User:AJona1992/Music of Scotland
Scotland has a historic Celtic culture. Celtic music has survived more strongly in Scotland than anywhere else except Ireland. As of 2003, there are several Scottish record labels, music festival and a roots magazine, Living Tradition.
Scottish folk music is well known for bagpipes. Bagpipes have long played an important part of Scottish music. It is, however, not unique or indigenous to Scotland, having been imported around the 15th century and still being in use across Europe and farther abroad. The pibroch, or highlands bagpipe, is the most distinctively Scottish form of the instrument. It was created for clan pipers to be used for various, often military or marching, purposes. Piping clans included the MacArthurs, MacDonalds, McKays and, especially, the MacCrimmons.
1960s rebirth[change | change source]
Like many countries, Scotland underwent a roots revival in the 1960s. Folk music had declined in popularity in the preceding generation, and numerous young Scots found themselves separated from their country's culture. This new wave of Scottish folk performers were inspired by American traditionalists like Pete Seeger, but soon found their own heroes, including Cathy-Ann McPhee and Jeannie Robertson.
With Irish folk bands like The Chieftains finding widespread popularity, 60s Scottish musicians played in pipe bands and Strathspey and Reel Societies Music had long been primarily a solo affair, until The Clutha, a Glasgow-based group, began solidifying the idea of a Celtic band, which eventually consisted of fiddle or pipes leading the melody, and bouzouki and guitar alongside the vocals. alongside The Clutha were other pioneering Glasgow bands, including The Whistlebinkies and Aly Bain's The Boys of the Lough, both largely instrumental. Scottish folk singing was revived by artists including Ewan MacColl, who founded the first folk club in Britain, and The Gaugers, The Corries, Dick Gaughan and Ian Campbell Folk Group. In the mid-1960s, the most popular group of the Scottish folk revival, the Incredible String Band, began their career in Clive's Incredible Folk Club in Glasgow.
The next wave of bands, including Battlefield Band, Ossian and Alba, featured prominent bagpipers, a trend which climaxed in the 1980s, when Robin Morton's A Controversy of Pipers was released to great acclaim. By the end of the 1970s, lyrics in the Scots-Gaelic language were appearing in songs by Nah-Oganaich and Ossian. Runrig's Play Gaelic in 1978 was the first major success for Gaelic-language Scottish folk music.
Scotland has several notable modern musicians. Shooglenifty, is an innovator of the house fusion acid croft. The Easy Club is a jazz fusion band. Talith MacKenzie and Martin Swan are mouth musicians. Savourna Stevenson, Heather Heywood and Christine Primrose are pioneering singers.
References[change | change source]
- Heywood, Pete and Colin Irwin. "From Strathspeys to Acid Croft". 2000. In Broughton, Simon and Ellingham, Mark with McConnachie, James and Duane, Orla (Ed.), World Music, Vol. 1: Africa, Europe and the Middle East, pp 261–272. Rough Guides Ltd, Penguin Books. ISBN 1-85828-636-0