Six comments
“The Silver Bow: The Fiddle Music of Shetland”
TOPIC TSCD469 ~ Highly Recommended
“Tom Anderson MBE, fiddler, composer, folklorist and teacher, was a profoundly influential figure in Shetland music. He and Aly Bain, with Trevor Hunter and Davie Tulloch, spanning three generations of music-making in the islands, play fiddle duets and quartets in the distinctive Shetland idiom.”
“For generations fiddle music has been the basic folk music of the Shetland Islands. This remastered CD reissue captures the excellence of the musicians (incl. Davie Tulloch & Trevor Hunter) and the variety of styles they played.”
There was a time we used to play quite a bit of Shetland music and Tom Anderson tunes, for some reason particularly in this one restaurant with an old upright in it. It was a once a week, four of us usually, sometimes more, a gig for the love of it and for ‘sandwiches’. We got a meal out of it and an appreciative audience, incuding the owners of the place. We always played ‘Da Auld Resting Chair’, ‘Hamnavoe Polka’, ‘The Bridal March from Unst’ (transcribed and soon to show on site here), ‘Da Shaalds o’ Foula’, and others featured and not featured on this recording. It is welcoming music, easy and stimulating for the digestion. It’s good to listen to and lovely to move to as well… I had this as LPs originally and I’m glad to now have it as a CD so I can play it while driving…a definite favourite…
Well, for what it’s worth ‘ceolachan’ I regularly play Da Slockit Light & Da Auld Resting Chair plus two sets of reels from that LP, up here, so Tom & his music lives on, in North Antrim too.
“The Fiddle Music of the Shetland Isles”
by Peter Cooke
Senior Lecturer and head of Ethnomusicology, Edinburgh University (the same!)
Cambridge Studies in Ethnomusicology
Cambridge University Press, 1986
ISBN: 0-521-26855-9
Some light reading ~ 😎
Extra track
My copy of the LP of vol 1 has another track, 7, of “Da Galley Watch/Kail and Knockit Corn”. I assume these are on the CD’s as well
Da Galley Watch/Kail and Knockit Corn is NOT on the CD or digital download. Presumably it was dropped from the CD due to time constraints but it’s disappointing it wasn’t re-added to the download.
I’ll have to dig out my LP and digitise an mp3. Grumble, spit etc.
Re: The Silver Bow: The Fiddle Music of Shetland
I’m so glad this recording is available in digital format. I’ve been listening to it these past few weeks and can’t get enough of it. My favorite tunes are Hamnavoe, Doon Da Rooth, and all the tunes on tracks 21 and 26. I wonder what’s with the bonus track not being on the cd/digital album, especially considering that there’s more room on a cd for extra tracks than on an LP.