From Scotland: Joy Dunlop & Twelfth Day

Fiere is a word in Scots which means friend or companion.

Fiere is also the title of a recording Scottish Gaelic singer Joy Dunlop and the two women who comprise the duo Twelfth Day, Catriona Price on fiddle and voice and Esther Swift on harp and voice, have made together.

A song from the tradition that arose from and honors friendship sparked the idea of the album for the three women. Faca sibh Ragnaill no Ailein? / Have you seen Ronald or Allan? is a waulking song, a song women would sing together to keep the rhythm of the work (and the conversation) going as they worked cloth. There’s a call and response aspect to waulking songs, and with this one, the singer starts out asking about others before getting around to the subject of the one she loves. In this version, it’s easy to hear the sound of centuries of connections and conversations among friends in the words and in the melody.

It makes an engaging opening track for a collection in which Dunlop and Twelfth Day take the languages of Scotland -- Scottish Gaelic, Scots, English, Shetland -- in directions which both honor tradition and extend it. The lyrics for the rest of the ten tracks are words from a range of Scottish women poets, set to melodies which the musicians have composed. There are stories of love and loss, discovery and friendship, of the moments of life which reach across time.



listen to the music from Fiere


Differing though shared backgrounds in traditional music and a willingness for exploring where tradition can go brought Dunlop and Twelfth Day together. Take the journey through this music with them. You’ll be well rewarded. Standout tracks include The Last Licht, Fiere, Coimhead Iad, and The Light Gatherer.

you may also wish to see
Julie Fowlis: Live at Perthsire Amber
Music for St Andrew's Day: music of Scotland
Mary Ann Kennedy & Na Seoid

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Now playing: Eddi Reader sings Robert Burns

When Eddi Reader was growing up in Glasgow and Ayrshire, she studied the poetry of Robert Burns as part of her school work, as all children in Scotland do. She thought, then, that his work was meant for highbrow situations, to be set up on the shelf and not for the likes of her. But as she grew into her own career as a professional musician and songwriter, she read more of Burns work and came to a different view. “As I read more and more about him,” she says, “ I get the sense that he was a spokesman for the glorious in the ordinary, the sublime in the mundane. I have met many, I guess, who might be like him, in that county of Ayrshire, and in the rest of Scotland. We are all Robert Burns’ babies.”

Reader was asked to do a program of Burns songs by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. She collaborated with both classical arranger Kevin McCrae and folk musician John McCusker to make a program which would “sort of have that band in bar sound, circa 1787. I wanted a bit of that in there. I needed that live, passionate sense behind the music just to make it real for me, keeping it an alive music, rather than a music that was presented as to you you’d present a bunch of flowers,” Reader said. “As I had everybody together, I thought I’d go ahead and get it recorded too, and make an album out of it.”

The result is Eddie Reader Sings the Songs of Robert Burns, which includes eleven of the more than three hundred songs Burns wrote, and a lovely bit of contemporary song, Wild Mountainside, by John Douglas. She included that song because “I wanted to show that poetry is alive and well today in Ayrshire,” Reader explained. Her selections range across the work of Robert Burns, from the bawdy double entendres of Brose and Butter to the bittersweet romance of Ae Fond Kiss, from the plea for the end of war and strife as a way of solving problems in Ye Jacobites to the celebration of friendship in Willie Stewart, to the gentle story of lasting love, John Anderson My Jo. And of course, Auld Lang Syne. Reader respects the poetry of her national bard while making the songs her own, creating a a set that Burns himself might have enjoyed joining in on.

to read an extended interview with Eddi Reader, look for the April/May issue of the folk music magazine Dirty Linen. available in early March.

On 25th January, Scots and others the world over will join to remember the work of Robert Burns with songs toasts and meals which may include cock a leekie soup, haggis, tatties, neeps, aand cranachan. In 2009, Scotland invites them all home for the Year of Homecoming.