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Owyhee Fiddle |
My wife and I took a quick trip to Ashland, Oregon -- about 500 miles one way -- to catch a concert by Alasdair Fraser and Natalie Haas. It was a small venue, a church, maybe 200 folks in attendance. A great show. Two top-notch performers on the cutting edge of Scottish fiddle music.
The big surprise to me, however, was that they also held a fiddle-cello workshop the next morning. I attended. Three hours of exploring the guts of Scottish 'ethnic' music. Too much to report on here, but I'll paraphrase a couple things Alasdair said that you might like.
He went into the idea of music as reflecting the speech, the language of a people. "You want to sound as if you come from some place."
Scottish fiddle is ethnic, and it should be dripping with haggis, with gooey organic material.
He also talked about trying to learn French, 6 years in school as a child, and when he was done, he was afraid to try to say anything for fear he would do it wrong. If he had taken just one summer to go to France and pick grapes, he would have had the language, the accent. it would have been better for everyone.
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