“The pumpkins are glowing and the alcohol’s flowing and witches step outside to smoke,
Two mummies are kissing and reminiscing, beneath the moonlit oak…“
I wrote this song, also back in 2010; maybe that was a great year for writing Halloween songs! I finally got around to recording it this year in my small bedroom studio in Malawi, where I’ve lived for the past 8 years.
Witches have a different meaning here in Africa, in the sense that they are not part of any mythology, but part of the living present. In fact, while doing the photoshoot for this song, I suggested we take a few pictures in the graveyard near my house, and was told definitively, that it would be a very bad idea!
I composed the song when I lived in London though, around the time that I had just learned about Samhain, and how it evolved into the way we celebrate the 31st today.
It was one of those songs that wrote itself, as Halloween parties have always been my favourite, and I’d recently lost an aunt. I remember very well in the early days of performing the song, the feeling that her spirit was coming right with me to commune. It is indeed intended as a song to call the spirits…
As a folk musician, there is a tradition of storytelling, and of keeping the past alive through song. I hope I’ve managed to do that, and also bring it into the present.
Thanks for your time,
Sincerely,
Neil
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