, ones lacking any keys whatsoever. Though obviously blown differently,
this form of the instrument is otherwise played similarly to the tin whistle,
using overblowing (hence the ‘squeaks’) to produce the higher notes and
cross-fingering to generate accidental notes (though these rarely feature in
Ireland’s traditional music). The sounds produced vary according to the kind
and quality of the wood used (hardwood, yew or bamboo in this case), the
instrument’s tuning (determined by its length) and, of course, the player’s
technique.
However,
it’s not just the choice of instrument, but the selection of tunes and their
arrangements which makes Shady Woods an atypical Irish flute album.
Again, this was deliberate on Desi’s part, selecting tunes which ‘do not slot
into any category, simply ones that I enjoy playing’. The overall effect is
reflective, relying on the wooden flute’s resonance and sparse accompaniment, a
little percussion there, harmonised vocal drones elsewhere, and the sound of
the waves rolling onto a beach in Clare. Accordionist Máirtín O’Connor can
rarely have played so few notes in one piece as he does on Le Petit Bal De La
Marine, a waltz evoking the afternoon dances held in Paris café in the
1920s. Shady Woods also presents probably the first musical marriage of
the Irish flute and the Indian shruti box, a hand-pumped miniature harmonium,
operated here by Graham Henderson of Dónal Lunny’s band, Coolfin..
Such
an atmospheric combination might lead some to suspect that Desi has fallen foul
of the ethereal, ambient doodling which blights an element of Ireland’s
traditional music, producing albums of haunting melodies for the tourist trade,
but this is far from the case, thanks to Wilkinson’s mastery of his instrument
and the cosmopolitan strengths of his material. Apart from tunes from Northern
Ireland, such as Lisburn Lass, there are also several pieces which
reflect Desi’s passion for Breton music (he spent several years living in the
region during the 1990s) and another, The Long Woman, written while he
took part in Hent St. Jakez, a
1993 pan-European musical project which followed the medieval pilgrimage route
to Santiago de Compostela in Northwest Spain.