Cantigas de Santa Maria No. 343 – The Rude Girl

Описание: Niccolo Seligmann, vielle
NiccoloSeligmann.com
Patreon.com/NiccoloSeligmann
   / niccoloseligmann​  
For more content like this, subscribe to my YouTube channel, and get exclusive content by joining my Patreon community! ❤

Most of the 400+ songs in the famous 13th-century Cantigas de Santa Maria tell stories of miracles performed by the Virgin Mary, some genuinely awe-inspiring and some comically mundane. In this tale, which I perform here instrumentally, the Devil enters a young girl's heart and makes her say rude things to her mother and other community members. When her mother calls the chaplain to exorcise the girl with holy water, the Devil in her heart raises the stakes by outing people's unconfessed sins—even the chaplain's! Having crossed over from insulting to dangerous, her mother whisks her off to Rocamadour, where the Virgin Mary entered the girl's heart, evicted the Devil, and quietly resolved the matter.

with audio distortion THERE'S A LOT TO UNPACK HERE. Blur the religious specifics a bit, and the story becomes:
"Once upon a time, a young girl disrupted the dynamics of a harmful familial power hierarchy, resisted punishment, and refused to back down. When she starts using her self-constructed power and platform to destabilize oppressive political structures, the hegemonic forces oppressing her escalate to a maximal level of repressive violence, and succeed in silencing the political dissident."

One of the political reasons King Alfonso X "The Wise" compiled the Cantigas de Santa Maria was to align himself with the powerful Virgin Mary, effectively equating the Virgin Mary and his Galician political apparatus. This religious-political apparatus is reflected in its highest hierarchical ladder-rungs by the Virgin Mary, and its lowest by the chaplain, whom the girl discredits by pointing out uncomfortable truths. Given this subtext, the political reading of this story isn't even a stretch. In this particular story, the institutionalized power structures prevailed, which serves the political purposes of King Alfonso, compiler of the Cantigas de Santa Maria. This story has happened in real life so many times, in so many cultures, and it doesn't always end the way this retelling does. Today, women like the Rude Girl in this story are challenging hegemonic power structures across the world. Sometimes they are silenced, like the Rude Girl in this cantiga, and sometimes they prevail. Sometimes, they achieve smaller victories that fall between those two extremes. I've recorded this cantiga in celebration of their work, and as a call to action for us all to join in their struggles against the sinful chaplains and authoritarian Virgin Marys of the world.

A note on style:

If I don't address my old-time fiddle influence at all, it'll be the only thing people comment on, when I'd much rather folks discuss the contextualizing material I write in these long-ass captions. So below is my disclaimer for the potential angry Facebook commenters who've made it this far in the caption.

💚

I include old-time corporealities in medieval music because it feels good in my body and instrument, not because I'm persuaded by evidence for this in iconography or written music. But what historical evidence could show us 13th-c. Iberian examples of instrumental subdivision patterns, levels of rhythmic inequality in passages of equal notes, or offbeat accent patterns? Groove cannot be notated. And the text? Strong and weak syllables are on different notes stanza-by-stanza and trying to chase that down makes for a fussy performance. So what's a vielle player to do? Look at the sources we do have, study the local folk fiddling traditions that culturally inform the repertoire (for example, Celtic and Arabic stylistic elements are part of this rendition) and ultimately... you just do what feels good.

Shout-out to Tina Chancey for making old-time/medieval crossover even a thing in the first place. WE STAN!!! (And thank you for joining my Patreon, Tina!!!)