Archive Trails

Joseph Briffa (www.josephbriffa.com) is making a documentary...

archivetrails — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 06:59:25 -0400

Joseph Briffa (www.josephbriffa.com) is making a documentary about the School of Scottish Studies, and has been filming Archive Trails. Here are some stills from his footage of the final rehearsals, at Kinning Park Complex, before the start of the tour.

Tour begins

trailsalasdair — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 17:20:18 -0400

The piece that Shane Connolly and I have created for Archive Trails is now as ready as it will ever be, and the tour begins tomorrow in Perth. Last night we staged a trial run-through for a small group of friends and we’ve spent today putting the finishing touches to the piece. I am looking forward to the tour as an opportunity for us to visit some parts of Scotland which are not at all familiar to me, and to revisit some with which I am well acquainted. It will be interesting to see how all of the new work develops night by night, as I’m certain it will. Long hours on the road, no matter where that road may be, are an ideal opportunity for me to think about future projects - in this case, new song work, taking notes for new lyrics and all. My notepad is ready. I anticipate that we’ll see some inspiring sights along the way, and also meet a lot of interesting folks. Perhaps you’ll be one of them.

Alasdair Roberts and Shane Connolly have been building puppets...

archivetrails — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 17:52:00 -0400

Alasdair Roberts and Shane Connolly have been building puppets for their reworked and expanded version of Galoshins.

Helmsdale Herring

trailsdrew — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 18:39:00 -0400

Another song available to download and this one is very much a direct outcome of the Archive Trails residency; a reworking of Ewan MacColl’s “Shoals Of Herring”.

Based on research mentioned in an earlier post I have adapted the lyrics of the song, transporting the narrator from Great Yarmouth to the East Neuk of Fife. Last week I was up in Helmsdale to sing some songs at Timespan and had an opportunity to record inside the old Icehouse which was once used to preserve fish (salmon not herring).

Thanks also to Jen Gordon @ Anstruther Fisheries Museum

Aileen Campbell working on her performance and video,...

trailsaileen — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0400

Aileen Campbell working on her performance and video, ‘Conversations around a song’.

Black an white ane ti ither mairriet

trailsdrew — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 08:53:00 -0400

I recently posted a virtual e.p Rhythm & Song for free download. The recordings have been kicking about for a while and are not a direct outcome of the Archive Trails residency but they illustrate an element of my practice i.e putting traditional folk tunes into new contexts. In this case Scottish folk meets Berlin dub techno via Jamaican DJ culture. I wonder what Hamish would have made of it?

Berrypickers of Blair

archivetrails — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0400

A few weeks ago I wrote about my imminent visit to Blairgowrie, home of the fabled berryfields which were eulogised in song by the late, great Belle Stewart. I’d been invited to a berry pickers’ ceilidh in the town hall there, and was interested to find out more about the workforce of today. Well, it turns out that the days when Scotland’s travelling folk toiled there are gone - the pickers nowadays consist predominantly of young eastern European students (which can only be a good thing both for them and for the local community.)

My time at the ceilidh was very enjoyable. I helped the kitchen staff to prepare food for the hungry berry pickers - I’ve never buttered so many scones - and the rudimentary knowledge of sound engineering I’ve gleaned from my years as a touring musician allowed me to help the local ceilidh band (who used a fiddle, two accordions and an electric piano) to figure out how to use the town hall’s recalcitrant PA system (although the evening wasn’t without the occasional burst of piercing feedback). It was good to observe these foreign youths, mostly in their early twenties, take to our national dances with unabashed vigour, unselfconsciousness and good humour, not to mention consummate skill - amost as if, like me, they had been brought up with these moves from primary school days. And the ceilidh was entirely dry - not a drop o’ the hard stuff in sight.

A few days ago my good friend and musical collaborator Rafe gave me the loan of an LP he’d sourced for £2.50 in a charity shop - ‘Festival at Blairgowrie’ on Topic Records, consisting of recordings made in the town in 1967. It is annotated by none other than Peter Shepheard of the TMSA (Traditional Music and Song Association), whom regular readers will realise we have encountered previously on the archive trail. The record includes music by Jeannie Robertson, Davy Stewart, Aberdonian singer Mary Brooksbank (who was new to me), the Border shepherd Willie Scott, John ‘Hoddan MacDonald (a Gaelic singer from Lewis) and English country dance band The Marsden Rattlers (featuring resident musicians from the South Shields Folk Club) and, of course, Belle Stewart. Belle treats us to two versions of her song ‘The Berryfields of Blair’ - the original version and also a parody of the same song written in honour of the first Blairgowrie Festival in August 1966. Belle’s song has been going through my mind over the past few months in relation to the Archive Trails project, and I imagine that my own work might eventually feature some kind of interpretation of it; knowing that Belle herself rewrote the song to make it fit a different occasion makes me believe that it might well be acceptable for me to do a similar thing myself.

Simplify Simplify Simplify

trailsdrew — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 08:38:00 -0400

“The musician is the document. He is the information itself. The impact of stored information is transmitted not through records or archives, but through the human response to life” Ben Sidran

A short while back we submitted our proposals illustrating what we intend to do in response to the residency at the School of Scottish Studies archive. Around the same time I was reading Ben Sidran’s book Black Talk where I found some interesting parallels between the oral culture discussed in his book and the recordings of an oral culture contained in the archive. What does recording do to oral culture? It makes the oral aural and in my opinion as well as an act of preservation, helps to keep something of the oral tradition alive through mimesis, adaptation and transmission.

My proposal therefore is a simple one: to sing songs and to talk both about the songs and why I sing them and more widely about my time in the archive. It is refreshing to think of speech as an “improvisational and spontaneous act” and I’m not particularly interested in rehearsing some script to be repeated unerringly throughout our tour. I prefer to think and speak on my feet, so to speak. This simple approach is also a reflection of the recordings I have listened to in the archive. They are not “performances” in the concert sense; often they are intimate sharings, in the singer or storytellers home, where the gap between audience and performer is diminished. In these recordings I get a grasp of the idea of the “democratic muse” and hear music weaved into the fabric of everyday life and self generated, not mediated by other forces more interested in short term profit. This do it yourself aspect of culture ought to be preserved and propogated, not mourned.

Belle Stewart's 'The Berryfields o Blair'

trailsalasdair — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0400

Belle Stewart's 'The Berryfields o Blair':

Belle Stewart sings The Berryfields o Blair, recorded by Maurice Fleming for the School of Scottish Studies in 1954.

Berryfields

trailsalasdair — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0400

Esteemed reader - I would like to draw your attention to a recently released CD on Greentrax Records (CDTRAX9024) in the Scottish Tradition series: ‘Scottish Tradition 24: Songs and Ballads from Perthshire Field Recordings of the 1950s’.

This edition of the series, which consists of selections made from the extensive collection of the School of Scottish Studies’ sound archive, features 15 singers in total, mostly drawn from the Perthshire Traveller community - singers such as the late Belle Stewart, matriarch of the Stewarts of Blair and her daughter Sheila Stewart (who still sings to this day), Willie MacPhee, Bella, Charlotte and John Higgins and Martha and John Reid, to name a few. This release is of particular personal interest to me, being a Perthshire-raised lad myself and having done some amateur ‘fieldwork’ in those environs myself a few years ago; also, it just so happens that a number of the songs featured on the disc are in my own traditional repertoire - auld ballads such as ‘Lord Randal’, ‘The Golden Vanity’, ‘Banks o Red Roses’ and ‘The Banks o Airdery, o’.

The CD was compiled by Maurice Fleming, a native of Blairgowrie, Perthshire, who himself recorded the bulk of the material on the disc. Maurice was a friend of Hamish Henderson, one of the founders of the School of Scottish Studies, and by his own account was bitten by the folksong collecting bug after a discussion with Hamish about his own work in the field. The town of Blairgowrie is famous for its berryfields, upon which Travellers would traditionally descend in the summer ‘the straws and rasps to pick’ (in the words of Belle Stewart’s song ‘The Berryfields o’ Blair’). There is a famous quote from Henderson to the effect that collecting songs, ballads, tales and traditions from the Travellers in those berryfields was like ‘holding a tin can under Niagara Falls’, so rich was their trove of material. This testifies to the importance of the Travelling folk of Scotland as key bearers of the nation’s oral tradition.

Because of all this, the town of Blairgowrie has a near-mythical place in my mind although, despite my own Perthshire connections, I have so far not spent a great deal of time there. However, this evening I have been invited to a ‘berry picker’s ceilidh’ in Blairgowrie, which I anticipate with glee. I am hoping to find out who the current ‘crop’ of berrypickers might be, and to discover what forms of oral culture thrive there nowadays.

So the Archive Trail leads me to Blairgowrie, Perthshire, to discover whether Hamish Henderson’s ‘tin can under Niagara Falls’ analogy still holds true.

Diary Room, Day 78

trailsalasdair — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0400

Tomorrow I am going to buy some air drying clay from which Shane and I will model the heads of the glove puppets to feature in our interpretation of the Scottish folk play ‘Galoshins’, which will constitute a part of my Archive Trails work. This is a new art form for me but it’s one with which Shane is familiar, so I’m looking forward to working with him on it.

I also intend to scour the charity shops of Glasgow’s south side to find suitable materials with which to tailor the clothes of our characters.

The script of the play and other aspects of the work are evolving as Shane and I discuss them. I’m very much appreciating the keenness with which he seems to have taken to the project.

Thyme (the revelator)

trailsdrew — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 06:11:00 -0400

With my recent move to Glasgow I haven’t been to the archive in a while but research is ongoing in other ways, not least with the recent delivery of a batch of cassettes picked up cheaply from Springthyme Records.

I still love tapes and not for nostalgic reasons. I like albums with two sides, and with a tape as with a record I tend to play the whole thing through without thinking about skipping songs. I have a portable cassette player at home and it is usually in the kitchen I use it most often, when cooking a meal or washing the dishes. One of the tapes is a Jane Turriff collection. I was completely new to her and was drawn to the album by it’s title: “Singin Is Ma Life”. Instinctively I jumped on to Youtube to see what was there. Not much, but after hearing this rendition of “Away Out On The Mountain” I was sold.

Another remote resource for continuing research is of course the Tobar an Dualchais website. This wonderful site really brings the archive to your home and I recommend it to anyone with an interest in folklore. So, last night I searched there for Jane Turriff. Alas she isn’t directly represented but I did listen to a right good 1987 recording by Ray Fisher of “Thyme It Is A Precious Thing” in which Ray credits her learning of the song to Jane Turriff. I really like this recording as it’s pretty loose, the atmosphere sounds relaxed and maybe a bit boozy and it’s fair to say that Ray “gies it laldy”. What a chorus!

Plans are crystallising

trailsalasdair — Mon, 23 May 2011 00:00:00 -0400

Today Shane Connolly and I met to discuss plans for our staging of ‘Galoshins’ for the Archive Trails tour. It was a helpful process to show him the script which I had collated as it currently stands and discuss it in some length. We discussed staging, characterisation, props, sound effects and musical accompaniment among other things; without wanting to reveal too much, plans are crystallising and becoming more focussed.

Last week, Shane and I ventured east to meet the illustrious Stan Reeves at the Tollcross Community Centre in Edinburgh. Stan had been involved in a production of ‘Galoshins’ at the Centre which also ran as part of the Edinburgh International Festival Fringe a few years ago. He talked to us engagingly and with great enthusiasm about his involvement with ‘Galoshins’, among other subjects, and showed us the costumes which his cast had fashioned for their production. The whole experience was very inspiring indeed and Stan, with his depth of knowledge and experience, has expressed a desire to help us out more with the work as it develops, which is most heartening.

Video

trailsaileen — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 08:21:00 -0400

[Flash 10 is required to watch video.]

A tour and other plans

trailsalasdair — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0400

My proposal for Archive Trails has now been submitted. Next month work will recommence in earnest on the creative side of the project, which I anticipate with some glee.

Before then, however, I have some musical activity - an upcoming tour with Stevie Jones, Shane Connolly and Alastair Caplin, mostly in England (and one gig in Milngavie, near Glasgow). Please check www.alasdairroberts.com for more information on the tour dates. We will be playing material from the recently-released CD/LP ‘Too Long In This Condition’ as well as some new material.

Emily Lyle, a scholar with particular interest in traditional cosmology who has also made in-depth studies of ‘Galoshins’, has asked whether Shane and I might be able to perform our new adaptation of the play at the launch of her new book about the play. If this happens, it will most likely be at the end of June - also, it’s likely to be a rather embryonic version of the work!

Wee Nuggets of Wisdom

trailsdrew — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 18:40:53 -0400

Since my interest in folk songs progressed from listening to them to singing and performing them myself I have often wrestled with various issues in my mind about why I sing certain songs, should I sing certain songs, is this right or is that wrong, and so on. Sometimes I wonder whether I think a little bit too much about such things. So I am grateful for a wee bit of wisdom learned from another visitor to the archive.

Adam McNaughtan is the current traditional artist in residence at the School of Scottish Studies and from time to time when I have visited the sound archive he has been in there too, usually transcribing reel to reel tape recordings. We introduced ourselves one morning and had a wee chat about this and that, football songs mainly (sadly lacking from the sound archive). At some point after we met I looked him up online. I came to the same page that you can link to now if you click on his name up there. And there it is, that wee nugget of wisdom: “He learns songs because he likes them”. When I first read that I just thought “that’s ace”. So true, so simple, no bull. It’s up there with a quote attributed to Big Bill Broonzy about what constitutes a folk song (another one of those mindwrestlers): “I guess all songs is folk songs, I never heard no horse sing ‘em”.

Taking Stock

trailsalasdair — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 08:47:00 -0400

Just got back from a brief trip to Finland and Estonia playing music with Alastair Caplin and Stevie Jones. A bit of travelling time to formulate thoughts about the Archive Trails project… and a marketplace in Helsinki yielded a beautiful object, an item which might make it into the work I am producing.

It’s time to draft a proposal and start thinking more logistically and practically about the creation of the work and issues involved in touring it around the country.

Scottish Mask and Puppet Centre

trailsalasdair — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 09:36:00 -0500

On 9^th March, the archive trail led me to Glasgow’s leafy West End, to the Scottish Mask and Puppet Centre. Shane Connolly of Sokobauno, with whom I’ll be working on the project, had invited me along for a meeting with the Centre’s founder, Dr Malcolm Knight.

Malcolm has been involved in the art of puppet theatre for many years; his first centre was a garret over a garage in Kelvinbridge, Glasgow in 1981, relocating to the current location in a former cleansing depot in Kelvindale in 1989. Shane has had connections with the Centre for many years too – he studied puppetry there and I was fortunate enough to see an early marionette of his own construction in the Centre’s workshop.

The Centre holds an international display of puppets and masks, as well as running regular workshops, housing its own café, running a theatre which holds regular performances and maintaining a very well-stocked library. I’m hoping to return to make further use of this library in the course of my research, as in addition to books about the art of puppetry there are some volumes relating more specifically to folk plays such as ‘Galoshins’ and the English Mummers’ plays.

The meeting with Shane and Malcolm was very encouraging indeed – Malcolm seems very enthusiastic about the project and very willing to help us out and offer his expert advice as the piece develops. Hearteningly, at one point he exclaimed ‘at last somebody is doing a Mummer’s play with puppets!’ In a neat connection with the School of Scottish Studies, Malcolm revealed that he’d been good friends with Hamish Henderson when he first arrived in Scotland in the seventies. They’d maintained a correspondence during which Hamish would supply Malcolm with any information he might come across pertaining to his fields of interest. Malcolm had also known and worked with the great Glasgow songwriter Matt McGinn – indeed, one of the first puppets that Malcolm had made in Scotland, modelled on a tweed-suited Glaswegian he’d met outside Central Station on his first day in Scotland, treated Shane and me to a hearty rendition of McGinn’s song ‘I’m Looking For a Job.’

The Centre’s ethos is centred around the conviction that, in Malcolm’s words, ‘mask and puppet theatre is one of the roots as opposed to one of the branches of theatre, where innovation and tradition go hand in hand.’ This strikes a chord with me in relation to the primal, almost archetypal nature of ‘Galoshins’ and similar folk plays, in that such phenomena could be considered as having close connections to the ancient roots of modern theatre; in light of this, it strikes me that the idea of producing a version of ‘Galoshins’ involving puppets is all the more apt.

Ali Roberts Investigates

trailsdrew — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0500

My fellow archive stravaiger Ali Roberts really picked up the Anon Man baton and ran with it at our second group meeting back on 23rd February.

During our meeting I played the recording of Anon Man singing “The Deadly Wars” to the group. As we listened Ali literally sprang into action and began to analyse the performance very closely. He quickly identified that the singer was English and noted that the style of ornamentation indicated an Irish singing influence. He was quick to suggest possible singers and was soon on the web to pursue the case. I was impressed by the depth of Ali’s knowledge and how he summoned it almost unconsciously. I received an email from Ali a couple of days later suggesting I try enquiring at Mudcat, the online folksong forum. However as I mused on this course of action he did it himself! Clearly he had the bit between his teeth! The response on Mudcat was characteristically swift and the trail has led to Pete Shepherd who is based in Fife and runs Springthyme Records. Pete was a judge of the men’s singing competition at the 1975 Kinross TMSA Festival where our Anon Man performed.
Archivist Cathlin Macaulay arranged for a CD of the recording to be sent to Pete and so we hope to establish the identity of our singer soon. Sweet serendipity struck again when by chance Cathlin unearthed a copy of the festival programme in her office.

Pages from Aileen Campbell’s archive notebook.

trailsaileen — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 10:13:00 -0500

Pages from Aileen Campbell’s archive notebook.