Scotland: National Poetry Day, and music

Today is national poetry day in Scotland.

Caledonia is a country where the national bard -- Robert Burns -- is well known outside his homeland as well as within its borders. It is the 250th anniversary of his birth, this year, too, so there’s been a bit more than the usual of his work around. There are many other fine Scottish poets, too, many of them expressing their work through music, sung or played. Celebrate the day and find out more about all this by following the links below.


tuning up for Burns Night: four Scots musicians

intersections: words, music, and Robert Burns

Eddi Reader sings more of the songs of Robert Burns

Songs of Homecoming, to Scotland and other places

Homecoming Scotland: music

Potato Music

photograph of Glasgow, copyright Kerry Dexter

Homecoming Scotland: music

This is the year of Homecoming Scotland. The land of highland, heather, and sea invites the world home to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the birth of poet and song collector Robert Burns, and the many other fine things about Scotland and its people. Here are several Scottish musicians you’ll want to get know along the way: Kathleen MacInnes is a singer and songwriter from South Uist in the Outer Hebrides off Scotland’s northwest coast. When you follow this link, you’ll get to hear her sing a song in honor of her dad and see some great photos of the Hebrides as well. Mary Ann Kennedy is a gifted clarsach player, singer, and producer. She had in mind a project to celebrate men who sing in Scots Gaelic, and that resulted in a fine album called Mary Ann Kennedy & Na Seoid. If you really want to hear the stories and landscape of Scotland, this is a place to listen, whether you speak Scots Gaelic or not. You don’t have to know Scots Gaelic to appreciate the work of Sarah-Jane Summers, either. Originally from Inverness, this talented fiddler and teacher explore intersections of Nordic and Scots music as part of the group Fribo. Nesta is her debut solo album, a journey to the highlands and north lands both melodic and lively. Malinky is a long running Scottish band who balance singing with playing, English with Scot Gaelic, and fast paced tunes with gentle ones. Their latest album, Flower & Iron gives a fine taste of all that. you may also want to see an exhibit about the Scottish diaspora at the National Library of Scotland, on through October, with letters, diaries and other items showing the story of Scots who settled around the world. there’s more about that at the library’s web site, too. Music Road: Songs of Homecoming, to Scotland and other places Music Road: Celtic Colours 2009 on the way Music Road: Homecoming Scotland Music Road: tuning up for Burns Night: four Scots musicians

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Eddi Reader, Emily Smith, Robert Burns

Come along the music road for trip to Scotland for a bit of a live show that's a study in songwriting and harmony singing as well. Eddi Reader sings Leezie Lindsay, a song she and Boo Hewerdine made from a fragment of a Robert Burns song. Emily Smith joins on harmony, and you may see a few familiar faces in the backing band too. From a celebration of the 250th anniversary of Robert Burns' birth, January 2009 at the Royal Glasgow Concert Hall during Celtic Connections.




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Eddi Reader sings more of the songs of Robert Burns

Emily Smith:Too Long Away

Music Road: words, music, and poetry

also, stay tuned here along the music road for news of other music events in Glasgow, and more from Celtic Connections

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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.

malinky: flower & iron

Flower & Iron


An old story, a new melody, a change of wording here and there to make the tale of a lovers’ conversation clear in the twenty first century -- those all set the scene in Pad the Road wi’ Me, the opening track on the Malinky’s latest album, Flower & Iron. It’s a fair representation of what they do as a group, as well --listen well to older songs, hear the melody and words clearly, and sing and play them in ways that stay completely true to the Celtic traditions from which they spring while being as fresh and conversational as a conversation with friends over the morning paper. The Scotland based group has been at this, with some line up changes, for ten years now, and this latest release finds them bidding fair for even better things as they start out on their second decade. Steve Byrne and Fiona Hunter hold the conversation in Pad the Road wi’ Me, and in addition to singing each brings creative instrumental skills to the group as well. Hunter is a cellist, and Byrne, one of the founding members, plays guitar, bouzouki, and several other instruments. Mark Dunlop, also a founder of the band, plays bodhran, whistles, and flute, and also sings, as do the the two newer members of the group, Mike Vass who plays fiddle and guitar, and Dave Wood who plays guitar and bouzouki.

That sounds like a lot of strings, you might think, and that’s indeed so -- the creative interweaving of all that is part of Malinky’s distinctive sound. Their song selection and arrangement here is creative, edgy, and thought provoking, too, all while in service to the tradition. There’s a lively instrumental set called Cows and Cottongrass, and a striking anti war song told from the view of a soldier’s children, called When Margaret was Eleven. Irish songwriter Liam Weldon is the source for Dark Horse on the Wind, which considers the human cost of politics from another perspective. It’s not all politics by any means, though, it’s just politics as a part of lives lived out. Those songs stand among twelve tracks next to that opener, where a man tries to persuade a reluctant woman to join her life with his. They all make a path to the closing cut, a gentle and very Scottish sounding song called The Road to Drumleman, which is a poem by Willie Mitchell set to to music by Tony Cuffe. The project was recorded by Jamie and Julia MacLean, and their dad, Dougie, writer of Caledonia among other songs, adds digeridoo to one track.

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Tammerlin: No Small Thing
Songs of Homecoming, to Scotland and other places

Matt & Shannon Heaton: Fine Winter's Night concert

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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.

Patrick season: far from home

Longing for home and being far away from it are constant themes in Celtic music. Sometimes, those are written by people across the sea, and sometimes by people who have just moved a bit down the road. It is a longing shared, though, for well known and well loved faces and the places which bring them to mind.

This is an idea which, though it sometimes gets blurred in the leprechaun hats and green beer, is a major subtext of Saint Patrick’s Day celebrations. Two songs which get to the heart of the joy and sadness mixed are In My Dreams from Rosheen on musique celtique and I'm Going Back from Cathie Ryan on The Music of.What Happens.


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Potato Music
patrick season: thoughts for patrick's eve
Songs of Homecoming, to Scotland and other places

-->If you'd like to support my creative work,
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.

Eddi Reader sings more of the songs of Robert Burns

Eddi Reader Sings the songs of Robert Burns: Deluxe edition

Several years back, singer and songwriter Eddi Reader fell under the spell of Robert Burns. As a native Scot, she’d known of him from her school days, and as a singer and songwriter by trade she knew his work too and was often asked to sing a Burns song or two at celebrations. And so she did, and the work of the eighteenth century ploughman poet fell in with Reader’s interest in history, music, and imagination.

When she was asked to do a program of Burns songs with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, she said yes. Working with arranger Kevin McCrae from the RSNO and fiddler and producer John McCusker from the folk music world, she created setting for the songs that were anything but the staid sort of thing one might think of when the word “I want it to be that you get to feel that you’re experiencing the songs as though they’d just been written,” Reader says. “If I can get the orchestra smiling, and singing along with Charlie is My Darling or Willie Stewart -- they had never heard Burns music played like that. They were falling in love with it and the arrangements are so bonnie.” And Reader is a really creative and natural song interpreter, too, one of the best going.

Those arrangements are the core of Eddi Reader Sings the Songs of Robert Burns, first released several years ago. In honor of the 250th anniversary of Burns birth this year, and in honor of Homecoming Scotland, which is being celebrated all year across Scotland, Reader decided to gather up seven more tracks, several from her album Peacetime and others unreleased, and add them to the original batch of songs. It makes for a set that’s even more engaging than the original. The first group of eleven songs includes Charlie is My darling, Willie Stewart, John Anderson My Jo, and Auld Lang Syne, as well as a touch of others’ work. The instrumental Molly Rankin balances with Willie Stewart, and the contemporary piece Wild Mountainside is a present day love song which in some ways forms the anchor to the disc. The seven added cuts really do add to the picture both of Burns writing and Reader’s singing. They include Leezie Lindsay, Green Grow the Rashes, Aye Waukin O, and Comin Through the Rye, which is paired with Mairearad Green's modern day instrumental, Dram Behind the Curtain. Even if, maybe especially if, you already have the first edition of this project, you’ll want to add this one too. If you’ve not yet heard either of them, the year of homecoming Scotland would be a fine time to take a listen.



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Music Road: eddi reader, willie stewart, and the search for haggis

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eddi reader, willie stewart, and the search for haggis

A song about friendship, written by Robert Burns and sung by one of Scotland's besst, Eddi Reader, seems a fine way to start off a new year, especially a year in which we celebrate Homecoming Scotland. It's the 250th anniversary of Burns' birth, What other poet do you know who has statues made to him in Vermont, Ontario, Glasgow, and Canberra, just to name a few places? If all you know of him is that you've just sung Auld Lang Syne at the new year, a song that's sung round the world every year is only part of his legacy. Check out the song in this clip as your next place to learn about the poet's range.

Reader says one of her thoughts in doing Burns music (she's a Scot, as of course, he was, and she's done his work with orchestras and as well as in more informal settings) is to do it the way someone might might have sung the songs in a pub in the 18th century, and you just happened upon it. She seems to have that nailed in this clip from the Cambridge Folk Festival.

We'll hear more from Reader here along the music road as the year unfolds, and from other Scots musicians as well. On this clip, notice (how could you not? he's the fiddle player) the work of John McCusker. He's a Glasgow native, as is Reader. Both have family from Ireland, too.



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hunt for the elusive haggis through webcams of Loch Ness, the Royal Mile in Edinburgh, Glasgow's George Square, and other places, prizes on offer if you see one before Burns day

Music Road: Homecoming Scotland

Dual: Julie Fowlis & Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh