Waterford folk group are time-travelling music tour guides
The Lunatraktors performing at the Smock Alley Theatre in Dublin. Photo: Carol Cummins
Carli Jefferson is a self described choreographer, clown, percussionist, dancer and 'maker of weird stuff' and Dr Claire Le Couteur is a singer who also does "a bunch of teaching". Together they form the Lunatraktors, a folk band that has been touring England and Ireland for the past 10 years.
Over this time, Le Couteur has realised that they blend together “a series of the least fashionable things; clowning, folk music, pantomime, performance art and audience participation.” Their new show 'Time Weavers', which was partly funded by Creative Waterford, recently made its debut at the Scene and Heard Festival in Dublin.
The Waterford News & Star headed out to Dungarvan to the couple's van (named Constance). The Lunatraktors, now in their mid-40s, have put comfort and accessibility in the heart of their new show.
"There are many people who can't sit still during shows, they find that actively painful. I feel like you can't enjoy yourself if you're not able to move freely," said Jefferson.
Their new show is "not a gig", according to Le Couteur "where everyone is standing up and it's uncomfortable and super loud and late and everyone's drunk." But it’s also "not musical theatre" where "it's really quiet and expensive, and you're trapped in a theatre seat". Time Weavers is "something else".
“If you need to rock and stim to get through your day, we feel that we do as well".
They don’t view this open invitation to participate in their music as a new idea. One of the reasons why the couple moved to Ireland was that “there’s an unbroken tradition that everyone can be involved in music and everyone has a song to sing, everybody can tell a story”.
"The baseline of Lunatraktors was always somatic sounds." This is the idea that the body is an instrument. Jefferson and Le Couteur take a lot of inspiration from Irish culture when exploring this idea. The percussion music created by some types of Irish dancing is one example of a somatic sound. For the Lunatraktors, singing and dancing are "something they can't take away from us no matter how hard they try".
Jefferson explains how the duo re-imagine time travel through music in their shows: "We are tour guides, we take the audience, who are our passengers onto our chronocraft. The chronocraft is powered by the sound we make with our bodies and voices, which generates a vibe, which allows us to travel through time, deeper into the mists of time, where we find folk songs along the way. It’s all in our imagination of course, but people are generally down with that”.
Their show incorporates songs from the 1980’s, 1800s and neolithic period (“that bit gets a bit trippy, with all the standing stones”) with a modern twist.
Although perhaps more than a little strange, the response to their show has been overwhelming positive, particularly with children.
A 7-year-old boy named Beck gave some important feedback, to the tune of: “The best show ever. The vibes were high.”
