IC:Innovative Craft Blog

Mr. McFall, Mr. Bennett and a unique Scottish craft

Posted Tuesday 6 April 2010, 02:18pm

When I was taking my first baby steps into the world of folk music, whilst studying for my GCSEs, Martyn Bennett had a hugely significant role to play in the shaping of my scope of what was possible within the genre.  I was a non-traditional instrument player (bass guitar) and from a non-folk-centric family, so I had a certain outsider viewpoint from the start.  However, I had the misfortune of being English and playing music in English folk clubs.

For those of you outside the English folk music world, this is a world where innovation is frowned upon and questioned, in the first instance, and reluctantly accepted over time.  It is also a world where, in 2003, when I was just starting university, the most significant step forward had come in 1969 with the ‘electrifying’ of folk music on Fairport Convention’s Liege and Lief.  It was also a world shocked by Jim Moray’s Sweet England (released in the middle of 2003) that took electric drumbeats, guitar effects and synthesisers to traditional English folk songs and split opinion completely in two.

However, as young artists trying to do something different we could all cast an envious and hopeful glance north at the likes of Martyn Bennett, Peatbog Faeries and Shooglenifty who seemed to be celebrated for their unique Celtic fusion rather than chastised. 

This year I was lucky enough to see Peatbog Faeries plying their craft as part of Celtic Connections in Glasgow’s Old Fruitmarket, sustaining strained foot muscles through over enthusiastic dancing in the melee of partying audience members of all ages (another rarity at English folk concerts), then on Good Friday seeing Mr. McFall’s Chamber playing their new Birds and Beasts album celebrating the work of Martyn Bennett at Edinburgh’s Queens Hall.

Being a classically trained ensemble and in a seated venue this was obviously a little bit more subdued than one of Bennett’s notorious gig/raves out on the Scottish islands, however the complexity of his arrangements was made plain to see and I wished I’d been able to see Bennett live during his lifetime.  Celtic music is allowed to shift and evolve without the scrutiny that English folk music seems to have and the musicians, the genre and the craft benefits from this unique nature.

Nick