In the 1960s Vashti Bunyan burned all her possessions, saddled up a horse and cart and set off for Donovan’s Scottish island with her boyfriend. So far, so pastoral. But Vashti’s story is not a counter cultural fantasy, and Vashti is not the folksy heroine people assume she is.
Vashti was born in 1945 in Newcastle, named after a rebel queen from Persia and she lives up to her namesake’s reputation. The singer-songwriter started out with ambitions to be a popstar, but was quickly disillusioned by the music industry. After releasing a few singles which fell on deaf ears, she set out on her now infamous horse-drawn journey to Donovan’s commune on the Hebrides. Along the way she wrote her debut album, Just Another Diamond Day. It was largely ignored on release but when it was re-issued in 2000 it gained a cult following and is now considered a psych-folk classic, lauded for its delicate beauty, even though folk was never a genre Vashti related to.
In this real meeting of minds, Vashti and Zakia talk about Vashti’s punk approach to quiet music, her experience of being rejected from a class on music technology for being ‘too old’ and the importance of dreaming for a better future. It’s fair to say that Vashti continues to do things her own way and her own, softly-spoken version of a rebel queen.
