"I should put my sister on the phone," Romi Lightman says as she discards the notion of discussing the ethereal music she and sister Sari craft as Ghost Bees. "She's more eloquent."
And with that, the phone is passed to Sari, much as the intertwined voices of the sisters Lightman weave a timeless musical tapestry through the acoustic-based ballads and fables of Ghost Bees' EP Tasseomancy.
And in the spirit of the sisters' telepathic communication, Sari is quick to downplay her sister's claim.
"More eloquent?" she asks herself aloud. "It depends on the day. We tend to trade off that role. I guess today's my day."
Let's hope so. For few words can do justice to the sounds of Ghost Bees. As captured on Tasseomancy, the Lightmans' original ballads of vampires, funeral pyres and the New World seem as distant echoes, seeping through the floorboards from another age.
Small wonder critics have dubbed Ghost Bees' music "spooky folk."
"I don't know if we have any intention to create a spooky sound," Lightman says. "I think it's just what we're naturally inclined to create. It stems from our childhood. Our dad was really into horror movies and comic books, and we've always had this fascination with the supernatural. It's something deeply embedded in us, it's just naturally there when we play musically together.
"It kinda freaks people out, I guess. But it's like a sixth sense, in a way."
Spooky. And yes, folky.
"We really enjoy a good story and the role of the storyteller in contemporary culture," she states. "I remember I took this class in university on fairytales and our professor's theory was that the role of the storyteller in modern culture is gone -- that it has been replaced with television and all these other tools and media and that, as a result, we don't have that traditional oral legend anymore.
"I don't think that's the case at all. I think that in music, and even in books today, you hear a lot about the role of the storyteller. And I think that's where our music comes from -- telling stories. Not necessarily just our own stories, but stories that we've heard and stories of our ancestors."
Stories like the EP's title track, which tells of Sari and Romi's great-great-grandmother's journey from "somewhere between Latvia and Russia" to Canada.
"Her history, her past, is still resonating within us," Sari Lightman notes.
In many ways, in fact, she is singing through Ghost Bees, of legends and fables as well as of such modern-day stories as that of her great-great-granddaughters' arrival into our -- and her -- world.
"I think about the past and the present," the singer and mandolinist muses. "Everything I'm singing about still has so much relevance today, even though it might not be something that's immediately happening right now.
"Our culture is very much a culture that's rooted in present issues and present thought and I think there is still so much explanation and so much truth to be found in what has happened before. It's all interconnected."
Particularly in the spooky, eloquent folk songs of Ghost Bees.
http://jam.canoe.ca/Music/Artists/G/Gho ... 1-sun.html
