MIWA NAGATO-APTHORP

Alchemy Film & Arts

Using film as a way to come together, have conversations and strengthen community.

HAWTHORN SONGS

Miwa Nagato-Apthorp began a practice-led participatory research project as musician in residence with Alchemy Film & Arts in 2022.

In collaboration with researchers, historians and community partners, Miwa’s residency explored Hawick’s lesser-known histories and heritages from the perspective of agriculture, labour and gender.

The residency has resulted in a range of outputs, encompassing newly written songs, community workshops, collaborations and performances, the establishment of a singing group, and Miwa’s debut record, Noren, which will launch at Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival 2025.

MIWA NAGATO-APTHORP

Miwa Nagato-Apthorp is an artist and musician based in Hawick in the Scottish Borders. Her practice is often collaborative and draws on folk traditions to explore multicultural understandings of history, climate, gender and home.

Miwa has performed her music at various festivals, most recently at Celtic Connections, and as part of John McCusker’s Southside of the Tracks.

NOREN
Noren collates songs that draw on Scottish and Japanese folk traditions, exploring Miwa’s dual heritage from multiple perspectives.

The vinyl, CD and digital release will formally launch on Friday 2 May, with a performance at the fifteenth edition of Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival.

Tracklist
1. The Bonded One (4:47)
2. Abigail (3:53)
3. Hawthorn Song (4:31)
4. The Ballad of Frank Toovey Lake (4:12)
5. Silver Fish (5:01)
6. Takeda no Komoriuta (traditional) (2:56)

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Credits
Project commissioned and produced by Alchemy Film & Arts

Project funded by Creative Scotland and The National Lottery Heritage Fund

EP produced by Inge Thomson
Recorded at Slate Room Studios
Mixed by Garry Boyle
Mastered by Dean Honer

Design: Matthew Walkerdine
Photography: Sanne Gault
Artwork: Miwa Nagato-Apthorp

All tracks written by Miwa Nagato-Apthorp except ‘Takeda no Komoriuta’ (traditional). Guitar instrumentation on ‘Abigail’ written by Matthew Hickman. Lyrics on ‘The Ballad of Frank Toovey Lake’ co-written by Hiroko Nagato-Apthorp.

THE BONDED ONE

Fri Dawn til dusk a’ season
I reap and thrash and dig,
And still the hind complains
that my appetite’s too big

Six months the hinds will hire us,
then the farmer pays him back
For everyday we’re workin
in our black straw mushroom hat

And it’s down wi auld bondage
Down! Cries he
But he’s no the bonded one
The bonded one is me

Morning brings the cow horn
and dawns the working day
And like a fleet of wagons,
we proceed along our way

Folk gathering in Yetholm
watch the crowning of King fa’
And ower in Hawick revolters
drive the cavalry awa

And it’s down wi auld bondage
Down! Cries he
But he’s no the bonded one
The bonded one is me

We’re singling in the summer
First woman leads the line
And she’ll hoe a few for you
my dear
If you ever fall behind

In autumn comes the harvest,
Beneath the glowing moon,
My legs were set for caving
Till the fiddler played a tune

And it’s down wi auld bondage
Down! Cries he
But he’s no the bonded one
The bonded one is me

They’re asking of the bondage
Now all this time has passed,
I’d have surely told them,
If they’d ever cared to ask

It was down wi auld bondage
Down! Cried he
But he was no the bonded one
The bonded one was me

HAWTHORN SONG

Many the bonnie children have come
Many the bonnie children said she
They come to gather flowers
In the evening hours
And for shade on a warm summer’s day.

Many the mournful, mournful ones have come
Many the mournful, mournful ones said she
They’re telling tales of loss
And though they know love’s cost
They’re happy just to have a place to cry.

Many the cruel hearted ones have come
Many the cruel hearted ones said she
They come with a wicked plan
To cut me where I stand
And they never will be seen from again.

LULLABY OF TAKEDA

‘Lullaby of Takeda’, performed here with Haru Nagato-Apthorp, is a Japanese folk song from the perspective of a young girl taken from her home to live with a wealthy family and look after their baby.

In the song, the girl laments that she cannot celebrate the Bon festival and that the child won’t stop crying, and yearns to return over the mountain to her home.

The song has been sung in the areas of Kyoto and Osaka over many years. It was adopted as an anthem of resistance and as a result was banned from some major TV networks in Japan until the 1990s.

NOREN ARTWORK

Noren (のれん) are Japanese panel curtains. Typically hung in doorways, between rooms and on walls, they mark entryways and the threshold between one space and another.

Noren‘s artwork features noren stitched and screen-printed by Miwa, under the guidance of artist Megumi Uenoyama-Barrington during a research trip to Orkney with Alchemy Film & Arts Director Rachael Disbury and former Alchemy artist in residence Julia Parks in 2023.