Music and Landscape

The line of horizon, the way light falls on a summer afternoon, a winding path, the sky at night -- all these things and many others form landscapes to the way we move and think and experience life. Landscape is a bedrock of many sorts of music, too. It has a hand in the ways music connects us to each other, and the way we connect to and understand music.

Whether you’ve spent time in the Western Isles of Scotland or not, whether you under stand Scottish Gaelic or not, you will hear this love, this connection to the land and the people who’ve lived on it and seen the same landscapes in Roderick MacKay’s Moladh Uibhist, a song he made about North Uist. Julie Fowlis, who is also from North Uist, sings it here.

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In English, one of the closing verses is

The last glimpse of the sun
After it has circled the whole sky
May be seen from my land
Just before it rises again on it
I must cut short my account for today
Since my time has gone
And even if I lived twelve times as long as a stag
I could not recount all the beauties of Uist


Fowlis recorded the song on her album Mar A Tha Mo Chridhe/As My Heart Is. Most of the songs on that recording are ones Fowlis learned and gathered from North Uist.

What are your favorite pieces of music that speak of landscape?


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Musical imagination: Matheu Watson

You can hear the sea and the wind and the light of the Western Isles through Matheu Watson’s music, whether he’s playing a tune he composed himself, one from the tradition, or one he has met on his musical travels.

Those travels have been fairly extensive, taking him from the Baltic states to Spain to Ireland, and seeing him travel in company of folk including innovative piper Fred Morrison, Scottish Latin fusion band Salsa Celtica, and the always surprising Treacherous Orchestra. It was to Berneray in the Western Isles that he went, though, to record the tracks for his self titled album..

It was an inspired choice, and one close to home for Watson, who attended school and college on Skye and Benbecula. His first instrument was the fiddle, and for this recording he offers especially intriguing and insightful work on fiddle and guitar, and plays tenor banjo, whistles, mandolin, bouzouki, and a few other things as well. He brought along gifted friends to sit in with him, too, and listening to the result you have to think they had a very fine time working out Watson’s vision on jigs, hornpipes, and slower tunes.

Ali Hutton, late of Back of the Moon and now of The Old Blind Dogs, played highland bagpipes, practice chanter, and an improvised on the spot Highland Bombard. Legendary artist Martin Simpson added slide, banjo, and ebow to several cuts. Sean Og Graham played button accordion, always creative percussionist Martin O’Neill anchored the beat with bodhran, and Kris Drever added his thoughtful style on guitar. These men have all held center stage on their own, deservedly so, and they well know when support and collaboration is called for, too. That’s what they offer here. A nod too, to engineer Will Lamb, who gives space and presence to the men and their music.

It is Watson’s imagination and style which center things here, though. You can hear those western seas crashing on the opening tune, Maggie the Rafter, which Watson wrote, and he pairs it well with a French Canadian tune called Homage, which he learnt from flute player Brian Finnegan.

Well constructed parings are a hallmark of the dozen sets on the album. Especially worth noting in addition to that opening pair are the Picnic set, which finds Fred Morrison’s The Incredible Journey set alongside two of Watson’s tunes, The Picnic Waltz and Picnic in the Sky. Another standout set is Drying Out, a reflective set which sees a tune from Castile, in Spain, paired with a piece composed by Irish American Liz Carroll. Glencalvie, another quiet piece, is also a real standout. It was written by Watson’s father Douglas, about a place in Sutherland which, he says, holds history.

All of the sets are equally well thought out and well played, making a project worth repeated listening. It is Matheu Watson’s debut recording, a fine and forward looking album of itself, and one which surely sets the stage for more good music to come.

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Island & Sea & Gaelic song: Maggie MacInnes

Maggie MacInnes
A Fagail Mhiughalaigh (Leaving Mingulay)

Family, faith, fishing, and the sea: those four things were the strongest ties which kept people who lived on the remote Scottish island of Mingulay going. They are what form the ideas around which Gaelic singer and clarsach player Maggie MacInnes bases the music she’s chosen for this album, as well.

There is family connection for MacInnes, too. Mingulay is uninhabited today, but her great grand parents lived there, and the musician has long been drawn to thinking about how people in such a remote community -- Mingulay is twelve miles off the coast of the island of Barra, in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides, and the Outer Hebrides themselves are separated by forty miles of water from the northwestern coast of mainland Scotland -- sustained themselves.

When MacInnes was invited to prepare music for a
television documentary about Mingulay and its people, she began gathering her ideas into music. Music from that film is on this recording, some of it rearranged, added to, and remixed, and there is new music as well. The album comprises traditional music, including a hymn which was a favorite of Macinnes’ great grandmother. There is a song from a seventeenth century female bard from the island, as well as a song of fairy legend, several waulking songs from the island’s women’s work, songs of history and of life on the sea, and the instrumental title track, which is composed by MacInnes. In the singing, playing, and song selection, it is a graceful and thoughtful project, illuminating lives and landscapes in ways that connect them with lives today.

Michael McGoldrick on flute, Christine Hanson on cello, Brian McAlpine on keyboards, and and renown Gaelic singer Flora MacNeil on backing vocals are among those who support MacInnes on the project.

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Julie Fowlis:Uam

Uam means from me in Scottish Gaelic. That is what you hear on this recording, a very distinct point of view. Julie Fowlis is a Scot who grew up in North Uist in the Outer Hebrides. She’s also an artist, musician, and thinker completely of the twenty first century.

The music she offers here is rooted and grounded in the old songs she learnt from tradition bearers while she was growing up. It is also rooted and grounded in that tradition spoken with taste and affection in a contemporary voice. Thig am bata (The boat will come) is a fast paced song with a strong but challenging beat, which she invited bodhran player Martin O’Neill to explore with her. On an old milking song, she’s joined by fellow Hebridean Mary Smith of Lewis for the singing and Phil Cunningham provides piano and accordion backing. That aforementioned song about the boat coming is a sort of murder ballad from the Hebrides. Fowlis pairs it with a like story which made its way from Ireland into American folk tradition where it is known and Wind and Rain. Fowlis and top notch Scottish singer Eddi Reader trade verses in Scottish Gaelic and English in a way which really illuminates the story of the song.

A Chiad Cheum (The First Step) is a lovely tune Fowlis and her husband, bouzouki player Eamon Doorley, composed for the wedding of a cousin. It allows the talents of Fowlis and Doorley’s frequent musical compatriots fiddler Duncan Chisholm, guitarist Tony Byrne, and bass player Ewan Vernal to come especially clear, and the two of them join in on whistle and bouzouki, respectively, as well. When Fowlis and Doorley played a festival in another Celtic area, Brittany in France, there they were asked to do a Breton song. Translated from Breton into Scottish Gaelic, the one they chose fits well in place in this collection. The title in comes over to English as I was born in the midst of the sea, an idea anyone from the western isles could easily appreciate.

There are sad songs and lively songs, ballads and working songs, songs which spring directly from the Hebrides and songs with touches of other traditions. Whether you understand Scottish Gaelic or not (there are English translations in the liner notes if you do not), you hear the sea, the land, the lives and loves of people in the songs, the wind and the weather. You hear Scotland, through the music of a gifted and original musician who is choosing to apply her gifts in service of traditional music and language.

Side note: should you have the chance to see Fowlis and her musical friends play live, take it. It is an engaging experience not to be missed. . Another side note: apologies to Gaelic speakers: this keyboard does not handle fadas well.



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-->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.