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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Brave the movie, Julie Fowlis, and music
Archipelago from Fiona J MacKenzie

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Music, History, and Heisgeir

Heisgeir is a group of small islands off the west coast of North Uist. North Uist is itself part of the Outer Hebrides, which lie about forty miles off the northwest coast of Scotland, so Heisgeir, also known as the Monach Isles, is a fairly remote place. Gales which sweep across the North Atlantic often strike Scotland first at Heisgeir.

The islands are uninhabited now, but archaeological evidence suggests that people lived there many centuries ago. Not just many centuries ago, either: up until the 1940s, fishermen and their families lived on the islands. which had the advantage of having a natural harbour into which they could pull their boats to avoid the brunt of the storms. For some time there were a hundred or so people living on the islands, but by the time the 1940s came, there were but two families left.

follow this link to see photographs of Heisgeir

Some of their houses and buildings still stand, and on occasion fisher people stop over there while working the area. A lighthouse on the outermost island of Sillay, built in the 1860s, was decommissioned in 1942, but has been shining again since 2008. It is run these days by automation: no light house keeper lives in the isle now.

Growing up on North Uist, musician Julie Fowlis knew about Heisgeir: some in her family had fished the waters there before she was born. As she was working on a project of songs, she thought to gather video footage and take photographs of the islands as they are today. She did that, but it turned into something more. Listening to the stories of people who had lived on the island or knew people who did, fisher people who’d traveled there, tales that had been passed down, she knew she had to let these voices speak, along with the landscape, along with the images, along with the music from Fowlis and her bandmates, along with the sea.

Fowlis has brought all these together in Heisgeir, a program that blends live music with film, film that includes the voices and the stories as well as images of the islands. It’s a beautifully told tale, one that invites reflection about history and change and what stories we remember and pass along, as well as about the nature of these remote islands themselves.















It could get you considering technology, too. Fowlis used contemporary technology to help in the passing along of these stories, but yet it is the stories themselves that last.

If the technology wasn’t there, would we know of them? If the lasting stories weren’t there, if the inspiration of the artist wasn’t there, would the technology matter? Heisgeir is one of the finest examples I’ve seen of technology so in service of older ways and artistic vision that you forget how the story is transmitted, you forget that the technology is there. It becomes a transparent tool.

At this writing there are two presentations of Heisgeir planned this summer in Scotland. You may keep up with those and other presentations in the future at Julie Fowlis’s web site. If you can go to see it, do so. If you are a presenter with any interest in heritage, your audiences will be well served by booking this program. If neither of those work for you, still, I invite you to give a few moments thought as to how we pass along our stories in ways that last, and what life may have been like on Heisgeir across the years.


I was fortunate to see the film and performance of Heisgeir at Celtic Connections in Glasgow, which is where these photographs were made. They were made with permission of the festival and the artists. They are copyrighted, and I thank you for respecting that.

You may also wish to see
Music Road: Julie Fowlis: Live at Perthsire Amber
Dual: Julie Fowlis & Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh
a short film about julie fowlis

-->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.

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.

you may also wish to see
Music Road: Scotland & Cape Breton: tradition and innovation
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Music Road: Dual: Julie Fowlis & Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh


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