James Blackshaw Soul Sucked Dry (2014)
Guitarist James Blackshaw’s instrumental track “Soul Sucked Dry” perfectly shows off two things: Firstly, the English folk artist’s skill in creating hauntingly beautiful fingerstyle pieces for guitar. Secondly, the ongoing productiveness of a motif seemingly as old as time itself: the soul sucker.
If you haven’t been living under a boulder, you’ll nod knowingly when we point to the dementors in Harry Potter as a representation of the concept: Big, scary, non-human (but terrifyingly humanoid) creatures feeding off human souls and consuming them en masse, right?
But the prison guards of the most popular wizard world are based on a concept found in old folklore in all corners of the world: There’s a creature in Celtic tradition named the “Sluagh” (Irish Gaelic for “host”), a spirit looking to devour people’s souls, especially the soul of people already dying. There’s Hausa folklore, especially in Nigeria and Niger, in which soul eaters (in this case living humans) cause a wasting, fatal disease, and the, uh, skill of soul eating can be learned or simply inherited. Even Homer’s ”Iliad” mentions the concept when the hero Bellerophon “devours his own soul” while he wanders the Aleïan Plain. Ah, Greek Mythology. Sweet.
What exactly makes humans so obsessed with the idea/fear of a supernatural creature stealing their spirit we’ll leave for you to ponder. You can do so wonderfully while listening to “Soul Sucked Dry” to stay on theme, and if you haven’t found the answer by the end of the song, you can go on and listen to James Blackbird’s whole discography, too.
Start the conversation
Become a paid member of The Rest to gain access to the comments section.