celebrating Robert Burns

Around the world, people are gathering to celebrate the life and work of Scottish poet Robert Burns, most especially on Burns night on 25 January. There will toasts to the haggis, toasts to the lassies, and replies from those lassies as well, all in honor and remembrance of the ploughman poet. His gift for words and rhythm, supported his keen eye for romance, social justice, and humor, and his love for the landscape of Scotland all show up in his work. Charlie Is My Darlin’, Auld Lang Syne, My Love is Like a Red Red Rose, a Man’s a Man for A’ That, all of these are written by Robert Burns, and they are but a few of the hundreds of poems and songs her wrote and collected.

Many musicians have recorded his music. To note especially are Emily Smith and Jamie McClennan,
Eddi Reader, and Jim Malcolm.

Several of my favorite songs written by Robert Burns are John Anderson My Jo, The Westin Winds, Commend Me to The Plooman, Silver Tassie, and this one, below. Tell us some of yours in the comments, if you’d like.




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about the book of memories and photographs Touched by Robert Burns

Jim Malcolm and Robert Burns

Acquaintance



Jim Malcolm is one of Scotland’s most inventive writers in the realm of traditional folk. He’s the writer behind Lochinside, among other folk classics, and was named Scots Traditional Male Vocalist of the Year several years back.

On the American side of the waters, he's especially well known for his work with top Scots folk band The Old Blind Dogs. He’s been back on the solo road now for some years, and offers a very fine set from another Scottish poet, Robert Burns. It’s always a danger, on both sides of the Atlantic, that Burns may be dismissed as over familiar or over sentimental. Eddi Reader and Emily Smith, among others, have proved that contemporary folk artists are able to move beyond those obstacles, and Malcolm, with his own distinct interpretations, does too.

Opening with Rantin’ Rovin’ Robin, Malcolm sets a conversational tone which well serves Burns funny stuff such as Deil’s Away wi the Exciseman (good riddance to the tax collector, if you need a bit of brush on your Scots), the narrative and gentle humor of The Ploughman, and the fine love songs such as Ae Fond Kiss and Auld Lang Syne. Understatement serves Malcolm well, and allows him room to move into the stories and the sentiment. His wife Susie, herself a fine singer in her own right, joins for that Ploughman song and the dry humor of the The Shepherd’s Wife. Fourteen cuts in all, and each one is a keeper.


This year, Scotland is celebrating a year of song. Look for more on the singers and songs of Scotland ahead here along the music road. Thanks for traveling with us.

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Music Road: Eddi Reader sings more of the songs of Robert Burns
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our Scottish music store at Amazon

Music for St Andrew's Day: music of Scotland

Saint Andrew’s Day, November 30th, is a holiday that’s close to home for every Scot, at home and abroad, and even more so in this year of Homecoming Scotland. There are concerts, light shows, and celebrations of all sorts, and a general throwing wide the doors to the winter holidays. From the northern isles to the western ones, from Lerwick to Galloway and Oban to Aberdeen, it’s a time of festivity. If you’d like music to go along -- or perhaps delight the Scots on your Christmas list -- here are several ideas.

Capercaillie Roses and Tears

Capercaille is one of the best loved and indeed most musically adventurous of Scottish bands. They've taken their musical tastes all across the world, For this recording, though, they bring things back home, focusing on music in English and Scots Gaelic that holds close to the Atlantic fringe where most of the band members grew up. Outstanding instrumental tracks from the band and fine vocals from Karen Matheson show the group in top form. Notable cuts include the Gaelic groove of Him Bo and the anti war song Don’t You Go.

Lauren MacColl Strewn With Ribbons

Fiddler Lauren MacColl has a sure touch and a distinctive tone, and she’s a flair for graceful composition and song selection, as well. Here she draws from music collected and composed by four musicians from her native Ross-shire area, mixed with her own pieces. It’s a fine work in which you can almost hear the voices of the hills. Barry Reid on guitar and Mhairi Hall on piano, who usually work with MacColl in concert, add to the music with their creative support for MacColl’s fiddle lines.

Eddi Reader Sings The Songs Of Robert Burns

Indeed she does. Reader has said that she wanted to present Burns conversationally, as things might be if you happened into a pub in his times. She has done that, and offers the songs in such a way that they are conversational to today as well. There’s one non Burns song, Wild Mountainside by John Douglas, which is a real standout its own. There’s an extended version of the recording with tracks collected from other projects, which is worth seeking out, but the original release stands fine on its own as well.

Julie Fowlis, Eamon Doorley, Ross Martin, and Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh
Dual

Astute readers will note that this appears on my suggestions for Irish music for your holiday gift list, as well. That’s because it’s an exploration of the connections and intersections of songs in irish and Scots Gaelic. It’s a very fine project, one you’ll be well able to enjoy whether you understand a word of either language ot not.
more about that here

Jim Malcolm First Cold Day

Not for nothing has Perthshire native Jim Malcolm been given top honors in Scotland as both singer and songwriter. He’s also a fine song picker too, as for example with the first track on the collection, The Valley of Strathmore, a reflective, haunting ballad of regret by Andy M Stewart. The original An Hour in the Gloaming is a tribute to Robert Burns and to the joys of fishing that you have to be neither a fisherperson nor a poet to enjoy. Down in Alabam is a funny take on some of the food Malcolm has encountered on his travels in the southern United States, while Schiehallion grew out of a project he did with Perthshire School children.

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Eddi Reader, Emily Smith, Robert Burns

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Words, music, and poetry

What relationship do song lyrics have to poetry? Many people, writers in particular, I find, think that you write a poem, set it to music, and then there you have a song. I don’t quite agree with that, and as it’s national poetry month all through April, I’ve been sharing a few thoughts on this.


About the idea above, that phrase set it to music is most often spoken by those who are not themselves very acquainted with music. For one thing, it is a process that is at once more complex and altogether more mysterious than it might at first seem. Given that, there are indeed times when musicians do set poems to music, so to speak. When doing so, however they get there, they give thought to the relationships among words, music, sound, and listeners, and what the ideas to be shared by all these are.

For example, Scottish musician Jim Malcolm has made a song of the Robert Frost poem The Road Not Taken. When the poem came to his attention -- being a Scot, he did not grow up with it, as many in America do -- he found he couldn’t get ot out of his head, and the spare arrangement on his album The First Cold Day is the result.

Irish American songwriter Cathie Ryan was wanting to give her mother something to ease the grieving when she saw her mother's sadness when she returned from Ireland after her own mother's death. While that thought was in her mind, Ryan came across the nineteenth century piece Rock Me to Sleep Mother in collection of poetry. The music in the words called forth music in Ryan and she made a song, which is recorded on an album by Ryan, Susan McKeown, and Robin Spielberg, called Mother


American songwriter Carrie Newcomer heard music in the words of Quaker educator Parker J. Palmer, and made them into a folk Americana sort of song that, in common with the work of Malcolm and Ryan, adds musical ideas to the words and interweaves with them. It is called Two Toasts and is on Newcomer’s album The Geography of Light

Songs come in all sorts of different ways. Sometimes there’s music behind the words, sometimes there are words which are inside the music. Sometimes the two arise together. I do not myself think the idea of setting poetry to music is a particularly useful description of the song writing process, but where and how ever it begins, I do think songs and their makers deserve consideration during a month marked for the consideration of poetry. Those who are looking to read more poetry during this month, and encourage others to do so, may also want to listen for it.

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Carrie Newcomer on songwriting

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words and music, continued

Dermot Henry was looking through a book in Kenny’s Bookstore, in Galway City one day [the old Kenny’s in city center for those of you who are picturing the scene]. The pages fell open to a poem by seventeenth century poet by Francis Higgins, a poem speaking in the voice of a woman who was growing older, but by no means fading away. As he was reading it, Henry heard music in his mind. Being a musician, and paying attention to such things, he made it into a song. It’s called As the Evening Declines, and has been recorded by Cathie Ryan.

Songs and tunes come in many different ways. Because it is National Poetry Month just now, I’ve been thinking about words, music, and how all that relates to the understanding and definition of poetry. Poetry, these days, often seems set off and aside of daily life (not if you ask Billy Collins or Wendell Berry though), while songs could seem to be closer. The processes and the tools are often very much the same. There’s also the thought that you have to stop and read a poem, while a song or a tune may be a companion as you move through your day. Used to be, in oral tradition, songs and poetry were more closely seen to be intertwined -- putting rhythm and meter and rhyme to words, and weaving them in melody, helped with remembering and passing on the stories.

I started, or perhaps continued, the conversation on the question of song lyrics and poetry here: poetry month: a view from the music road. There’s more to say on all these ideas. I’ll do some of that in future posts during poetry month -- we do have to talk about Robert Burns -- and in a new series on teaching and learning music that’s planned for later on in this summer. As always, I'd invite you to join in the conversation by adding your thoughts in the comment field below.

Meanwhile, Dermot Henry is a fine songwriter and singer originally from Sligo, whose early work from the 1970s someone should really issue again on CD. He’s written songs such as What Ireland Means to Me, The Girl from Asdee, and a good number of others. One of his best, Slan Abhaile, you may find on recordings by Kate Purcell and by Cathie Ryan. You may sometimes catch the man himself on tour these days as part of an Irish Home Coming show with Cherish the Ladies and Maura O’Connell, or at gigs of his own in the northeastern US.

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Tuning up for Burns Night: four Scots musicians

Robert Burns’ work still touches people’s hearts after more than two centuries, and in countries far beyond his native Scotland. His themes ranges from the wry wit of The Shepherd’s Wife to the haunting beauty of My Heart’s in the Highlands, to the connections of friendship in Auld Land Syne. As Scotland and the world gear up to mark the 250th anniversary of Burns’ birth, here are several equally creative Scots musicians you’ll want to get to know.

Jim Malcolm's
latest recording is a collection of songs by Robert Burns, in fact, including that lively Shepherd's Wife in a duet with his own wife Susie, the eighteenth century antiwar song Logan Braes, and a vivid song of Scotland’s landscape, Westin Winds, along with more widely known pieces such as Ae Fond Kiss and Killiecrankie. Check out Malcolm’s own work, too. Not for nothing has he been recognized with top song writing awards. And he has a delivery so natural that he might be having a conversation with Burns himself.

Emily Smith
mixes songs from the tradition with her own compositions, and best of all she loves to source or set them in her native Dumfriesshire in southwestern Scotland. Her latest album, Too Long Away, has all of that in generous measure, with rollicking ballads of history, acute observations of day to day life, stories of legend, and a quiet look at a summer evening. There’s a Burns song too, one that finds the raking and rouging poet writing from a woman’s point of view.

Corrina Hewat
plays the harp, both the small acoustic sort and the big pedal kind. In her own work she doesn’t draw distinction between folk and jazz, considering them both equally interesting and equally part of the same musical exploration. In addition to creating her own work (her latest album is called Harp I Do) she shares her gifts as a singer in the trio Grace Hewat Polwart, and composes for tlarge ensembles including the folk orchestra The Unusual Suspects.

Julie Fowlis
sings in Scots Gaelic, a language she grew up with in North Uist, but which is spoken by fewer than one percent of Scottish people. She does that so well the Scottish Executive recently honored her by naming her Scotland’s first Ambassador for Gaelic, in recognition of her work bringing the language to people in Scotland and beyond.

As you tune up for Burns night and beyond, give these musicians a listen. And stay with us here along the music road: especially during this year of Homecoming Scotland, we’ll be featuring the work of many musicians from Scotland, Scottish America, Cape Breton, and other parts of the Scottish tradition.

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Music Road: Now playing: Eddi Reader sings Robert Burns

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Tuning up for Burns Night: Jim Malcolm

Coming up on 25th January, it’s Burns night, when Scots the world over, and many who know nothing of Scotland beyond hazy ideas of heather, haggis, and kilts, will gather to have a rousing good time to honor the memory and work of the Ayrshire poet. Haggis, as Burns wrote an address to it, and whisky, as that too featured in his life and work, are parts of the celebration.

So is music. Burns wrote about everything --life, love, sex, the Scottish weather, legends, mice, horses, travels, food, work, grieving, and friendship are but a handful of his topics. Whether he was writing words to be read or to be sung, his language is very musical. That’s an aspect fellow Scot Jim Malcolm embodies in his album of Burns songs, which is called Acquaintance. Malcolm, a fine writer and singer himself who was named the best male folk singer in Scotland a few years back, is no’ stuffy about his native bard, presenting the songs in his own conversational and musical style. Rantin Rovin Robin, a mini autobiography from the ploughman poet, open the collection, and Malcolm closes it with Auld Lang Syne sung to the original tune. The Westin Winds, The Ploughman, Killicrankie, Parcel o’ Rogues, and in a humorous duet with his wife Susie, The Shepherd’s Wife, are among the songs Malcolm offers. It’s a fine and lovely and often funny nod from one talented poet and musician to another.

There’s more about Jim Malcolm and Acquaintance at his web site

A few things about Burns night from the BBC

ahead, look for more about Burns songs from another Scot as Eddi Reader Sings the Songs of Robert Burns