When compiling presentations at 3am for the Scots Trad Music Awards you become very aware of the parallels between media no-how and successful genres within trad music. The likes of Gaelic song and folk bands have in the main a very good web presence and it is easy to get info (pictures, audio files) of artists when you need it. This is a great resource for newspapers, promotors etc and enables these entities to promote and engage with these scenes.
The reason I am writing this blog is more about the genres that are not doing this and the parallels with their lack of publicity/success. The areas that jumped out at me were Scots Song, Scottish Dance Bands and to a lesser extent Strathspey and Reel Societies. In my opinion these 3 genres are struggling to make any headway in encouraging folks to come out and listen, join in, buy CDs etc and while the web is not the be and end all, it is definitely a very good start to raising public profile.
It seems to me that hardly anyone is bothering to sort this side of operations out. It is very important that the scenes survive in Scottish music as they have so much to offer our culture. In my opinion we are now at the emergency stage of saving these genres and it has to come down to individuals wanting it. We need to see band leaders, singers, organisations all creating proper websites for themselves, using the likes of myspace, YouTube to get the word out. It is so easy nowadays to do this with not a lot of knowledge. I suppose though even if it did take a lot of learning we need people to get off their backsides and read a manual on how to upload to the web. There should be a whole network of Scots songs websites which possibly could be coordinated through the Traditional Music and Song Association, a network of Scottish Dance Band coordinated through the National Association of Accordion and Fiddle Clubs/ Royal Scottish Country Dance Society) sites all with photos, audio files, biogs. Lets promote these guys or they're going to disappear.
Strathspey and Reel Societies don't even have a national association which shares news between them. They have a few websites but no real unity.
In the end it has to come to down to the community - can they be bothered or are they happy for it to die out. I hope that there are folks out there that don't feel out and will embrace the opportunities that are in front of them.
I've started a discussion about this on Foot Stompin'
A few reflections on my Scots fiddle concerto. The series of 3 solos, 1 duo and concerto were performed on 16th November at the Scots Fiddle Festival in the Assembly Rooms, Edinburgh.
Through the rehearsals of the Fiddle concerto I was very happy and amazed at soloist Gordon Gunn's lyricism and dexterity throughout the time. I was trying to write music that was hard and testing to the soloist while exciting to the listener. I felt I succeeded.
On the performance night it was very interesting to listen to the flow of the works from the very first "A fonn gunbhitrom (I am disposed to mirth)" performed by Mairi Campbell to the duo "A' cheud luan do'n raidh (The First Monday of the Season)" performed by Aidan O'Rourke and Patsy Reid. To my ears it showed a development of ideas as learned from one next piece to the next.
When it was time for the concerto it went very well and all the players played great. I did at the time have a feeling that it was different to the rest but in a positive way. (I'll be uploading a video in the next few weeks). It was a long night of a gig with Lau going on first (they were brilliant) to be followed by an hourish of new music but the audience seemed to like it (and the place was packed).
Anyway when the reviews came out they were mixed. Rob Adams' in the Herald generally thought it went ok but felt the concerto lacked something when compared to the preceeding duo. The Scotsman (Hi-Arts) reviewer disliked it completely. Anyone who has read my previous blogs will know that I don't mind this - everyone is entitled to their opinion and I recognise if I'm going to write on a public stage then I have to be able to accept flak as well as positive thoughts. I suppose the one thing that really bugged me about the latter review is that the journalist kept going on about a concerto is only for orchestra and any other ensemble is completely wrong. Unfortunately in this case the journalist is wrong as there are many examples - Judith Weir, Michael Finnesy, Sally Beamish, Hindemith who have all written concertos for 'non' orchestras.
What I've taken from the experience is that I now need to work on my ensemble writing skills. I don't feel that I'm getting the 'traditional' ensemble writing right. My parts are all very 'classical' and I need to work out how I am going to feature the trad musicians in the ensemble and make them sound like themselves. I think I am generally on the right track for the soloists (although I could maybe write more in the home keys). I'm going to take lessons next year with a composer to advance my skills and to move forward and will use the fiddle concerto as a piece to look at in the lessons.
I'm about to try writing a trad piece for glockenspiel and I am currently just thinking whether or not I need any ensemble between it. It will only be 5 minute piece. It will be good to keep going and learning more.
I've finally made it through the madness that was November - Scots Fiddle Concerto, Scots Trad Music Awards, St Andrew's Celebrations, SAC Flexible Funding Application, PRS Foundation Distil application, Foot Stompin' complete new website with still ongoing corrections and top of the list - my wife had her gallbladder out...
I've had a few thoughts I want to talk about in the next few days including marketing of the different genres within traditional music and how I think it is affecting there audience perception. So I'll depart just now and come back in the next few days.
Well Scots Trad Music Awards 2007 are up and away and votes are appearing in large numbers. Many people worry about folks canvassing for votes but I actively encourage it. I want as many people to vote as possible and I take the view that when a person has been canvassed they come to the site and they see everyone else who is up for nomination. This will immediately widen their horizons to the vast amount of talent we have playing traditional music in Scotland. After all the Scots Trad Music Awards is first and foremost a marketing event aimed at bringing publicity to traditional music. A development this year I have enjoyed is the advent of Facebook sites setup to garner votes. This will get us to another audience.
I am always amazed looking at the body of nominations how fabulous and varied our scene is. I mean looking through we can all name 10 times as many musicians who are not nominated. What a strength for a small country. In terms of music and genres we really punch above our weight.
We're not getting TV coverage this year but there is a possibilty of web coverage on the BBC Scotland 07 site. We'll be taking video at the awards and putting together a package to bid for TV coverage on Glasgow in Novemember 29th, 2008.
I had a conversation the other day about how to get the message out to the public re the brilliance of traditional music. In the case we were talking about TV was already involved - usually the top goal for us all and the promotor felt that the message still wasn't getting through. It's an interesting thought as in order to really get our message through we need to combine lots of threads, one being branding.
How do we go about getting the right type of branding? In my view the 'right type' has to come from the big guns of Scottish corporate life like Royal Bank of Scotland, Bank of Scotland, Standard Life. At the moment they seem to be more interested in sport probably as sport is on the TV all the time which helps them achieve their aims of maximum publicity.
How do we get to the folk who make these decisions to come on board? How do we convince them to take a chance and back Scottish cultural music? Usually when a big sponsor comes around, lots of publicity comes with it. This needn't be large sums of money given to the events but more the uses of an image that will make people sit up and listen. Often backing by the big companies will make the media sit up and listen.
In my view, to do this the sector needs to recruit the right people to make this happen. In trad music we tend to try and do all the jobs ourselves (mainly due to funding restrictions) but in 'classical' music they have always (in the big orchestras) employed the right people eg to get funding they emply a fundraiser, to market they emply a marketeer.
We need to start employing people who have all the contacts who work in the industry. Someone who can take us to the right places. It will have to be a series of partnerships but it could work given the right investment.
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No time!
I'm currently on tour in Germany and I have been thinking of the way ahead for me as a musician. We went to perform an outdoor gig in Jena on a Sunday afternoon (my hopes weren't raised at this point) and found that the act preceeding us were a group of young gymnasts playing loud music. As soon as seen this I said to myself this is not a gig that I want to do. I might have considered it 20 years ago when I was starting out but not now. It was a humiliating thought standing there waiting to go on thinking 'is this where I'm at?' The previous night we had played to 5 people in a small club in Chemnitz and I was already questioning things.
I have now decided that I am worth more than this.
After playing concertina for 25 years and having reached a high standard of perfomance I'm not going to play any old gigs for for no reason no matter what country I'm in. This situation is not the fault of promotors/agents as I agree to the terms at the outset. I need to decide what my terms are and stick to them.
I'm not a bread head and money is not a motive for me but I'm not going to play crap gigs for no reason. The way ahead is when I go out, I'm going to work out what I want from the tour (should have been doing this long ago) and if this is a problem I'm will not take the engagement. I'm too busy with all my other work to deal with the fallout from this kind of thing. This might sound big headed and obnoxious but I don't mean to be - I just can't do it any longer.
A quick diary piece: Most of the Scots Trad Music Awards are now sponsored. We're looking for sponsors for Venue of the Year and the Hall of Fame. The dates for entering your nominations for the trad awards are between 1 - 19th October 2007. The voting (for the 4 top nominations) will happen from 29th October - 23rd November. Our events are running from the 29th November til the 1st December (Award Ceremony) this year.
We're now looking for events for the St Andrew's Celebrations. This is a umberella project where try to gather as many trad music ceilidhs, gigs etc from around Scotland and market this as one. With this publicity we hope that members of the public will see the event in their area and go a long and take part and love traditional music.
We announced the semi-finalists of the BBC Radio Scotland Young Traditional Musician Award last week. They are Steven Blake (Pipes), Gillian Fleetwood (Clarsach), David Garner (Fiddle), Adam Holmes (Guitar, song), Amy Lord (Scots song), Lorne MacDougall (Pipes, whistle), James Duncan MacKenzie (Pipes, smallpipes), Iain Angus MacLeod (Accordion), Robert Menzies (Accordion, piano), Ewan Robertson (Guitar, song), Ailie Robertson (Clarsach), Fraya Thomsen (Clarsach). The event weekend runs from the 5th - 7th October 2007 with the concert in Coulter Hall, Coulter, South Lanarkshire on the the 6th October, 7.30pm, tickets £8 (conc £6).
More on all these events at www.handsupfortrad.co.uk
I'm away to Italy at the weekend with Keep It Up. We don't really gig at all nowadays so this will be fun. Even more fun will be remembering the sets! Next week I'm off to Germany with Dave Milligan. We're there for about 10 days. The tour is:
Sept.
8, Chemnitz, club Arthur
9, Bad Langensalza, church concert
10, off
11, Ilmenau, Alte Försterei
12, Schmalkalden, Kunsthaus (art gallery)
13, Hildburghausen, Rathaus
14, Oberotterbach, Musikantebuckl
15, Weilerbach, Bürgerkeller, club Dreschflegel
Fiddle Concerto is coming along. I've moved to the computer and am currently inputing my ideas for moulding...
This question has arisen as I write my fiddle concerto. In doing this I have written a march in F as my opening theme but it has no scotch snaps in it, it's not a strathspey nor does it utililise the bagpipe scale (A mixolydian starting on G). These are the common things that if asked I would describe as the Scottish sound. When I play my tune I think it sounds Scottish and when played by fiddler Gordon Gunn complete with ornamention it will sound right. It makes me wonder if the above description is a lot baloney and infact the 'Scottish sound' is actually bourne out of ornamentation and phrasing.
When I go abroad and pick up a book of say Breton tunes and play them I don't feel like I've cracked the culture and I sound like their musicians - the tunes instantly become quite Scottish. Same when you look at Brahms' Hungarian Dances or Bulgarian traditional music - they all look very simple on the page but when the local musicians play them they transform into something that is not on the page, not even near. It's the ornamentation and phrasing that makes these tunes sound Breton or Bulgarian not the notes on the page.
So when I (or any other Scottish musician) play a tune the first thing we do is to not think about it. We don't worry about inserting scotch snaps or g naturals, we just phrase it in a way that feels right and use ornaments that seem to work.
I wonder if Scotland has a set of 'phrases' and 'ornaments' and each region of the country dips into these, makes them their own but never deviates far enough away from the originals to become their own national style - subsets of something bigger. Shetland music does sound different to other parts of Scotland but you can still here the Scottish links.
This is something to mull over for a while although I better not take too long as I feel the deadline for the concerto is fast approaching alongside everything else including the Trad Music Awards.
The strange thing that has happened to me in the last week is our first born child Charlie has started school. I was the most worried about it as I couldn't believe 5 years has passed so quickly and my wee boy has grown up! Anyway as my wife said Charlie is loving it and from the first day he hides when I go to pick him up rather than come home with me! I'll take that as a positive!
It occurs to me that everybody is struggling for time to do things. In traditional music a small amount of people do many things and I wonder if we've all reached saturation point. Many of us are in the industry because we play/sing the music and often trying to bring admin and performance/creativity together can be difficult and of course admin is what pays the bills in most cases. In classical music there are many administrators - the Scottish Chamber Orchestra has 4 administrators to every musician.
Is it maybe time for to start employing more people who are not directly interested in traditional music? I always worry that an employee doesn't know enough to do the work. Maybe also the wages are not fantastic (due to funding) so you are wanting 'a love of the music' to compensate for some of the wages.
On another note I had a great meeting with the Scottish Exec about their St Andrew's Celebrations. Hopefully The Scots Trad Music Awards will be able to be part of this in 2007.
