Great Scots

Capercaillie, Karen Matheson, and Talitha MacKenzie

by Jeffrey Gantz

True, the Irish are getting all the headlines these days. The Chieftains have more Grammys than they can count, Michael Flatley and Riverdance will eventually have more money than they can count, and now that the votes have been counted in the latest round of elections in Britain and in the north of Ireland, it seems that the English may finally be on their way out of Ulster. But Scotland had its own big electoral news -- not a single Tory was returned. And with Tony Blair's Labor Party in firm control of Westminster, it looks likely that Scotland and Wales (whose electorate also wiped the Tory slate clean) may get some sort of devolved government -- perhaps the first step to eventual independence. Mean-while Scotland continues to proclaim its cultural independence -- at least, if the new CDs from Capercaillie, Karen Matheson (who remains Capercaillie's lead singer), and Talitha MacKenzie (originally of Mouth Music) are any evidence.

Capercaillie are from Oban, on the west coast of Scotland, just opposite the isle of Mull, and they take their name from the largest of the Highland grouses. Their previous available-in-America albums -- Crosswinds (1987), Sidewaulk (1989), Delirium (1991), Get Out (1992), and Secret People (1993) -- saw them move from traditional dance tunes and mostly Scottish Gaelic songs to an eclectic mixture of pop, rock, jazz, blues, funk, you name it. To the Moon (Green Linnet) moves still farther into original music; there are just two traditional tracks, one a re-recording of a tune from their contribution to the soundtrack for Rob Roy.

The other, a fine combination of "A Nighean Donn" ("O Brown-Haired Girl") and "A Ghealaich" ("O Moon"), kicks off the CD with whispery vocals and backing synthesizer before the backbeat and waulking chant enter for "A Ghealaich." (Waulking songs accompany the slapping and pounding that thickens woven cloth into Harris tweed; it's the rhythm of honest work.) After that, it's mostly downhill. "Claire in Heaven" benefits from Fred Morrison's Highland small pipes, which give weight to this story of a baby girl who's just three days old when she dies, the apparent victim of sectarian violence. And there's a decent Irish Gaelic song from Manus Lunny, "Níl Sí i nGrá" ("She's Not in Love"), about a newlywed whose wife no longer loves him. But what could rescue lines like "You know the secret, isn't love just a little like hate" or "Fine words come like friends to your rescue" (from "Why Won't You Touch Me"), or "Only you know how to make me feel this way" (from "You"), or "She said climb that rocky mountain where the sun will rise to kiss you/And your dreams will be like a virgin spring to the foot of the crooked hill" (from "The Crooked Mountain")?

Whenever the waulking thump and/or chorus return, as on "Ailein Duinn" (the Rob Roy number, a lament for an 18th-century sea captain -- "Brown-Haired Alan" -- who drowned in the Outer Hebrides on the way to his wedding) and "Fear-Allabain" ("The Wanderer"), the music gets grounded and the lyrics grow pithy. And "God's Alibi," about Macedonia, has some bite to it: "I'm a witness to the crumbling walls as well/But I'm not your alibi." But the rest lies somewhere between Celtic new age and Celtic fusion, music innocuous enough to lead in network golf-tournament broadcasts. Bring back the romantic Capercaillie of "Soraidh Bhuam go Barraidh" and "An Ribinn Donn" (both from Crosswinds), or the harder-edged group who gave us the hit waulking rocker "Coisich a Rùin" (from Delirium) and the politically charged "Bonaparte" (from Secret People) and "Waiting for the Wheel To Turn" and "Servant to the Slave" (both from Delirium). Or at least give us Cascade (1984) and The Blood Is Strong (1988), and maybe Capercaillie (1994), none of which has been distributed here.

Why we also have Karen Matheson's solo disc, The Dreaming Sea (Survival -- Capercaillie's British label), is a puzzle, since it's produced by the band's Donald Shaw and sounds a lot like To the Moon (which offers just two instrumentals, both sleepy reel sets). The highlight is a ghostly setting of "Calbharaigh" ("Calvary"), which Nobel-worthy Scottish Gaelic poet Somhairle MacGill-Eain (Sorley McLean) wrote back in the '30s -- just hearing Somhairle read is worth the price of the disc:

My eye is not on Calvary

or on blessed Bethlehem

but on a putrid back alley

in Glasgow

where everything rots as it

grows,

and on a room in

Edinburgh,

a room of poverty and suf

fering,

where the infant, all scabs

and sores,

wallows till death.

Alas, you won't find any translation in the liner notes, or even the text -- Survival, which was so good about providing this material for Delirium, drops the ball here, leaving listeners stranded on the Scottish Gaelic numbers (six of the 13 tracks). Which are outstanding. "Mi le M'Uilinn air Mo Ghlùin" ("I with My Elbow on My Knee") has words and music by Murdo MacFarlane, from the isle of Lewis; it's haunted by Donald Shaw's piano and Tommy Smith's soprano sax. "An Fhideag Airgid" ("The Silver Whistle") is an 18th-century Jacobite song welcoming Bonnie Prince Charlie's landing in the Outer Hebrides in 1745; here it's rendered as a wistful piano lullaby with soothing "ho ro" background chant.

But the English numbers are about as inspiring as a John Major campaign speech. Try "There's always Sunday to change your mind/For the craven and the blind/I'll take my chances here with you tonight" (from "There's Always Sunday"). Or "When I close my eyes I feel the whole world spin/Till I don't know where I end and you begin" (from the title track). Or "It's barely five o'clock/And the sunlight's on the lough/And nothing's wrong" (from "Early Morning Grey"). Matheson has an affecting voice; she might be able to pull these off in person. But not on disc -- certainly not with the sort of poppy, peppy arrangements she favors.

Unlike Capercaillie, Talitha MacKenzie is from the big city -- not Edinburgh, or Glasgow, but New York, where she learned Gaelic from a teach-yourself book. Back in 1991 she and Martin Swan released Mouth Music, which combined waulking songs and puirt-a-beul (mouth music, which developed after the English banned the Celtic pipes) with African drum rhythms. Subsequently they split up, Swan going on to release the more Afro-oriented Mo-Di under the Mouth Music name (a new release, Shoreline, is just out), MacKenzie going solo with Sòlas ("Solace"), a stunning effort that went world without losing its Scottish focus or its Gaelic sensibility.

Now MacKenzie is back with the equally stunning Spiorad ("Spirit" -- this and Sòlas both on Shanachie), on which she's even more joyously eclectic. We start off with "Fill Iu O," a Gaelic waulking song with lyrics by MacKenzie that begins conventionally ("You would be my lovely wee lass/I would go with you to Uist") but opens up slyly by the end ("I would go with you to Riocuad/To play World Music"). On the Gaelic/English "3 Things" ("Three things are given/From God above/We can't control them/Fear, Jealousy and Love") she sings in a Hildegard-like whisper and introduces modal harmonies. "Fionna-ghuala" offers shotgun vocals from MacKenzie (it's hard to believe a non-native speaker can have such a thick, authentic-sounding accent) and shakers from her main back-up, Chris Birkett.

She does play world music: there's the Bulgarian dance "Hopa!", with Birkett on "Birksted wombat wobbleboard," the Serbian dance song "Ajde Jano," whose lyrics she wrote herself (and which she sings with a nasal folk twang), and the zippy Breton dance song "Changerais-Tu," about counting sheep -- this last, in French, has unbelievably nasal vocals from MacKenzie, a Breton "one-two-three-four," and "sheep bleats" (also unbelievably authentic) from Birkett. Chris even gets his relatives into the act: the 16th-century lament "Griogair" ("Gregor") features Jim Birkett's recording of a crackling fire and May Birkett in the rocking chair.

"Fhear a' Bhata" ("The Boatman") is a traditional love song that also turns up on Eilidh Mackenzie's Eideadh na Sgeulachd and Màiri Mac Innes's This Feeling Inside; Talitha MacKenzie introduces it on alto recorder, then sings it virtually a cappella, with just a keyboard drone and pre-recorded waves, and it's gorgeous. "Saor an t-Sabhaidh" ("The Sawing Joiner") opens with didjeridoo and then saxophones before settling into another rapid-fire waulking beat. The title track is a slightly different version of "Coisich a Rùin," with the multi-talented MacKenzie in a softer frame of mind, almost lullaby-like, and backing herself up on clàrsach (the Scottish harp), piano, chimes, and flute. It all ends with "A Fhleasgaich Òig" ("O Young Bachelor"), which profits from the Scottish pipes of James MacDonald Reid. All by herself, Talitha MacKenzie is a waulking -- and walking -- advertisement for Scottish independence.