Post by Admin on Dec 11, 2020 16:58:25 GMT
A weekly two minute catch-up for members from the
TMF Director's desk
These are some of the things that have caught my attention this week.
The topic of archiving, particularly of the commercial end of Scottish traditional music, bubbled up again this week with the news that distributors Gordon Duncan Distribution and Scotdisc are closing their warehouse at Kilsyth, due to dwindling sales of CDs. Archiving talks are ongoing. In the meantime, the media have picked up on the streaming issue with a piece on STV's Scotland Tonight earlier this week, and this article in The Guardian by Mercury Prize nominee, Nadine Shah. Musicians and small labels are being clobbered, and the Musicians' Union's campaign #FixStreaming continues as does the DCMS enquiry at Westminster.
As has been rehearsed many times, many musicians are not only looking at tiny returns from digital service providers but empty diaries as well, although hats off to the likes of Hands Up for Trad, the Tolbooth in Stirling, and Seall in Skye for providing virtual opportunities. The subject of re-opening came up at the Cross Party Group on Music this week, with some insight from New Zealand and a very thorough paper from Geoff Ellis (of T in the Park fame) on how re-opening could be done. (Not sure if that is publicly available but I can send you a copy.)
The effects of the pandemic and prospects for venues was also the topic under advisement at a panel convened by the Incorporated Society of Musicians as part of their Empowered Musician conference. One of the things I was able to talk about was the situation the Wrigley Sisters find themselves in due to the intransigence of Orkney Islands Council. Jennifer and Hazel's summary here, and a link to their crowdfunder here.
Another very thorough paper is the Music Education Partnership Group's 'Following the Science', a review of the issues around singing, and playing brass, woodwind and bagpipes during the pandemic. The report concludes that singing and playing these instruments does not present a statistically significant added risk of transmitting the virus in addition to any risk from gathering socially as long as the proper mitigations are in place.
Great to see Jo Miller presenting to the Scottish Mentoring Network's annual conference on our TradMentor programme. Very different in many ways to other mentoring schemes across the country, but also a lot of common ground. There was a lot of acknowledgement of the role that mentoring co-ordinators play in ensuring the right matches, and supporting participants.
All the meetings and conferences referred to took place online of course, so I've been going square-eyed this week at the amount of time spent on Zoom, including an enjoyable session talking to students from Newbattle Abbey College's Celtic Studies course about tangible and intangible cultural heritage and how traditional music, dance and storytelling fit into those categories.
Talking about archives again, I came across a great resource The Traditional Tune Archive. Formerly known as The Fiddler's Companion it's the work of two enthusiasts, Andrew Kuntz and Valerio Pulliccioni. As well as putting up the tunes they look to provide as much information as they can on their history and their social context.
And continuing the theme this week, the late and much-loved fiddler Joe Scurfield, known for his work with the Old Rope String Band, left behind cassettes of some 600 tunes in his repertoire, which he called his Tune Bank. Friends have digitised these and made them available in a very classy website which also has pictures and memories of Joe.
The TMF's former membership officer, Ellie Logan, is now living on Gigha and has conjured up some money for a people and place project including a community film about the island. As part of that she is looking for a film-maker to get involved. Contact Ellie if interested or if you know of anyone who would be.
Mention of the Old Rope String Band brought to mind this fabulous rendition of the Donald MacLeod pipe jig, The Seagull by their successors, the New Rope String Band.
All the best
DF
David Francis is Director of the Traditional Music Forum
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