tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-49167009092936034062024-02-02T19:24:17.913+00:00The KistMusings on Scotland's Traditional Song Culture by Chris WrightChris Wrighthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02348218839082136422noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4916700909293603406.post-15963878297171821842012-07-11T08:30:00.000+01:002012-10-31T18:41:58.002+00:00The Kist Goes Stateside<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
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<span style="background-color: white;">At Kist o Riches, we've always been keen to spread the word about our online archive as far and as wide as possible. So when I spent some time in the USA last month, I took the opportunity to do just that by delivering two public lectures on the project, each followed by a concert of Scots songs drawn from our archives. The first lecture was held at the world-famous </span><a href="http://www.nypl.org/" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: white;" target="_blank">New York Public Library</a>, in just about the swankiest <a href="http://www.nypl.org/node/181" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">auditorium</a> I've ever seen.<span style="background-color: white;"> The <a href="http://www.folkmusicny.org/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Folk Music Society of New York</a> very kindly organised a follow up house concert in Manhattan, which turned into a very cosy and enjoyable affair. A week later, I gave another lecture and concert at a wonderful centre for Irish traditional arts in </span><span style="background-color: white;">Saint Paul, Minnesota </span><span style="background-color: white;">named </span><a href="http://thecelticjunction.com/home/past-events-2012/kist-o-riches-june-30/" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: white;" target="_blank">The Celtic Junction</a>, with the event jointly hosted by the <a href="http://www.singclub.org/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Traditional Singers Club of the Twin Cities</a>.
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: small;">Kist o Riches @ New York Public Library</span></td></tr>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="background-color: white;">In the lectures, I described the background to our project by looking first at the genesis of the School of Scottish Studies in 1951, and the work of early collectors such as Hamish Henderson and Calum MacLean. After a linguistic overview of Scotland, I carried out a live demonstration of the </span><a href="http://www.kistoriches.co.uk/" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: white;" target="_blank">website</a>. </span></span><span style="background-color: white;">I was keen to provide </span><span style="background-color: white;">the audience</span><span style="background-color: white;"> with as much context as possible while </span><span style="background-color: white;">eliciting some of the broad themes on the recordings, but I also wanted to highlight some of the less well-known aspects of Scotland's traditions, and of its song cultures in particular. </span><span style="background-color: white;">Yet how could I choose a handful of examples from literally tens of thousands available, and to present them in some kind of logical fashion? Well, I decided to take the audience on </span><span style="background-color: white;">an audio-visual tour of Scotland using recordings from our archives,</span><span style="background-color: white;"> and breaking the journey into legs of roughly equal distance. We would stop off at various points along the way to take in a song, a piece of instrumental music, or a spoken word recording from one of the many thousands of contributors.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Kist o Riches audio tour of Scotland<br />
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<span style="background-color: white;">We set out from Edinburgh, the home of the <a href="http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/literatures-languages-cultures/celtic-scottish-studies/archives" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">School of Scottish Studies</a>, from whose archive most of the recordings are drawn. We then worked our way up the east coast, calling in at my home town of Dundee to hear <a href="http://tobarandualchais.co.uk/play/24693" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Mary Brooksbank</a> describe her working life and her songwriting, before carrying on a little further north into Perthshire for a Traveller song from Willie MacPhee. Willie was sojourning at the berryfields of </span><span style="background-color: white;">Blairgowrie, which had yielded such a </span><span style="background-color: white;">rich harvest of traditional songs that Hamish Henderson described collecting there </span><span style="background-color: white;">as like "holding a tin can under Niagara Falls".</span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; text-align: left;">The Traveller song tradition carried us up Strathmore and into Aberdeenshire, where the celebrated singer </span><span style="background-color: white; text-align: left;">Jeannie Robertson</span><span style="background-color: white; text-align: left;"> greeted us with a rendition of her heart-breaking tragic ballad </span><a href="http://tobarandualchais.co.uk/play/41356" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: white; text-align: left;" target="_blank">'My Son David'</a><span style="background-color: white; text-align: left;">. </span> <span style="background-color: white; text-align: left;">We then passed through Buchan and onto Portsoy, where the bothy tradition of the North-East was well represented by Jimmy MacBeath's <a href="http://tobarandualchais.co.uk/play/47981" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">'Guise o Tough'</a>.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; text-align: left;">At this point we ventured into the </span><span style="background-color: white; text-align: left;">Eastern Highlands</span><span style="background-color: white; text-align: left;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; text-align: left;">and stopped off at Glenlivet to hear from a remarkable woman named Annie Grant. Known locally as 'Grannie Bochel', she had been born in 1854 and was aged 102 when Hamish called to record her. Grannie Bochel recited a verse she had composed </span><span style="background-color: white; text-align: left;">in 1874 when she first came to Glenlivet, and the audience learned about a 27-verse ballad that she later recited for Hamish - the most complete version ever recorded. Leaving the Highlands behind, w</span><span style="background-color: white; text-align: left;">e headed far up north to Caithness, to hear Donald Grant of Thurso recall the local customs for protecting a newborn baby from the fairies, who would sometimes try to kidnap a child and replace it with a <a href="http://tobarandualchais.co.uk/play/50908" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">changeling</a>.</span>
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<span style="background-color: white; text-align: left;">Leaving the mainland for a time, we journeyed to the Northern Isles, where </span><span style="background-color: white; text-align: left;">John MacKay of Stronsay in </span><span style="background-color: white; text-align: left;">Orkney delivered some fine fiddling with the pipe march </span><a href="http://tobarandualchais.co.uk/play/69762" rel="nofollow" style="text-align: left;" target="_blank">The Lochaber Gathering</a><span style="background-color: white; text-align: left;">. Celebrated fiddler and collector Tom Anderson of Shetland then demonstrated for us the Scandinavian influence on local musical traditions, with the haunting lament <a href="http://tobarandualchais.co.uk/play/89974" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">'Auld Swaara'</a> evoking the Norwegian fiddling tradition. The Scandinavian heritage of Shetland was likewise echoed in the Norn refrain of the classic ballad '</span><a href="http://tobarandualchais.co.uk/play/47965" rel="nofollow" style="text-align: left;" target="_blank">King Orfeo</a>', a truly wonderful mix of Scots, Celtic and Norse traditions, <span style="background-color: white;">ultimately</span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><span style="background-color: white;">deriving its happy ending for the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice from early Antiquity.</span>
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<span style="background-color: white; text-align: left;">Crossing over to the Western Isles and the heart of the Gàidhealtachd, we were met with a spirited rendition of the waulking song <a href="http://www.blogger.com/goog_726517046">'</a></span><span style="background-color: white;"><a href="http://tobarandualchais.co.uk/play/96501" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Tha Fadachd Orm Fhìn a Rìgh'</a>, led by Christine Shaw of Ardhasaig on Harris. Moving south along the archipelago, we came to Sollas on North Uist, where </span><span style="background-color: white;">Rev. William Matheson </span><span style="background-color: white;">sang for us the first Gaelic song composed in America, <a href="http://tobarandualchais.co.uk/play/101311" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">'Dèan Cadalan Sàmhach a Chuilein Mo Rùin'</a>. The song was composed by a Kintyre emigrant named John MacRae ('The Bard of Kintail'), who in the song lulls his baby daughter to sleep in their new home of North Carolina. A short hop over to Skye took us to the Free </span><span style="background-color: white;">Presbyterian </span><span style="background-color: white;">Church in </span><span style="background-color: white;">Portree, where the congregation demonstrated the magical <a href="http://tobarandualchais.co.uk/play/23373" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Gaelic Psalm Singing</a> that stands as a rare Western example of surviving <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterophony" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">heterophonic</a> music. There was a connection here with North Carolina again, </span><span style="background-color: white;">in the possible <a href="http://www.scotsman.com/news/arts/black-america-s-musical-links-to-scotland-1-465474" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">direct influence</a> of the Gaelic Psalm Singing tradition on the spiritual music of black congregations in the southern USA.</span>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Canntaireachd</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Pìobaireachd</td></tr>
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<span style="background-color: white;">Working our way down the west coast, we arrived at Tobermory on Mull, where </span><span style="background-color: white;">Pipe Major William MacLean gave a wonderful demonstration of the complex vocable system known as </span><span style="background-color: white;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canntaireachd" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">canntaireachd</a>, used as an oral method of teaching the classical bagpipe music called </span><span style="background-color: white;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P%C3%ACobaireachd" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">pìobaireachd</a>. In a marvellous performance, PM MacLean set out the elements in canntaireachd for the thrilling pìobaireachd called <a href="http://tobarandualchais.co.uk/play/78368" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">'The Desperate Battle of the Birds'</a>, and then <a href="http://tobarandualchais.co.uk/play/78363" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">played the piece</a> on the pipes, showing how well canntaireachd emulates the notes, intervals and ornaments of the pipes.</span></div>
<span style="background-color: white; text-align: left;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; text-align: left;">Heading south to the Kintyre peninsula, we met a family of singers and song collectors called the </span><span style="background-color: white; text-align: left;">the Mitchells of Campbeltown, who</span><span style="background-color: white; text-align: left;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; text-align: left;">shared with us one of the local songs they had so diligently collected: <a href="http://tobarandualchais.co.uk/play/83350" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">'Callieburn'</a> is a song of emigration in which the singer is leaving his native Kintyre for America, which has 'beguiled' him. The song itself beguiles the listener, as it did Willie Scott of Canonbie, who was so taken with the song when he met the MItchells in 1968, that it became one of his favourite and most often sung pieces. Willie's byname was 'The Border Shepherd', and shepherding was his lifelong profession. We joined Willie at Canonbie in the Borders for a wonderful performance of his song <a href="http://tobarandualchais.co.uk/play/84548" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">'The Irthing Water Hounds'</a>, which praises the hunting dogs of the River Irthing, just over the border into England.</span>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Stewarts of Blair</td></tr>
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<span style="background-color: white; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white;">The last leg of our journey brought us full circle, back to Edinburgh, where Sheila Stewart of the famous Travelling family from Blairgowrie took to the stage during a concert to sing the wonderful convivial song </span><a href="http://tobarandualchais.co.uk/play/99494" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: white;" target="_blank">'Jock Stewart'</a><span style="background-color: white;">. The song is dear to many Travellers and became one of the most recognisable anthems of the Scottish folk revival through their pre-eminent role as source singers. Sheila is one of Scotland's national treasures, and along with her family has made an enormous contribution to the Kist o Riches archives and to Scottish culture. You can learn more about Sheila and the culture of the Scots Travellers by visiting the Kist o Riches <a href="http://tobarandualchais.co.uk/en/quicksearch/Reporter:818$0020OR$0020Contributor:818" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">website</a>, and by reading Sheila's own <a href="http://www.birlinn.co.uk/author/details/Sheila-Stewart-913/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">memoirs</a>. There's also a fascinating documentary about Sheila and the Travellers of Perthshire named 'Last in the Line' (2006), available to view in its entirety <a href="http://www.scottishdocinstitute.com/films/last-in-the-line/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">online</a>.</span></span>
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There are a great many other fine Kist o Riches tracks that I wish I'd had time to include in the tour, such as the <span style="background-color: white;">haunting rendition of</span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><a href="http://tobarandualchais.co.uk/play/89523" style="background-color: white;" target="_blank">'The Cruel Mither'</a><span style="background-color: white;"> by Gordeanna McCulloch of Glasgow, or one of the many songs in the repertoire of </span><a href="http://tobarandualchais.co.uk/en/quicksearch/Reporter:920$0020OR$0020Contributor:920" style="background-color: white;" target="_blank">John MacDonald</a><span style="background-color: white;"> of Speyside, another fantastic tradition bearer.</span>
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<span style="background-color: white;">Well - there'll be plenty of time to make up for that</span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><span style="background-color: white;">in future posts</span><span style="background-color: white;">...</span><br />
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<i><span style="background-color: white;">Acknowledgements and thanks:</span>
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<i>I'd like to thank New York Public Library, The Folk Music Society of New York, The Traditional Singers Club of the Twin Cities and The Celtic Junction for hosting these recent events.</i><br />
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<td align="middle" rowspan="2" valign="middle" width="200"><a href="http://www.nypl.org/" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img height="122" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6B4Ykm71r5As1TFIyGGKLK0LtD8qGf2mVaZtM9eY1JBt4nX80RzvfMlwDL1A-VgjneyBC22jSEbvACx0bJSF5w4NGfYxqVLkTt9qxH8QGvPFNdVAZipz5bVpSsyCDfQYyQ9jN60JwTte5/s200/NYPL_logo1_black_pos.JPG" style="border: 1px white solid; padding-top: 40px;" width="200" /></a></td>
<td><a href="http://www.folkmusicny.org/" imageanchor="1" style="background-color: white; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img height="80" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVKB0mL6TP7H8ii84hMsANWVBNL0tDetZoma3c2322KJ3q4J70YGAkE6LZHv1KOMKg4dIkzMrtS6bFXYgXz3oqusltmy1rC5-TUClnK0AaleSHY9fxl0To_ZjgmVTFR3qdO2TUbEEFFZvM/s200/NY-folk-club.png" style="border: 1px white solid;" width="200" /></a></td>
<td rowspan="2"><a href="http://www.thecelticjunction.com/" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLGCirMRc-cxhtFoWiC81iZ9p5mtSMOa6isYtiAiqKQIoa80oPeMMXgoNAnM10AY5H_zJAIvYrPihX5fYyUVX8StfX5JgtODx68-W-68hGS0lKFwMgOmLat3VjNqovCkgjZfg4TpCwlFv_/s200/Celtic_Junction_Logo.174130614.png" style="border: 1px white solid;" width="150" /></a></td>
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<i>Special thanks to my colleague in Tobar an Dualchais/Kist o Riches, <span style="background-color: white;">renowned Gaelic singer</span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><a href="http://www.margaretstewart.com/" style="background-color: white;">Maighread Stiùbhart</a><span style="background-color: white;">, for her assistance in selecting the Gaelic tracks for the lectures.</span></i><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small; text-align: -webkit-auto;">Image and Photo Credits:</span><br style="font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 20px; text-align: -webkit-auto;" /><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small; font-weight: bold; line-height: 16px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">All images public domain, except for the p</span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small; font-weight: bold; line-height: 16px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">hoto of Kist o Riches at New York Public Library (copyright of Chris Wright) and the p</span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small; font-weight: bold; line-height: 16px;">hotos of women waulking cloth and of the Stewarts of Blair (copyright of School of Scottish Studies / Kist o Riches)</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small; font-weight: bold; line-height: 16px; text-align: -webkit-auto;"><br /></span></span>
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Chris Wrighthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02348218839082136422noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4916700909293603406.post-25686033324812048872012-07-10T07:48:00.002+01:002012-07-11T09:00:38.465+01:00The Kist o Riches<span style="background-color: white;">For the last few years, </span><span style="background-color: white;">I've been working for the <b><a href="http://www.kistoriches.co.uk/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Kist o Riches</a> </b>- a landmark project to digitise, catalogue and place online tens of thousands of recordings of Scottish traditions. Most of these recordings are drawn from the</span><span style="background-color: white;"> archives of the</span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><a href="http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/literatures-languages-cultures/celtic-scottish-studies/archives" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: white;" target="_blank">School of Scottish Studies</a><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><span style="background-color: white;">in Edinburgh, whose fieldworkers began collecting material in the 1950s using the then newly-available portable reel-to-reel tape recorder. The recordings document many different aspects of traditional culture, ranging from detailed descriptions of traditional crafts and working practices to performances of the traditional music and songs that have been passed down through generations over hundreds of years.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0lhyphenhyphenem9djXPpvf-iac9Zkxb7WXZr4_Ya7GEVHE-3bo99AXTjyYniwSIv6-kxIXOOFZdxpgce7IOMG4a1Exo6hmoIWAvfNSutg0T_Gvpl19NCqE-PrMR8ENKloi_YgsadCboGxTbChy9cO/s1600/Hamish+Henderson+&+Alec+Stewart.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="211" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0lhyphenhyphenem9djXPpvf-iac9Zkxb7WXZr4_Ya7GEVHE-3bo99AXTjyYniwSIv6-kxIXOOFZdxpgce7IOMG4a1Exo6hmoIWAvfNSutg0T_Gvpl19NCqE-PrMR8ENKloi_YgsadCboGxTbChy9cO/s320/Hamish+Henderson+&+Alec+Stewart.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: small;">Hamish Henderson with Traveller </span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: small;">storyteller Alec Stewart in 1958</span></td></tr>
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The Kist o Riches project - or <a href="http://tobarandualchais.co.uk/gd/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><b>Tobar an Dualchais</b></a> in Gaelic - began in 2006 with the aim of turning these recordings into a modern digital resource, and by the time we launched our <a href="http://www.kistoriches.co.uk/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">website</a> in 2010, we had around 16,000 recordings online. We've managed to almost double this number in the past year and a half, and are working hard towards getting all of the recordings online in the near furture.<br />
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<span style="background-color: white;">My work for the project has focused on cataloguing the Scots- and English-language traditional songs in the School of Scottish Studies archive</span><span style="background-color: white;">, many of which were collected by the celebrated folklorist Hamish Henderson (1919-2002). The School has well over ten thousand of these song recordings, and they offer important insight into Scotland's traditional song culture. Our website contains many hundreds of recordings of important </span><span style="background-color: white;">traditional </span><span style="background-color: white;">singers such as </span><a href="http://tobarandualchais.co.uk/en/quicksearch/Reporter:525$0020OR$0020Contributor:525" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Jeannie Robertson</a><span style="background-color: white;">, </span><a href="http://tobarandualchais.co.uk/en/quicksearch/Reporter:523$0020OR$0020Contributor:523" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Jimmy MacBeath</a><span style="background-color: white;">, </span><a href="http://tobarandualchais.co.uk/en/quicksearch/Reporter:2894$0020OR$0020Contributor:2894" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Willie Scott</a><span style="background-color: white;"> and other source singers for the Scottish folk revival, yet there are many fantastic contributions from singers who are much less well-known, but whose recordings are hugely important nonetheless.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXkIuEObdA55A3BhpwixkwgA-74HlXXAy5nJhssAkLrodqmQj8YlufNyxXlWXmx7SQBiWvynYrnqAFdmHKNbOKm2vmpyH2LI3qM2D_NSuo4R3ednGVtXyRiPGm5aWimh7cWZAHp4kPU5gd/s1600/DSC_0184+jimmy+macbeath.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXkIuEObdA55A3BhpwixkwgA-74HlXXAy5nJhssAkLrodqmQj8YlufNyxXlWXmx7SQBiWvynYrnqAFdmHKNbOKm2vmpyH2LI3qM2D_NSuo4R3ednGVtXyRiPGm5aWimh7cWZAHp4kPU5gd/s320/DSC_0184+jimmy+macbeath.JPG" width="195" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: small;">Jimmy MacBeath</span></td></tr>
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<span style="background-color: white;">In listening to and cataloguing these thousands of recordings, the Kist o Riches team has essentially been conducting the first ever wholesale review of the content of the School's sound archives, and as a result we've uncovered many interesting tracks, some of which may not have seen the light of day since they were originally recorded on reel-to-reel tape. For the Scots song recordings, we've made a point of cross-referencing these tracks with major song <a href="http://tobarandualchais.co.uk/en/help/classification" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">collections</a>, including the </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_Ballads" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: white;" target="_blank">Child ballads</a><span style="background-color: white;"> and the </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Greig-Duncan_Folk_Song_Collection" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: white;" target="_blank">Greig-Duncan Folk Song Collection</a><span style="background-color: white;">, and we've also made good use of other internet based resources to provide supplemental information. This approach has led to some interesting discoveries which promise to shed light not only on individual songs, but also on the nature of the oral tradition. One aspect I'm particularly interested in is the interaction between the oral tradition and printed songs.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;">I've been singing traditional songs for most of my life, and listening to these tapes has been an enormous privilege. </span><span style="background-color: white;">As a Dundonian, I've revelled in the recordings made by Hamish Henderson of </span><a href="http://tobarandualchais.co.uk/en/quicksearch/Reporter:3752$0020OR$0020Contributor:3752" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: white;" target="_blank">Mary Brooksbank</a><span style="background-color: white;"> (1897-1978)</span><span style="background-color: white;">, the famous Dundee poet, songwriter and activist. Not only does Mary sing her own songs on these recordings, including her renowned </span><a href="http://www.tobarandualchais.co.uk/fullrecord/24693/1" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: white;" target="_blank">Jute Mill Song</a><span style="background-color: white;">, but she describes in detail the events that inspired her to write them. Other of Mary's recordings offer an invaluable first-hand account of the events and circumstances that shaped her life, her beliefs, and her lifelong commitment to social justice. Mary Brooksbank is just one of thousands of people </span><span style="background-color: white;">from </span><span style="background-color: white;">all across Scotland </span><span style="background-color: white;">recorded by the School </span><span style="background-color: white;">in the 20th century, and these recordings are important contributions to our collective narrative - our cultural memory.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCR9ZpX8QWKxJRasei3dGRgojkCqj22bqUPqKFzoc6ifBHqghcicxMrIZE88NjVmZWThB33IcGnx3DqXELk3bUv_ykgLDHXvYA4lnsQl1l2gO-CGbLACNP7T7h3aue3FyjDZq0WPkD93XO/s1600/lizzie+higgins+NIIa+8819.tif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCR9ZpX8QWKxJRasei3dGRgojkCqj22bqUPqKFzoc6ifBHqghcicxMrIZE88NjVmZWThB33IcGnx3DqXELk3bUv_ykgLDHXvYA4lnsQl1l2gO-CGbLACNP7T7h3aue3FyjDZq0WPkD93XO/s200/lizzie+higgins+NIIa+8819.tif" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: small;">Lizzie Higgins of Aberdeen</span></td></tr>
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In May 2012, I was appointed the Kist o Riches' <b><span style="color: #783f04;">Scots Artist in Residence</span></b>, with a remit to promote the project and its recordings through performances, workshops, public talks and other events. This blog is a place for me to highlight some of the Residency projects I'll be undertaking in the coming year, using the Kist o Riches website as my primary resource. I'll also be sharing some thoughts on the legacy of our project and how the website can help Scots re-engage with their song culture - as well as looking <span style="background-color: white;">in detail </span><span style="background-color: white;">at some of the wonderful song recordings available on Kist o Riches.</span><br />
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If you haven't already visited the Kist o Riches site, you're in for a treat: <a href="http://www.kistoriches.co.uk/"><b>www.kistoriches.co.uk</b></a><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Credits:</span><br />
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small; font-weight: bold; line-height: 16px;">All photos copyright of School of Scottish Studies / Kist o Riches; p</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small; font-weight: bold; line-height: 16px;">hoto of Hamish Henderson and Alec Stewart by Sandy Paton.</span>Chris Wrighthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02348218839082136422noreply@blogger.com2