Music road trip: Cape Breton
Sea, forest, heritage, and home -- those things are strongly present in the music of Cape Breton. So strongly present that musicians from this island in northern Nova Scotia have taken their unique brand of Celtic music around the world, taught old dances they remember to Scots who’d forgotten the ancestral steps, and delighted audiences from New England to the mid Atlantic, to Vancouver, to Calgary, to Tokyo, to Istanbul and beyond.
The fiddle is a mainstay of Cape Breton music. It's a fiddle style born in the percussive playing of the west of Scotland and carried across the sea, where it met with influences and partners from other parts of the world, and with the landscape and lives on the forested places of Nova Scotia. Natalie MacMaster brings both tradition and originality to her work. One place to hear that mix clearly is on her album Blueprint
The Barra MacNeils have been making music in the family for as long as they can remember, and making music the family business for more than two decades, with fine singing, playing, and composing that express the heart of Cape Breton’s music. They celebrate this on their album 20th Anniversary Collection
Cape Breton music is deep and varied -- and it is a presence in the music of New England and the mid Atlantic states. This is part of The Great American Road Trip, in which I originally partnered up with A Traveler’s Library to add musical ideas to the book and film suggestions for journeys through the regions of the United States which you’d find there. The Library is closed now, but I think you will still find the journeys through music interesting.
The fiddle is a mainstay of Cape Breton music. It's a fiddle style born in the percussive playing of the west of Scotland and carried across the sea, where it met with influences and partners from other parts of the world, and with the landscape and lives on the forested places of Nova Scotia. Natalie MacMaster brings both tradition and originality to her work. One place to hear that mix clearly is on her album Blueprint
The Barra MacNeils have been making music in the family for as long as they can remember, and making music the family business for more than two decades, with fine singing, playing, and composing that express the heart of Cape Breton’s music. They celebrate this on their album 20th Anniversary Collection
Cape Breton music is deep and varied -- and it is a presence in the music of New England and the mid Atlantic states. This is part of The Great American Road Trip, in which I originally partnered up with A Traveler’s Library to add musical ideas to the book and film suggestions for journeys through the regions of the United States which you’d find there. The Library is closed now, but I think you will still find the journeys through music interesting.
For more about the road trip (and a look at some great road songs) see Great American Road Trip: Music begins
you may also wish to see
Music Road: thinking about Cape Breton: music and landscape
video on Gaelic culture on Cape Breton
Music Road: Cape Breton Radio Live take 02
Music Road: holiday gift list: music of Canada
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Labels: blogsherpa, canada, cape breton, cape breton music, great american road trip, natalie macmaster, nova scotia
5 Comments:
I would love to visit Cape Breton. Thanks for reporting on its music. Your blog truly makes me see places in a different way ....
This was really a great blog update!! I want to go and visit Nova Scotia- to check out my roots- (my great grandmother was from Nova Scotia)- but also I want to get this album!!!!
kerry - you've introduced me to such fantastic music - here's another one i didn't know, and now NEED to learn! thank you.
Great post. I was lucky enough to see Natalie MacMaster in concert a few months ago. She's amazing. Thanks for sharing such great music.
My parents visited Cape Breton a few years ago and really enjoyed it. I would like to visit also.
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