Bold Little Weasel is the second song finished from my 1 month, 4 songs project started at the end of last year. As is evident, although the bulk of the writing took place during that month, it has taken a long time to polish the songs sufficiently to reach a point when they could be properly presented. In the case of Bold Little Weasel, the main challenge was mastering the ambitious fingerpicking parts I’d written for myself. It took a lot of practice to reach a point where I could play the introductory passage and the mid-song ‘solo’ at the speed the song required.
A song from the streets
This recording was made in the streets of Fatimid Cairo, the medieval quarter of the city. As will be revealed, it’s very much an urban song, and I wanted the setting of the session to reflect this. Almost all the time, this part of Cairo is seething with people, which would have made making a recording quite a challenge. On an early Friday morning during Ramadan we succeeded in finding a peaceful corner, though during filming we had to negotiate round plenty of passers-by (it’s incredible how much noise a sandal slapping on stone can make), loud street-cleaners, spluttering Vespas and even a hip-hop crew doing a little filming for their own tune.
There are some truly impressive examples of medieval architecture in this area, but we were looking for a back-alley to film in, the kind of place a weasel might scurry down (and in fact, one did scurry down this very street, though sadly too fast to get on film). We also needed a place where would be left in peace to work – it wasn’t too surprising when as we finishing a policeman appeared to make sure we weren’t up to anything fishy and inform us that filming with a tripod required a special permit. Luckily by then we had what we needed in the can.
The Egyptian weasel
The hero of our song is the Egyptian weasel. Like the fox in the UK, the Egyptian weasel is one of those rare wild mammals that has successfully adapted to thrive in an urban environment. Growing up in rural England, my experience of seeing weasels was limited. Though not uncommon, they are shy, small and sneaky. Even if you were lucky, you might only get a few fleeting views every year. So imagine my surprise to discover that in Cairo weasels are confident and (as the song says) bold members of the city ecosystem; an animal easily found and often sighted in broad daylight. Indeed, many locals mistake them for rats*.
But to me, they remain wild creatures, and exotic reminders that I live in a strange land. One morning on my walk to work an Egyptian weasel dashed out of the shadows, froze on noticing my presence, eyeballed me, then obviously deciding I was no threat to him, bounded on to snatch a piece of dropped chicken from outside the shawerma shop, then leapt into the wheel arch of a parked car to devour his prize. I shook my head at these antics, smiled, and thought ‘bold little weasel’ . . . then realised instantly there was a song title there.
Doing it ever more DIY . . .
There are a few changes to the way I’ve produced this video. The first is to sound. This was the first video recording in which I used my Zoom H5 Recorder, which has been waiting for a proper outing for several months. I’m quite ignorant in the science of making audio come across well, so results were mixed. The Zoom picked up more sound than the in-built mics on our cameras, but a lot of this was incidental stuff – footsteps, wind, sparrows twittering. I wasn’t sure if the guitalele and voice sounded significantly better on the Zoom than they did on camera. There is clearly more I need to learn about setting up the Zoom to capture a performance effectively.
Most of my videos have been made by my long-suffering wife, but in this case I recruited two friends, Neda and William, to do the filming for me, using three different cameras. In the past, I’ve just done a few takes and made a video around the single best one, but in the case of Bold Little Weasel the finished article is a mix of two main audio takes and multiple video takes. I stitched the audio together crudely on Audacity (some of the joins are audible). The corresponding video takes were then also joined up on Imovie, and I browsed through all the other footage Neda and William had taken, feeding in clips from other takes which appeared to fit more or less with the underlying recording. The finished article has its clumsy moments, but it’s the first time I’ve done this all on my own, without relying on my wife’s more accomplished editing hand to put things together.
One of the most pleasing things was realising how in time all the different takes were with each other. I’ve learnt from studio time the imperative of following the metronome, and I was happy to discover that even when chopping up my various attempts, the variation in tempo was only very slight.
Blog posts related to the writing of Bold Little Weasel during the 1 month, 4 songs project can be found here:
These are the full lyrics
Bold Little Weasel
Verse 1
Bold little weasel, agile and sleek,
Flourishing in these hard times
Gleam growing in his eye, no longer meek
As our fickle fortunes decline
If you imitate his way, you’d leap and tumble, skip and veer
Shadowing his steps to be bold, and brave, and without fear
This bold little weasel
Verse 2
The cripple on the corner has staked his spot
Doubled on his third hand crutch
Of your wicked ways and sneaky whiles
He’s seen and heard so much
Just a pair of pirates, nothing more than a couple of crooks
Though of course this creature is more acrobatic in thought and foot
This bold little weasel
Bridge Part 1
The alley cats have seven lives or nine
While yours hangs on, a slender line
And nothing happens by accident, in your fragile world
Yet I feel the connection between us
As our fates unfurl
Bridge Part 2
Good fortune runs at my side, a familiar all day long
The thought of you, that fleeting view, the architect of luck
And it’s an exercise of fantasy, to imagine that scoundrel dancing for me
Backflips and somersaults and Egyptian dervish spins
Verse 3
At the furthest arc of our activities
We stop just to regard
This bouncing ball of duplicity
As he slips beneath our guard
Swashbuckling his way in and out of the halls of men
Watch the shadows closely, then come and tell me when
You see this bold little weasel
This bold little weasel
Bold little weasel
*It’s actually very rare to see a rat on the streets of Cairo – probably due to the hard work of the weasels and huge population of feral cats.
far.flown.falcon 
Loved the song, the idea and your voice. 😊
I am, with your permission, teaching this to my boys?
LikeLike
Of course!
LikeLike
[…] Bonus content: Listen to artist Far Flown Falcon’s song about a weasel, recorded in a street of Fatimid Cairo… […]
LikeLike