Thursday 9 July 2009
Modsary, near Skerray – on holiday
Last week descended into a bit of a rush, with a full-on admin assault, including the programme material for the EIF, sending out the notation and some mp3s for that, tracking down some elusive musicians, and amongst other things, writing my CV for the first time in several years. Somehow I got it all done in time for my 5pm Friday deadline, and put my mind to packing suitcases instead. At about 8.15 I set my computer to back itself up for the final time and discovered that somehow since that morning, my main portable hard drive had died. Completely. Not a spark of life whatsoever. So I abandoned the packing and jumped into the car in search of the one computer shop still open, which I eventually reached just in time, after a long detour avoiding a major road traffic accident at the Clyde Tunnel. My packing ended up very much last-minute, but I still managed to fit in most of the case of Ceilidh beer that Scott Williams gave me while I was cutting the hedge on Wednesday night. It’s very good indeed (‘Buy it in Sainsburys’, he says).
Here in Sutherland we have the company of swallows, twites, butterflies and rabbits; on the beach at Coldbackie this morning were the resident fulmars and a visiting ringed plover. It’s a surprise to me that Coldbackie beach isn’t always full of people, as to me it’s famous: somewhere there is a photo of me there aged 4, lying on a rug to keep the sand off, happily reading the Highway Code.
Coldbackie beach on a warm but cloudy day
I haven’t done much reading since we got here: so far I’ve only been dipping into Amphigorey again, prompted by overhearing Stephen Johnson quote Edward Gorey over dinner on the Isle of Man , and I’m working my way through Sandra Rosenblum’s Performance Practices in Classic Piano Music, a book I tried and failed to track down about 15 years ago. It’s particularly enjoyable reading books on 19th and 20th century performance practice, as you sometimes pick up that sense of crusading underdog zeal that's come from the realisation that the whole world is doing it wrong and you know why!
I didn’t have time to put anything onto my iPod specially for holiday listening, so I’ve returned to some old standbys, including what might be my favourite folk music record ever, the first album by Niekku. I only have a cassette copy that I took from Trevor Woolston’s LP in Swaledale in 1987. Värtinnä were playing at the Swaledale Festival that year – they were still an acoustic band then – and I’d just bought a Walkman Professional and was recording everything in sight, on BASF chrome tapes from the cash and carry.
The LP skipped in a couple of places, and I’ve lost my carefully written-out tracklisting, but wow, what an explosion of talent on that record: Arto Järvelä, Maria Kalaniemi, Liisa Matveinen, all fresh from the Sibelius Academy’s traditional music course. I could only admire (and be a little jealous of) Arto’s great taste or good fortune at being in a band with five supremely talented young women. And I was very excited at the prospect of a similar musical earthquake happening here after the RSAMD started its traditional music (or as it’s inexplicably titled ‘Scottish Music’!) course. I’m still waiting for that supergroup to emerge.
Oddly enough, even since eBay has hoovered up all musical ephemera in its path, I’ve never seen a copy of the LP since. It gets mentioned in obscure Finnish discographies, and I recovered my tracklisting from the GraceNotes CDDB database, but does it ever come up for sale? Not that I’ve seen. I wonder if Olarin will see to a CD reissue sometime. It might give all of us working within musical traditions something to aspire to.
shipwreck at Torrisdale Bay