Wildfire - Mandolin Orange
We take a trip today to Chapel Hill, North Carolina to meet our next LCM featured artists Andrew Marlin & Emily Frantz better known as the excellent US duo Mandolin Orange. Our LCM #SongOfTheDay is a live version of one of our favourite songs from their 'Blindfaller' album, the beautiful, timely and thought-provoking 'Wildfire'. The video is taken from a Sawyer Session filmed in front of the Gyre structure in the North Carolina Museum of Art’s sculpture garden.
'Wildfire' stands as the perfect metaphor to represent the spread of ideas. An idea that acts as the spark; the conflict that ensues, that moves with the energy and the power to burn a whole forest. It starts with an idea long ago that led to the US revolution and to the birth of America. Andrew Marlin uses Joseph Warren, whose death made him a martyred symbol of the American Revolution, as an example of an unnecessary death resulting from the wildfire of conflict in the colonies.
"It should have been different, it could have been easy. His rank could have saved him, but a country unborn needs bravery........And it spread like wildfire..... From the ashes grew sweet liberty, like the seeds of the pines when the forest burns....It should have been different, it could have been easy. But too much money rolled in to ever end slavery. The cry for war spread like wildfire. The day that old Warren died, hate should have gone with it. But here we are, caught in the wildfire. Civil war came, civil war went. Brother fought brother, the south was spent. But its true demise was hatred, passed down through the years. I was born a southern son In a small southern town where the rebels run wild. They beat their chest and they swear: ‘We’re gonna rise again’ "But pride has a way of holding too firm to history.......And it burns like wildfire".
America now finds itself at another crossroad—the feelings of frustration and the desire to change have led to new conflicts spreading like 'wildfire'. Many headline the news today. Will the American people learn from the past and move forward.