An Lanntair, Stornoway, Isle of Lewis, 2 September 2011

CAN I start this review of a great night out, with a question?

Does there have to be a degree of innovation, when you follow the work of one artist. Does the next collection of poems, or concert or work of theatre need to move on? Or can we accept that an artist hits something that works and is content to work within small variations of that success?

I’m asking because I just don’t know.  But I’ve a feeling that a description of what took place here might prompt further discussion. I’m familiar with Kathleen MacInnes and band from her very fine CD (soon to be augmented with another).

Kathleen MacInnes

I play it quite often and so recognized that a large part of this concert was based closely on it but with some tantalizing songs from the forthcoming album. This is all well and normal – I was amazed to find in some Festival performances of the Peatbog Faeries, just how closely some fairly complex arrangements clung to the recorded versions.

But something happened on the Stornoway stage that went way beyond reproducing quality music. First, there were some changes in the band. This is again normal, in a country with a finite population of talented jobbing musicians. It was very much Kathleen and friends, as the unstoppable banter proved.

Ross Martin (on loan from his work with Calum Alex Macmillan’s Daimh line-up) played very sensitive but rhythmic guitar.  Angus Mackenzie played the range of bellows pipes, big pipes and flute and whistle to fine effect. And local lad Alasdair White played practical jokes, as well as  one of the most moving slow airs I’ve ever heard, outside a kitchen.

In fact that’s really what happened – a kitchen party came to the stage. The singer’s cheery and witty personality was a large part of this. She made a virtue out of any false start. And these human slips really did add to the event because the hilarious, the witty and the intensly moving all combined without a hint of a join or separation between these elements.

The Puirt a Beul incorporated parts you could encounter in the diddling championships at Traditional Music and Song Association festivals.  The band gained good musical mileage as well as a joke in the bilingual pun which results in the title “Taking the cow for a walk.” A prayer recorded as from Barra in Carmichael’s Carmina Gaedelica has come back to us bearing the grace notes from its journey to Ireland.

And the band’s shared-out story of the epic gig in Eigg, (possibly subtitled Rescued by Trawler) was a work in its own right. But a singer and musicians of this order could go directly from all that to the timeless theme of separation, though set during the Napoleonic wars.

So I’m going to propose that no, artists don’t have to make indentifiable shifts that can be called development.  But I’m also going to propose that their variations on a way of working should be as lively and brimming with the quality known as nàdarrachd.  In the town of Stornoway, local useage of English incorporates a fair number of words, I now know are of Gaelic origin. This is one. My mother would slip it into an English sentence.

It’s not enough to say that someone is completely themselves – natural in their own personality. I’ve just looked up “natural” in a Gaelic dictionary, to check the spelling and found that there is a large number of words to choose from.

I’d say, from local useage, this Gaelic import could have been tailored to suit Kathleen MacInnes. It seems to me there is also a suggestion of  great respect for a person who remains approachable and friendly although her talents are awe-inspiring.

As well as the phrasing and playful sense of rhythm, there is the asset of that husky timbre – a shade of the raw best of Country music, something of the jazz singer and something which could only be Hebridean.

This is the sort of evening which proves that the atmosphere of that intimate upstairs performing space in the old town hall can indeed transfer to the new theatre.  And of course the facilities mean that more people can share the experience.  I’ll be buying the new album and not worrying if others hear it as more of the same.

That’s my own answer to the question I started with. There was a fair amount of innovation and an abundance of life in this concert of “traditional” music.

Rumour has it that the talented Mr White is exploring improvisational music these days. Let’s support that move and trust that the same nàdarrachd will

also help find an audience for the most challenging developments.

© Ian Stephen, 2011

Links

• Kathleen MacInnes
• Ian Stephen