Following up on our previous post about the music associated with the Battle of Harlaw, Soundyngs is reviewing a recording project from some years back (even further back that 2011), and is again a bit sad thinking about how the change in music distribution technologies from physical media to digital streaming has impacted our listening experience. Greater ease, certainly; but at a cost to the deeper story-telling process. Although, in this case, the errors in the CD liner notes contribute what might almost be another layer of ‘oral’ fluidity. Fortunately, the digital resources of the School of Scottish Studies are at hand to provide a useful corrective. So, some things digital are a marked improvement; but stream carefully, we suggest.
The CD under discussion here comprises tracks recorded by the great ethnomusicologist and field recording champion, Alan Lomax, whose visits to Scotland in the 1950s and early 60s did much to inject energy and field-recording enthusiasm into the indigenous folk music revival.
Like Hamish Henderson, Lomax wanted to find interesting people who had stories to tell as well as songs to sing; and, also like Henderson and indeed introduced by the founder of the Edinburgh School of Scottish Studies, Lomax also spent time with people from the Scottish Travellers community. These folk had hitherto been neglected as song-bearers, and their families included people with a phenomenal knowledge of traditional song repertoire. Travellers moved around the countryside after work – and were well placed to hear and pass on songs from all over Scotland. Songs and stories around the campfire formed part of their patterns of life. Many of Lomaxes recordings ended up with the School of Scottish Studies in Edinburgh; others connected up with recordings of folk musicians around the world, archived in New York.
The singer on this album, Jeannie (Regina) Robertson (1908-1975), was blessed with a remarkable voice: expressive and powerful, and a family who clearly valued singing. The recording sessions here were made with Lomax in London – a special trip down for this singer, following her appearance at the 3rd People’s Edinburgh Festival Ceilidh – in 1953.
Now, you can hear many tracks by Jeannie Robertson on streaming services. However, what you don’t usually get from streaming individual tracks are the stories and narratives surrounding the songs. The written notes on the CD (written by Matthew Barton, 1998) explains Jeannie’s importance to the folk scene in Scotland, and her experiences recording with Alan Lomax. Photographs also show us Maria Stewart Robertson Higgens, Jeannie’s mother; her husband, the piper Donald Higgens; and various moments in her own singing life. And detailed song notes provide much more besides, including, unfortunately, quite a few errors of transcription as the New Yorker Barton doesn’t always quite understand broad Aberdonian. So, treat the transcriptions with caution.
The audio recordings include interviews and chat between Lomax and Jeannie, which helps to set the songs in the context of learning; for example, track 3, ‘She’d a Lot of Old Songs (Interview)’, is Jeannie remembering her mother telling her the back story for one particular song.
All of this, recordings and (despite the occasional slips) writings, provide insights into the process of song transmission. In track 5 (‘It’s a true song’), for example, Robertson tells Lomax “that’s not the whole song” – some verses are missing. “True” in this case is summarised as the kind of story that might happen with your neighbours, now, and not just sometime in the unknown past. Many such observations continue appear for later songs and give you a sense of what is malleable in oral tradition. Listening, you can hear this experienced singer doing her best to educate an academic non-Scot about the meanings and significance of her songs.
Taken as a whole, rather than broken down track-by-track, the disc gives a broad sense of the kinds of topics that might feature in songs; love, jealousy, war, and travel, inter alia. This isn’t simply one song: it’s a repertoire, a way of life, a culture remembered, and an example of an attempt to communicate this across a cultural divide.
Lomax’s recordings over a lifetime contributed to a very large archive, which from 1983 became part of the holdings of the Association for Cultural Equity in New York, the organisation he founded, dedicated to cross-cultural exchange and equitable music sharing. The “Portrait” series, of which this is one instance, includes two other members of the Traveller community (Jimmy MacBeath and Davie Stewart) and, also from Aberdeenshire but a farmer rather than a labourer, John Strachan. Since his death, those running the archive have started to try to return to the original communities of the recordings, to ‘re-patriot’ material and adjust errors. This particular release still has some way to go before the errors are corrected, but we applaud the attempt.
The idea of equitable sharing is a grand dream. Unfortunately, modern streaming is not as equitable as Lomax imagined; apart from the inequitable share of royalties to the artist, current market dominant streaming services lack the kind of detailed written ethnographic information that makes this, and other projects like it, a deeper record of a person and their culture; single-track extraction also accelerates this deconstruction of a fuller sense of tradition. I know, but… the ease of access is so tempting, isn’t it…. And so, we all grow just a little bit less informed. Luckily, the School of Scottish Studies still has a very large quantity of material, audio and otherwise, featuring Jeannie Robertson (including many interviews with Hamish Henderson), which can be accessed – also, oh so easily – online, and where the written guidance (online) is clear and authoritative.
Further Reading and Listening
- Jeannie Robertson, The Queen Among the Heather in The Allan Lomax Collection: Portraits (Rounder Records, 11661-1720-2, 1998)
- Association for Cultural Equity (ACE), Jeannie Robertson: Queen Among the Heather
- Kist O Riches / Tobar an Dulchais – search for Jeannie Robertson gives 603 entries.
- James Porter and Herschel Gower, Jeannie Robertson: Emergent Singer, Transformative Voice, American Folklore Society n.s. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1995)
(and a biography on another great Traveller singer)
- Sheila Stewart, Queen Amang the Heather: The Live of Belle Stewart (Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2006) – written by the daughter, about her mother.