Today we venture back into antiquity to explore the roots of the globe-trotting music groups that we are so used to hearing and seeing about today. You may well think that this is a fairly recent phenomenon, but in fact this goes back further than you can imagine.
Music historian Cedric Triangle has chosen to dedicate his career to studying musical concerts, particularly those put on by the same group or ensemble in several different countries and continents. When younger, Triangle fancied himself as a jazz musican and was part of the ground-breaking Vernon Cupboard quartet, combining of Cupboard on sax, Triangle on trombone, Max Whiff on bass, and Clam on drums.
Triangle’s career would surely have developed further if it wasn’t for the notorious backstage incident at The legendary Spangled Prune club in New York, whereby his trombone was damaged beyond repair in a clash with an escaped ostrich.
Triangle’s jazz aspirations never recovered from this setback, however, as he wanted to have some sort of career in music, promptly enlisted in a degree course in New York studying the history of music. For his thesis, Triangle decided to focus on global tours and soon discovered that this was by far means a recent occurance.
Upon graduation, he was able to pick up lecturing work at the same university, and over the following his years was able to achieve tenure. What secured his appointment as professor was his book on the until then little-known Viking Magnus Bumnotteson. Bumnotteson it turns out did not embark on the usual raiding and pillaging for which Vikings were renowned, bit instead undertook ‘muscical raids’ whereby his ship, crewed by fellow musicians would swoop in on a seaside or riverbank town, do a a gig, and then sweep out again after passing around a helmet for donations.
Bumnotteson toured all over Europe, and it is believed even went as far as North America, where archaeologist uncovered a horn bearing his inscription.
Unfortunately there is no record of any compositions having been written down, but the tale was recorded for posterity in the folk story ‘The Axe, the Raven, and the Tuba’, which Triangle discovered on a research trip to Norway in 1995.