It was in 2009 that Alasdair Roberts first sang in Gaelic. He was performing at the Ceol’s Craic, a Glasgow-based club, alongside fiddler Alastair Caplin and Lewis-born Gaelic singer Màiri Morrison, a native Gaelic-speaker from the Isle of Lewis.
It was meant to be a one-off performance but, as Alasdair told us, “Ishbel Murray and Ceol‘s Craic team enjoyed the music that night enough to suggest that Mairi and I do some recording together.” That first fruitful encounter evolved into one of our favourite albums of 2012 – Urstan (Drag City).
When we last interviewed Màiri Morrison and Alasdair Roberts, they both shared a desire to collaborate again and today are announcing the release of a second album that came about following a trip to Canada in June 2023 for a transatlantic collaboration instigated by Nova Scotian bass player and musical arranger Pete Johnston. The new album, Remembered in Exile: Songs and Ballads from Nova Scotia, will be released on April 25th via Drag City, and features ten traditional Canadian songs with Scottish roots that draw heavily on the pioneering work of Nova Scotian folklorist Helen Creighton.
The album press shares that the album’s songs are pulled from her works including Songs and Ballads from Nova Scotia and Gaelic Songs in Nova Scotia, out of a vast amount of traditional song material collected by Creighton on Canada’s eastern seaboard. These songs are the musical artifacts of the westward journey undertaken by Scottish fishers, crofters, merchants and their families as they migrated — willingly or otherwise — to Canada from the 1600s to the mid-1800s.
Leading the way is their new single, Màiri Nighean Dòmhnaill. The track is sung by Màiri with an exquisitely poised performance from Johnston and his Canadian band — Sarah Frank on fiddle, Jake Oelrichs on drums, Mike Smith on banjo and Andrew Killawee on harmonium. The song is a Gaelic ballad that crossed the water and took root in the new world; the opening line roughly translates as “Oh, I Do Love You”, but one doesn’t need to speak Gaelic to get the depth of feeling imparted by Màiri and crew.
Pre-Order Remembered in Exile: Songs and Ballads from Nova Scotia (April 25th – Drag City): https://lnk.to/rememberedinexile
The following is an extract from an interview with Alasdair and Màiri in 2012:
Màiri Morrison on her Gaelic roots:
Well, I guess I struck lucky by being born in Lewis with Gaelic as my mother tongue and a rich culture on my doorstep, unfortunately my appreciation of such things only developed with age. It wasn’t really cool to speak Gaelic when I was young, (probably not cool to use the word ‘cool’ now either), so it was only whilst singing or speaking to my elders that it was in common usage for me. Gaelic was old-fashioned. Fortunately, I realised how precious my language was and how being surrounded by Gaelic, Gaelic singers, songs and the culture would actually be the best gift I would ever receive.
I’m not sure why the village I grew up in, Bragar, produced so many great singers and bards but creativity definitely remained in family blood and continued down through the generations. In years gone by one house would be ear-marked as the ‘cèilidh’ house where singing, song-writing and story-telling would be the essential pastimes. People could write songs in minutes about the most beautiful girl or the most uneventful of events. Sadly, many songs were lost as the oral tradition diminished but thankfully we have an abundance of traditional music that is appreciated far and wide with websites such as Tobar an Dualchais proving to be an invaluable resource.
Alasdair Roberts on first singing in Gaelic:
…it was a little daunting as although I am interested in Gaelic culture and language, and had (and continue to) spend a lot of time listening to and absorbing Gaelic music (particularly older recordings of traditional singers such as, for example, Flora MacNeil, William Matheson and Calum and Annie Johnston – in terms of style alone, separate from language, I regard such singers as these and also the great old sean-nos singers of Ireland such as Nioclas Toibin and Joseph Heaney as big vocal inspirations; I cannot deny that I have a strong, visceral emotional reaction to the Gaelic music of Scotland and Ireland) – despite all that, it was slightly daunting as you say to sing in front of an audience of Gaelic speakers. The songs we sang were fairly simple – mostly I just sang refrains, ‘vocables’ as they call the syllables which punctuate verses in many Gaelic songs. We also sang a popular old song called ‘Mhic Iarla Nam Bratach Bana’, ‘Son of the Earl of White Banners’, for which I had to learn a lot more words, but that was very rewarding to do.
He later adds: At the moment, most of my Gaelic language knowledge comes from absorbing and learning about traditional songs, which has given me some very basic grasp of the tongue, but it also means that most of my vocabulary is to do with love and death, perennial Gaelic song subjects – but then, I ask you, what other subjects are there, really?
Would they perform together again?
Alasdair: well, sure, if the opportunity arose I would love to, and I would hope that it would be completely different, a new direction entirely with the material. As I said, there is such a wealth of material in the Gaelic song tradition to work with – possibly a lot of wonderful unearthed gems to be found and revitalised, which is an exciting prospect either for us or for other musicians who care about these things.
Mairi: Are you kidding? I would be delighted to. I wonder how differently we would approach things now that we know each other better. Musically, Alasdair is my comfy jumper – he has the skill and loving attention to detail to unravel that jumper and beautifully re-knit it into a fine masterpiece of a ‘geansaidh’. So yes, it would be lovely to think we could collaborate in the future. I did recently suggest a Gaelic/Mongolian/Scots fusion album, so I would definitely watch this space…
We look forward to more songs of love and death on Remembered in Exile: Songs and Ballads from Nova Scotia (April 25th – Drag City).
Drag City: https://www.dragcity.com/artists/alasdair-roberts-and-mairi-morrison