Post by Traditional Music Forum on Feb 15, 2021 15:01:13 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.
A couple of thought-provoking articles popped up this week. The first from piper, Hamish Moore in Bagpipe News, is an overview of how traditional music and dance as we know it now, especially piping and solo dancing, have been shaped by the regimentation and competition. The second from the Elphinstone Institute's Tom McKean looks at how the recent sea shanty outbreak shows how tradition still matters in the contemporary world.
The Tasgadh panel, which disburses small grants for traditional arts projects, met for the final round in this financial year. People are still coming up with all sorts of innovative ways of dealing with the Covid restrictions. The good news is that the fund, which is administered by Fèisean nan Gàidheal on behalf of Creative Scotland, will continue in 21-22.
In a busy week of meetings the Cross Party Group on Music also met this week. The staple items on the agenda at the moment are Covid, Brexit and streaming, all of which are conspiring to restrict musicians' lives and income. The Scottish Music Industry Associaton is finalising a report on the impact of Brexit and gave us an early look at that, while Barry Dallman of the MU delivered an excellent presentation on streaming, managing to clarify what is a very complex picture.
I managed to lug in on a talk that Steve Byrne gave to staff and students at the University of Mainz in Germany. The topic was Steve's personal philosophy of place, cultural memory, and tradition which informs both his work with the Local Voices project and with Malinky. The philosophy can be summarised in the phrase 'Dig Where You Stand' as in Steve's blog of the same name.
Speaking of blokes called Steve, this week's earworm is Seasick Steve's very infectious 'It's a Long, Long Way'. Three chords, genuine, heartfelt sentiments and a chorus that's easy to join in with. A folk song!
More Zoom time this week putting the final touches to the social media training project we are working on with Showcase Scotland, the Scottish Music Centre and Hands up for Trad. Webinars, one on one advice sessions, and a series of short video clips, the project will be rolling out in the next few weeks.
I spent a large chunk of time yesterday not on Zoom, but on the phone - and on a land line at that - and was reminded that for one to one communication it is entirely unnecessary to see the other person's fizzog and vice versa.
One of those conversations was with Drake Music Scotland's Thursa Sanderson, where we talked round the idea of an integrated 'neuro-diverse' trad music big band. As a starting point we need to be able to identify potential participants, musicians with different degrees of autism, Asperger's, Down's, for example, who might be interested in taking part. Please get in touch if you or your organisation work with or know of such folk.
TMF member, Edinburgh singer Eileen Penman, got in touch to ask if anyone else has been writing pandemic-related songs. She has written three so far, and we'd be interested to hear from others who have been inspired by the current circumstances, as would the Elphinstone's Lockdown Lore project.
We were sorry to hear of the passing this week of James Macintosh, the first ever winner of what became the Glenfiddich Piping Competition, and Charlie Scott, an ebullient and popular presence on the trad and ceilidh band scene in Aberdeen.
All the best
DF
David Francis is Director of the Traditional Music Forum
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