Scotland's Music: Joy and Andrew Dunlop: Dithis/Duo

Sister and brother Joy and Andrew Dunlop have been making music together since they were children growing up in Connel in Argyll in Scotland’s Western Highlands. Their musical interests led them on different paths, however. Joy’s deep love and curiosity for Gaelic culture led her to study at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig on the Isle of Skye. Andrew was drawn to classical music, studying at Manchester and receiving his doctorate from Eastman School of Music in New York. They’ve each created flourishing careers and received top awards and honours in their fields of music over the past decade.

They had not made a record together, though, and they decided it was time. For it, they set themselves a challenge.. “Despite Andrew and I having performed together for many years and having an extensive back catalogue, we actually chose to arrange and record repertoire that were new to us as a duo,” Joy said. As many musicians do “I’m constantly making lists of songs to learn,” she said. “When we decided to record an album together, I hauled out the lists and started singing through them. Since this wasn’t a themed album, I just chose songs that I loved to record on the album!”

The album is called Dithis/Duo. On it you will find quite a varied collection of song, told in English, Gaelic, and Scots.

Andrew’s work on the piano both supports Joy’s voice and carries the stories as well. It’s an intriguing combination.

Love of story is one of the through lines of the album. There’s a song based on testimony of a young woman who worked in the mines in 1842, one written for a priest who left his home in the Western Isles to serve in Ecuador, and another which comes from the perspective of man reflecting on the changes in his faith as he hears church bells ring, as well as one from a woman musing on motherhood. These are contemporary songs, written by Frank Higgins, Blair Douglas, David Francey, and Carol Ann Duffy and Esther Swift, respectively.

There’s a good helping of songs from the tradition, too. These include love stories from several perspectives, a set of puirt a beul, and a Robert Burns song.

“I like songs that tell stories - it doesn’t matter to me from whose viewpoint they are being told but there needs to be something there to which I can relate,” Joy said. “I love the story of A Mhairead Òg, where the man is heartbroken after accidentally killing his love, when his mother sent him out to hunt for ducks. We find out that it was also his mother who sent the girl that very pool to bathe and I always enjoy how the story unfolds in the song.”

One song that’s certainly not a love song. unless perhaps that comes in a young woman’s respect for her own dignity. is that one that comes from the mine worker’s words. “The lyrics are based on the actual testimony that Patience Kershaw of Halifax gave to the Children’s Employment Commission in 1842, by which time she had been working in the mines for over 6 years,” Joy said. “The dignity and understanding that she has for her terrible situation never fails to move me. This was actually a song that Andrew suggested trying, and I love it more and more every time that I sing it.”

I Wonder What’s Keeping My True Love Tonight is, like the tale in A Mhairead Òg, a story that shows up in many versions across the Celtic lands and their emigrant communities. The answer to that question comes in various forms too. Joy chose her favourite verses from several versions to tell the tale, and remarks that as a Gael, she was naturally drawn to the sadder one.

Also listen out especially for

Solas M’aigh/My Hope’s Light, an haunting and lovely song that evokes both loving a place and leaving it Saints and Sinners, David Francey’s song of distance and faith, which Joy says caught her attention when first she heard it. She and Andrew bring their own gifts to the quiet, thought provoking story.

Ae Fond Kiss. You will have heard this Robert Burns song before. Joy and Andrew add to the fine canon of Scottish artists who’ve taken it on and put their own stamp on it, offering some verses as Burns wrote them in Scots and some in Gaelic. In the sleeve notes you’ll find the full text of both versions if you wish.

Each of the eleven tracks is well worth repeated listening. You will no doubt find your own favourites.

What’s clear is that Joy and Andrew Dunlop are thoughtful creators in music, master storytellers both. They have joined their paths on record for the first time on Dithis. One would hope that there will be many more such creative collaborations yet to come

You may also wish to see
Joy and Andrew’s website
Joy focuses on songs from Argyll on her album Faileasan/Reflections
Hamish Napier’s album The River, where you’’ find more excellent, though quite different, piano creativity
Another excellnt, though again very different, album Gaelic song: Alterum from Julie Fowlis

-->Your support for Music Road is welcome and needed. If you are able to chip in, here is a way to do that, through PayPal. Note that you do not have to have a PayPal account to do this. Thank you.

Another way to support: you could

Celtic Connections 2011:first look

The Celtic Connections Festival in Glasgow is in full swing, with artists and listeners from all over the world joining in for more than three hundred events that light up the January nights and days across eighteen days' time.


Whatever the numbers, it is a festival which honours and celebrates the immediacy and intimacy created through music...

this photograph is of Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh at the City Halls Grand Hall.

photograph made with permission of artist and festival, and is copyrighted. thank you for respecting this


you may also wish to see
Music Road: Altan: 25th Anniversary Collection
Music Road: Celtic Connections coming up

Delicious Baby's Photo Friday, where travelers offer new insights to the world each Friday.

Capercaillie: Roses & Tears

The eight musicians who make up the band Capercaillie come originally from the Atlantic fringes of Ireland and Scotland, and it’s to the music of those places that they’ve returned to source the ideas for the album Roses and Tears.. It is not an album of traditional music. exactly. Nothing Capercaille does ever is quite that. It is, however, adventurous, creative, and well in the spirit of traditional music as connection, celebration, and telling memorable stories.

The first track, Him Bo, is a groove based song which finds Karen Matheson singing in Scots Gaelic. It’s the sort of song that draws you right into the music, whether or not you understand Scots Gaelic or have even heard it before. Matheson has; she’s from a Gaelic speaking area of Argyllshire in the southwest of Scotland. She’s won recognition and awards for her Gaelic singing, and she sings in English as well. Her skill there is in evidence on several cuts on Roses & Tears, including the haunting Soldier Boy, composed Donald Shaw. Shaw is a keyboard and accordion player as well as composer, and it one of the most prolific and widely respected of Scottish musicians, having worked on projects with more than fifty artists, composed music for several films, and in 2008, helming the artistic side of Celtic Connections, one of the largest Celtic music festivals in the world.

The heart of it all for Shaw is still writing and playing music. He too is from Argyllshire, and founded Capercaillie more than twenty years ago while at high school in Oban. Several of the instrumental sets on Roses & Tears pair Shaw’s original work with traditional music. The members of Capercaillie went looking for traditional music that’s rarely been played ot recorded to challenge themselves of this project and they came up with some gems, many from the archives of the School of Scottish Studies in Edinburgh. These include An Turas an Anraidh/The Stormy Voyage, which is paired in a set with an original tune from flute player Michael McGoldrick. McGoldrick is from Manchester, the son of Irish parents . By the age of fifteen he had had already won several prestigious All Ireland championships, and he’s played with the rock band Toss the Feathers, Brit folk artist Kate Rusby, Irish trad music powerhouse band Lunasa and the non trad powerhouse Afro Celt Sound System.

One aspect of Capercaillie that underpins all the music on Roses & Tears is that it really is a band, with the musicians collaborating and connecting to offer an engaging and clear vision of music that’s rooted in tradition and extends the traditional elements of song and story into the twenty first century. David Robertson on percussion, Che Beresford on drums, and Ewan Vernal; on bass, have m musical resumes that include folk, rock, jazz, and world music. Fiddler Charlie McKerron is steeped in traditional music and has worked with other modern day musical adventurers including Aidan O’Rourke and the Finlay MacDonald Band. Manus Lunny, on guitar, bouzouki, and vocals, is a respected composer who hails from Donegal in Ireland's northwest and has worked with The Wild Geese, Phil Cunningham, and others.

What comes through clearly here: the musicians and really passionate and engaged in what they do; they have a fresh vision for sharing an extending Celtic tradition, and they are just plain fun to listen to. The album itself is a fine balance of the fast paced and quiet, the upbeat and reflective. Outstanding tracks include that opener, Him Bo, a set which includes a clapping song from the isle of Barra in the Outer Hebrides and a tune called My New Silk Gown; a haunting cover of John Martyn’s powerful ballad Don’t You Go, and the reflective closer Loedhasach an tir chein/ Lewisman in a Foreign Country.

you may also wish to see
The Highland Sessions: Mo Ghile Mear
Julie Fowlis:Uam
Celtic Connections coming up

-->Your support for Music Road is welcome and needed. If you are able to chip in, here is a way to do that, through PayPal. Note that you do not have to have a PayPal account to do this. Thank you.