St Andrew’s in the Square, Glasgow, 27 January 2008

The Island Tapes

WONDERFULLY grainy archive films of the islands coupled with great guitar work from Ian Melrose and Allan Neave, the expressive Gaelic singing of Alyth McCormack and David Allison’s intricate real-time recording on guitar and percussion made for another memorable Celtic Connections outing for The Island Tapes.

From humbler origins in David Allison’s soundtrack to some Scottish Screen Archive films, this project now takes in six films and four outstanding musicians, has toured in Germany, Estonia, France and New York as well as Scotland, and its DVD and CD has sold 2500 copies in the first two weeks since its January release. Compositions by the four musicians along with traditional songs and tunes beautifully complement these old films of Harris, Orkney, Skye, Shetland, St Kilda and an emigrant journey to New York.

The imposing figure of silver-haired David Allison sits like some Hebridean captain at the bridge of his multi-media creation pressing pedals in his stocking feet, mixing and layering pre-recorded flute and fiddle, even playing brushes on the back of his guitar, while evocative island images flicker behind him and the others.

In the course of the night we learn much about the 1930s working lives of the islanders, whether it’s washing clothes in a burn and peat cutting in Harris to Alyth’s sprightly vocals or Da Maakkin O’ A Keshie (a straw basket) by Gideon, a Shetland old timer with drooping moustache and bunnet, to a ukulele and kazoo accompaniment.

In Handba’ at Kirkwall, Orkney, the lovely tune ‘Farewell to Stromness’ by Peter Maxwell Davies quickly trips into ‘Moments in Awe’ from Andrew Robinson as shop windows are boarded up and the annual battle between the Uppies and the Doonies gets underway.

In film terms the prize winning Crofting in Skye by an unknown director is the most dramatic and successful, and you can almost hear the sheep being rescued and a Hebridean storm getting up in the tunes composed by Ian Melrose. The final two films, St Kilda – Britain’s Loneliest Isle and A New Way To A New World, are the most poignant, not just because they show the people of St Kilda only two years before their evacuation and emigrants on the Cameronia bound for New York, but because they include the oral testimonies of Norman Gillies, whose mother’s death in childbirth precipitated the islanders’ decision to leave St Kilda, and of emigrants from the Ellis Island archives.

Norman’s firm voice echoing down the years blots out the colonialist stain of tourists in their fur coats patronising ‘the natives’, while across the Atlantic the Tapes end in New York where ‘the river … just flows on’. A sentiment that must surely apply to this show.

It must be tough playing Irish tunes on the flute when Michael McGoldrick’s around but the Breton Sylvaine Barou came pretty close in the opening set from Comas (Irish Gaelic for power). It’s easy to see why they’re so popular around the European Festivals since this really is a powerhouse band ringing the changes on Irish tunes and songs with, at its heart, 20 times All-Ireland champion fiddle player Aidan Burke and Tipperary born Jackie Moran on bodhran and cajon, and the extra bonus of continental flair from the Belgian Philip Masure on guitar as well as Sylvain Barou.

Masure’s Irish brogue on ‘The Rambling Irishman’ sounded authentic enough to me, and Moran’s extended bodhran solo fairly flew before he too broke into song with ‘Bold Donnelly’, but they really got into their stride with the tune ‘The Funky Spider’ and Barou’s lovely free flowing flute rendition of a Niall Vallely song, in which Barou lived up to Donal Lunny’s description of him as ‘the greatest flute player of his generation’.

Comas deserve to be much better known over here and on this showing well merited a gig of their own at next year’s Celtic Connections.

© Norman Bissell, 2008

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