Sam Lee - Bushes and Briars (Official Music Video) in association with Emergence Magazine

Made in conjunction with the new documentary film ’The Nightingale’s Song’ featuring Sam Lee, screening online via Emergence Magazine from May 2024 onwards Listen to Bushes and Briars: See bottom for Song Lyrics and Song Background Notes Bushes and Briars by Sam Lee from the forthcoming album Songdreaming released March 15th Directed and produced by Adam Loften and Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee Cinematography by Adam Loften and Jeremy Seifert Edited by Adam Loften Bushes and Briars produced by Bernard Butler, Vocals Sam Lee Piano James Keay Double Bass Misha Mullov-Abbado Percussion Josh Green Electric Guitar Bernard Butler Scottish Small pipes Ali Levack Violin Bridget O’Donnell Violin Joseph O’Keefe Trombone Yusuf Narçin French Horn Laetitia Stott Percussion Jack Yglesias Follow Emergence Magazine @emergancemagazine Follow Sam Lee @samleesong / Bushes and Briars - Lyrics by Sam Lee Through bushes and through briars I’ve lately made my way All for to hear a small bird sing I make my peace that way All for to hear that small bird sing And heed what they’ve to say Your speak is filled with woe betide Yet singularly sublime A language, a liturgy, alive yet saturnine For your rarity determines mine Such times we find we’re in the presence of A reckoning divine Sometimes I’m uneasy and troubled in my mind Sometimes I think we’ve gone too far To turn it round in time Sometimes I’m plagued by all I should and must And what we’ll leave behind Through bushes and through briars Eventually, we stray And if we hear the small birds sing Their requiem proclaims You’ll never hear so sweet as the birds all in the spring As we watch them fly away BUSHES AND BRIARS - SONG NOTES What does it mean to be in the presence of a species and their song knowing their voice is fast being silenced? Bushes and Briars was composed in response to the many hours I’ve spent in the company of the nightingale; listening, singing with and devoting attention to their iconic voice. These uncountable hours are always spent in that complex awareness that this once immortal tune will likely be gone from our land in a matter of years; a unique emotional situation for humans to find ourselves in. This song is an invitation to consider what appreciation in the age of extinction can feel like. Bushes and Briars, woven out of the Essex folk song collected by Vaughn Williams and with nods in the string arrangements to his ‘Lark Ascending’ theme, was first heard by Vaughan Williams in 1903, sung to him by a 70-year-old Essex labourer. He remarked on the song that he “felt it was something he had known all his life”. The same has been said of hearing nightingales; so foreign yet so familiar. Curiously the song’s original theme of rejection, unrequited and impossible love has so many resonances with my own relationship with these birds. A species so rare, so vulnerable, so exquisite and so impermanent, how do we attend to the space a situation like this creates? How do we celebrate these birds? What grief do we allow ourselves to express? What accountability and responsibility do we hold to their protection and cultural acknowledgement? Bushes and Briars opens the Songdreaming album as a triumphant adoration of nature but also an alarm and rallying call to love, protect and reckon with what we have to lose.