Author Archives: wendywelch

New Lang Syne – –

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Jack manages to hit the deadline for a change with the guest post – –

Some disconnected recent events have got me thinking about American artists who successfully interpret Scottish music and songs.

Maura Shawn Scanlon
  1. John Turner – John runs the ‘Jink and Diddle’ series of Scottish fiddle classes in North Carolina and is a multiple winner of the US Scottish fiddle championship. My friend Randy who runs our local used book store gets lots of LPs and lets me know if there’s anything interesting among the recent arrivals. A few days ago he messaged me to say he had two by John Turner and Fiddletree. I had never heard of them but consulted Dr Google, which leads to the next performer –
  • Maura Shawn Scanlon – About six or seven years ago she won the US Scottish fiddle championships and I had her on my radio show. She was invited to compete in the Glenfiddich world championships in Scotland (which she also won) and I had her back. That’s when I found that she had studied at the ‘Jink and Diddle’ classes under John Turner! Since then she has moved to Boston to continue her studies and performs in various groups playing both classical and Scottish music. That leads me to another winner of the US championships –
  • Jamie Laval – I first met Jamie when we were both on the teaching staff at Swannanoa Gathering Celtic Week and we hit it off. Jamie is also an expert of Scottish fiddling, but he concentrates on the west coast style, so, very different from John or Maura Shawn. That style owes a lot to bagpipe influence – not just in the actual tunes but also the tunings and drone effects. Talking of the west coast of Scotland leads me to –
  • Rhiannon Giddens – Wendy and I met Rhiannon when we led workshops at ‘Common Ground on the Hill’ in Westminster, Maryland about ten year ago. She was part of ‘The Carolina Chocolate Drops’ at the time and they were a black string band playing jug band music. But one evening there was a gathering in our room and Rhiannon started singing Scots Gaelic songs. I was astonished. How could a young black woman from North Carolina be doing this? It was obvious that she wasn’t just parroting the sounds but actually knew the language.

There are many events around the US featuring Scottish music but most of them feature performers that just skim the surface and have done no real research or study. But every once in a while folk come along that really do dig deep.

Some of them are listed above – – –

The Monday Book

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The review today is by Paul Garrett

Stephen Pressfield, the author of Gates of Fire, The Afghan Campaign and Tides of War, about the Spartans, Alexander the Great and Alcibiades, respectively, returns to ancient history with his latest effort, A Man at Arms.

Teleman of Arcadia is a Greek mercenary who once served in the Roman army’s famous Tenth Fretensis Legion. He is dispatched by the Roman consul in Palestine to intercept and stop by any means a dangerous insurgent, said to be carrying a letter that could cause the downfall of the Empire.

When Teleman becomes allied with the man and his daughter, a mute, the mercenary and his little band of unlikely heroes must defend themselves against bandits, Arab mercenaries and The Roman army itself to deliver the letter, which is a missive from the Apostle Paul to the Greek city of Corinth.

Pressfield’s book The War of Art about overcoming “resistance” has nearly taken on the lofty status of Natalie Goldberg’s classic Writing down the Bones or Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird. I have always thought his books about writing to be better than his stories. This book is no exception.

His prose is hard to take sometimes, as his motto seems to be to never use a one or two syllable word when a three or four syllable word is available. I have nothing against what Hemingway called “ten-dollar words” back when that was a lot of money. As a writer of fiction myself, I can sympathize with trying to come up with a word that will evoke the exact meaning or feeling one is looking for, but in an action novel, multisyllabic utterances decelerate the deciphering of the manuscript. It’s sort of like trying to run through ankle deep mud. There are also a few escapes and close calls that stretch credulity.

The book’s saving graces are Pressfield’s insistence on historically accurate portrayals of characters and setting, the many surprising plot twists, the riveting action sequences, and the insight into what it must have been like for the early Christians as they faced seemingly overwhelming odds to keep their nascent religion alive. Though perhaps not Pressfield’s best effort, A Man at Arms is still an entertaining read.