#watersong

Savina Yannatou, Primavera en Salonico and Lamia Bedioui: Watersong

Considering water as balm and curse, life and storm: the fabulous Greek singer and collaborators transport us across centuries and countries

Savina Yannatou is a fabulous Greek singer whose work over the last five decades hasn’t stood still. Her CV includes interpretations of early music, throat singing, composing for video art and improvisations with Can’s Damo Suzuki. Her new album with Greek jazz ensemble and long-term collaborators Primavera en Salonica and Tunisian singer Lamia Bedioui is a global tour of traditional songs about water: how it can be balm and curse, source of life and storm.

Watersong begins beautifully, in Greece, with The Song of Klidonas. Singing of a mid-summer ritual in which girls place charms in a pot of clean water to be left outside bathed in starlight, Yannatou dusts the beautiful melody with melancholy. Then the mood shifts. Naanaa Algenina (Garden Mint)/Ivana mixes folk songs from Aswan in Egypt and North Macedonia into a wild, wayward concoction: Yannatou and Bedioui’s opening stunning harmonies twist into a middle section in which Yannatou gasps and ululates around stuttering instruments. Elsewhere, she gives Cypriot traditional song Ai Giorkis (St George) a sultry edge and Spanish ballad A los Baños del Amor (At the Baths of Love) a hymnal glow.

The album jumps across the centuries, from Ireland to Iraq, Corsica to Calabria, but it is filled with intensely modern moments. Michalis Siganidis’s double bass in Greek carol Kalanta of the Theophany has motorik-like propulsion. The 10th-century Arabic poem Mawal (To the Mourning Dove I Said) comes across as an avant garde contemporary prayer, setting a tangle of percussion against Yannatou and Bedioui’s spoken-word delivery, full of contrapuntal whispers and wails.

Traditional instruments such as Kostas Vomvolos’ qanun (an Arabic zither) and Harris Lambrakis’s ney (a Persian flute) also add drama and dreaminess. This album sets traditional music flowing and crashing in many unexpected, wonderful directions.

The Celebration scene in Drawn to Life: The Next Chapter is unique in that it's the only scene in the game that uses the Generic Elder Raposa sprites in the sequel, seen on the right side of these screenshots.

However, another quirk of this cutscene is the duplicated Yvonne, seen in the first image at the top of the screen, and at the bottom of the screen in the second. This "Yvonne 2" doesn't appear in Watersong's overworld, nor are they named in the cutscene itself.

A third oddity of this cutscene is the inclusion of both Leopold and Ferdinand, two Raposa that share a sprite. This is the only cutscene where two, named Raposa with the same sprite appear together, meaning that it is unknown which is dancing with Yvonne and which is dancing with Veronique.

Aliases / Nicknames: Harbinger of Justice, The Bravest Cat in The Clans

Gender: male

Sexuality: bisexual

Family: Longdapple (mother), Mudpatch (father) several unnamed siblings, many more unnamed cousins, Copperdapple (daughter)

Other Relations: Wildpaw (apprentice)

Clan: Newclan

Rank: Warrior

Characteristics: kills to avenge apprentice, slowly loses his mind and sense of self thanks to Starclan interference

Number of Victims: 10

Number of Murders: 10

Murder Method: disemboweling, impaling, beheading

Known Victims: Olivejay, Watersong, several unnamed loners

Victim Profile: toms, medicine cat

Cause of Death: killed by Copperdapple

Cautionary Tale: ??

Story:

It wasn’t fair! 

He had looked down at Wildpaw’s body, still warm with life, then around the clearing, as though he would see her murderer emerge from the trees.

The wind blew through the trees, bringing olive leaves blowing into his face. He shook them away and carried the body back to camp.

That night, as he slept, he saw Wildpaw waving an olive branch, a swarm of jays flying around her like a cyclone of feathers. Her gaze was frantic, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out who she meant.

Olivejay.

The tom had always been weird around Wildpaw, taking too much interest in her at every turn.

Haypad killed him. Ripped him open. Then went after Watersong, one of Newclan’s many medicine cats, who had given birth to Olivejay many moons before.

That night, Wildpaw had thanked him, purring as she called him the bravest cat in the clans. A harbinger of justice.

He set out on his new crusade the next day.

Over the course of a single moon, he dispatched four rogues. The next moon, six.

Unfortunately for Haypad, in his crusade, he had forgotten to fuel his body, and he would’ve died hungry--if his daughter hadn’t found him first.

Additional Information:

--Submission by @ambitiousauthor​

--He’s from Clangen!

Hey remember when the drawn to life amino had a DtL inktober back in 2019? Well I thought I'd try doing the prompts I didn't do.

“The mysteries in the thought we live apart,

@succfishy’s winning entry for the Medium Prompt!

(Draw one or more canon characters in some way participating in their favorite activities. This can be anything, including scenes shown in the games! )