From the Alleghenies to the Hebrides by Margaret Fay Shaw

Author:Margaret Fay Shaw [Shaw, Margaret Fay]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781912476077
Google: thmhtQEACAAJ
Publisher: Origin
Published: 2018-04-12T23:23:13.469970+00:00

In 1949, at the International Folkmusic Conference in Venice, I had proposed playing the recordings John and I had made on Barra but found that owing to Scotland’s not being given national status, I could only get a few minutes taken off the Scottish Country Dance programme. They were doing dances on the stage, and I could see that Miss Milligan, who had brought her troop of Highland dancers, was very upset to think that she had to give up some of her time to me. So I said I wouldn’t bother about it. However, Professor Constantin Brailoiu, whom John and I had met at the Musée de I’homme the year before in Paris, asked me if I’d brought recordings and when he learned that there wasn’t going to be time, he said, ‘But we must hear them! You can have my time, because I only have a paper to read and it can easily be published instead in the journal.’ So he gave me his hour.

When that became known, I was given the last hour of an extra day that they had added to the conference because they hadn’t been able to fit in everything. On this Sunday afternoon, after everything else was completed, then my recordings were played; and by that time, when I looked down on the audience, I could see that all the English-speaking people had left. Those in the two front rows were Hungarians, Turks, and Greeks, people who were really interested in folk music. So I played my tapes. By that time I was so tired and nervous that my hand shook holding the paper so that I couldn’t read it. However, the songs were wonderfully reproduced; they had a marvellous machine. The session was held in a most beautiful little theatre and was a great success.

I then had a note from Maud Karpeles, who was the secretary of the International Folkmusic Council (the first president was Vaughan Williams), saying that the famous Hungarian composer Zoltan Kodaly was coming to London and did I have any recordings to play or manuscripts to show him? I said I had. So I went to London, and I was told to meet Kodaly at half-past two the next afternoon at Boosey and Hawkes’ music shop. It was a typical winter day in London – pouring cats and dogs, and black as ink. Not long after I reached the shop, the door opened and out of the rain came a man who looked as if he had just stepped out of the gutter where he had been fiddling for pennies! He had on grey spats and a very long fitted overcoat, gathered at the waist. A little tartan woollen muffler that had gone into a string stood above his coat collar and he wore a broad-brimmed black felt hat. He spoke a little French, but that was all.

We went to the back of the shop, where they had arranged a table for us. I had the wire recorder and the manuscript of my songs from South Uist.

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