Festival of American Fiddle Tunes/Paul Conklin

 

Cape Breton Edition 2000

ARTICLES

TUNES

  • Alex MacDonnell's Favourite, by Dan R. MacDonald, as played by Buddy MacMaster
  • Queensville, jig by Dan R. MacDonald, as played by Buddy MacMaster
  • Lisa's Welcome Home, jig by Paul Cranford
  • Boreal Owl, strathspey by Paul Cranford
  • Angus Ranald MacIsaac, reel by Paul Cranford
  • Bell's Waltz, by Otis Tomas
  • Stewart Applegath's Reel, by Otis Tomas
  • The Longest Night, lament by Brenda Stubbert
  • My Great Friend John Morris, reel by Brenda Stubbert
  • Laureen's March, by Dougie MacDonald
  • The Periwig, Scottish pipe tune as played by Wilfred Prosper
  • Bessie's Reel, by Wilfred Propser

 

ARTICLE EXCERPTS

Buddy MacMaster: Cape Breton 's Living Legend

By Peter W. Marten

Hugh "Buddy" MacMaster of Judique is held in very high regard by all players and fans of Cape Breton music. It seems impossible to portray his style and technique without using superlatives such as "finest" and "greatest." Indeed, he receives the highest of praise from everyone who hears him play, whether they are dancers, listeners, or other fiddlers. Born in 1924, Buddy has released two recordings, Judique on the Floor and Glencoe Hall, and contributed tracks to various others, notably Traditional Music from Cape Breton Island. He is also active in teaching, and has figured prominently for years in the summer courses offered by Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, the Gaelic College on the Isle of Skye, where this interview took place in July 1998.

Let's start from the beginning. How did you get interested in fiddling?

Well, I was born in Timmons, Ontario, and I was four years old when my parents moved back to Cape Breton. They lived in Ontario for a few years; my father was a hard-rock miner at the time. Just about as far back as I can remember, I enjoyed music, and I guess I heard some music before we left Timmons. I can just remember one fellow playing a little bit, but I must have heard others as well. I can't remember that, but I learned some tunes somehow. I'd be doing mouth music, you know, jigging the tunes, and I'd have two little sticks, playing the violin by the way, and imagining that I was a great fiddle player. So then we moved down to Judique, Inverness County, in Nova Scotia, and apparently I was still doing this with the little sticks, and my grandfather, my mother's father, saw me doing this and he whittled out a piece of wood shaped like a fiddle, you know, so it looked a little more like a fiddle.

I suppose I didn't carry on that way for too long, but then I maybe got away from playing with sticks, you know. But I enjoyed music, and there'd be picnics, sort of a field day, and they'd have a piper there, and I remember following the piper around, you know, listening to the music, and then afterwards I rigged up an old kind of make-believe bagpipes, and I'd be marching around [laughs].

But they didn't buy you a set of pipes?

No, but it was just a love I had for the music that was making me do these things. When I was eleven, I went upstairs and I discovered my father's violin in the trunk. He was away at the time, so I took it down to the kitchen. I got part of a tune on the violin that day. I'm sure it wasn't in tune and there was one broken string on it, but I got part of a tune: "The Rock Valley Jig." I was playing it on G, I didn't know the difference. There was a fiddler, a cousin of mine, came to the house; he could play, and he said I should play that tune on the key of C, so I switched to C. Of course, I wouldn't have known C from G then, anyways. I could tell by the sound -- it sounded better on C.

Do you still play that one?

Occasionally, yeah. It reminds me of that day, you know, when I play that tune. So, I've been playing ever since that day. My mother gave me some money to go up to the store and buy a string, and I got that in the violin someway and I learned to tune the violin pretty quick.

So did your parents play, too?

My father played a little bit. I think when he was a young man he played more, but he got away from it. Just very seldom he'd pick up the violin and play it for his own enjoyment. His mother could play the violin, and my father had a brother that played, he lived in the Boston area -- I didn't hear him when I was young. None of my mother's brothers or sisters played, but they all enjoyed music. But there are a lot of fiddlers related to my mother's people, like Dan R. MacDonald, who composed a lot of tunes that are played now, and Alex Francis MacKay from Queensville, Inverness County, and there are others.

Who did you look up to when you were learning to play, after you'd gotten started?

There was a man living in Judique, Alexander MacDonnell, and I used to enjoy his playing. Of course, there weren't many fiddle players around my area-right in Judique-but this Alexander MacDonnell, he used to come to the house, to my parents' home, and he was quite a good player. He played by ear, but he learned these tunes from other players that used to visit him, who read music, so he always had his tunes quite correct. He always stressed that to me, that I should try to pick up the tunes, to play them, as correct as possible.

There was another fella used to come to our place, Angus MacMaster, but he's no relation of mine; he played. And then a little later, other musicians used to come to the house. Bill Lamey, he was a good player. He read music and he used to play on the radio, and he was quite popular. I really enjoyed his playing. My sister played piano, so he used to like to come to my house and my sister would accompany him.

And Dan Hughie MacEachern, that'd be Jackie Dunn's grand-uncle, her grandfather's brother, he used to come to our place a lot. And of course, Dan R. MacDonald, and Gordon MacQuarrie, he would have a book of tunes called The Cape Breton Collection [by Gordon MacQuarrie], around 1939 to '41, something around that time. So, my parents enjoyed the music and all these musicians used to come to our house.

Later on, while I was growing up and working for a few years, Winston Fitzgerald used to come the house then, so we always had a lot of music around the home.

When did you learn to read music?

Well, I was about 23.

So you were going for quite a few years before you learned to read...

Yeah, I used to play by ear. I could pick the tunes up pretty quick, I guess quicker than I can now by ear. You know, I guess when you're younger it's easier to pick up tunes. I depend on the music more now. I was working in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, and a fella that was rooming with me took me to this lady's house, Mrs. Mildred Leadbeater. She was a pianist and she told me I should learn to read the music. She just drew up the five lines and marked the notes, things like that, and that seemed to get me more interested in learning to read, so I got an instruction book and I picked it up myself.

Was there any kind of attitude against reading music? Were there a lot of people around who could read music?

Well, not too many, except these fellas that I used to hear. But a few years after I started to play, you know, there was more fiddlers coming to the house, and most of these fellas could read music. They were pretty well advanced [at it.] Of course, Dan Hughie MacEachern, and Dan R., they were good composers and they used to write their tunes [down].

How do you feel your repertoire has changed over the years?

Well, I still play quite a few of the older tunes that I've played for years, because a lot of the old tunes that came from Scotland here, they're really old standards that are always popular, and they're good for square dancing and step-dancing, so I think most of the Cape Bretoners still fall back on these old tunes. But a lot of the newer tunes, they don't seem to survive like the old ones, you know? You play them for a while and then you kind of lose interest in them, but some of these older tunes, they'll never die. I hear them over here, like "Miss Drummond of Perth" and "King George IV" and "Miss Lyle" and all those tunes, the "Duke of Gordon's Birthday," there's many tunes. I hear they're popular here, and they were brought to Cape Breton 175 years ago and they're still popular, you know?

...

[Peter Martin works as a translator and teacher in Helsinki, Finland. His main interests are Celtic, French-Canadian and Finnish fiddling.]

 

Paul Stewart Cranford: Keeping the Light

By Jerry Holland

Known by most as a lighthousekeeper / fiddler, Paul Cranford's accomplishments and contribution to Celtic music have long gone unrecognized by many. Paul's love and respect for the Cape Breton music traditions have been his "guiding light" for many years now. Paul's publishing of historical and contemporary music books, his own composing, and his incredible knowledge of music combine to make him a unique resource in this genre. His efforts at preserving this music -- collecting it and making it available to current and future generations -- are a gift to anyone interested in this culture. Paul is a dear and kind friend who stands in the background and gives without expecting anything in return. I have tremendous respect for the man's energy, intelligence, and generosity.

Why don't you start off by telling us where you were born and things like that?

I was born in Toronto, Ontario.

You came to Cape Breton when?

1975. I was twenty-one. I was just traveling. It was a summer where I was free. I'd been going to school the year before and decided I wanted to do a bit of traveling before my next move. I'd been interested in music for many, many years and was looking for a place to practice music, so I just went off traveling.

What kinds of music and instruments were you playing then?

I had a banjo but had been listening to all sorts of different things. I was approaching the banjo in a style they call melodic style. It was somewhat bluegrass-inspired, but I wasn't necessarily playing tunes out of that repertoire. I was just trying to play melodies on a banjo.

Was Cape Breton the last stint of that tour, as far as your vacationing?

I didn't get any further. When I left, I figured I'd go around the world [laughter]. I made it to Cape Breton and I was only here for about three days when I landed a job as a lighthousekeeper.

That's been the talk of North America -- the character that's the lighthousekeeper, fiddler, banjo player, as well as composer and all-around folklorist. Music-wise, what did your job as lighthouse keeper do for you?

Well, the first year I was out there, I could have been on the North Pole. Although the island [St. Paul Island] was adjacent to Cape Breton, I was totally isolated -- other than the mailman I didn't have contact with Cape Breton people. I was just practicing technique -- and everything from Bach, to ragtime, to fiddle tunes. It wasn't until the next year, when I transferred to Cape Breton -- that I met many different musicians and started my apprenticeship here.

So your lifestyle started off with approximately a year's isolation.

Just to get my physical "chops" together, practicing technique on the banjo. Mind you, when I got ashore and started playing with people, my sense of rhythm was bad because I'd been by myself too much, not playing with accompaniment or for people.

In being back on the mainland of Cape Breton for the period of a month on and a month off...

Well, the first year [on the lighthouse] was a full year, and then I came to Cape Breton for a full year. Within weeks, I met musicians and started visiting regularly in their homes -- Sonny Slade, Johnny Wilmot, Tommy Basker, and Doug and Margaret MacPhee. Those four households were within driving range of the lighthouse I was on that year, and I sort of came under all of their collective wings... They'd take me around to house parties and introduce me to different musicians around the island. They'd teach me to use my ears, to learn tunes by ear, playing a phrase at a time, that sort of thing. I had the best of teachers, you could say, although they were my friends, not my official teachers. And because they were older than me, I had a different type of relationship with them. I'd come visiting them, and maybe I'd cut the lawn, or help with some errands -- I became a part of their lives.

...

You had no prior knowledge of Cape Breton music when you first came here, is that correct?

That's right. I didn't know the difference between types of Celtic fiddle music -- Don Messer, Cape Breton, Irish, Scottish -- I was naive to all the subtle differences in style.

The interest must have been quite strong for you to go the distances that you have. But to have gone as far as you have -- with a focus on the Cape Breton and Irish styles of music -- what was it about these particular types of music that grabbed you?

I'm not sure if it's the types of music or the people who played them. I remember the first night I went to a party with Johnny Wilmot. I was so taken aback by his style that when I went home that night, I practiced till dawn. I just kept at it. I knew that that was what I had to do.

So there was a definite inspiration. Did the other influences such as Margaret and Dougie MacPhee and Tommy Basker and Sonny Slade have similar effects?

I think every one of them did. But what they really offered was hospitality. I'd been interested in other kinds of music as a teenager, but it was never accessible. If you wanted to become a jazz musician, it was this long-winded technical study - there didn't seem to be an immediate social setting to allow me to learn the music. I don't think there's any better way to learn music than gradually, from your friends... If you learn a tune one-on-one, your source doesn't let you get away with mistakes. But then, the next week you'd go somewhere else and hear the same tune played subtly differently. And yet you'd already passed the test from the first mentor, saying "this is it." So it didn't take me long to realize that there's no such thing as a "fixed" version of a tune. So whenever I learn a tune, if it's got any history to it, I try to search it out. If it's an older tune, I try to find the original settings as well as the current settings, and as many recorded and book references before I create my own setting.

...

Where did your interest in books come from? What drove you to acquire your first book here?

I can remember one time I went to a pub with Dougie MacPhee and was listening to Buddy MacMaster. Every tune that would go by, I'd ask, "What tune is that, Dougie? What tune's that?" He'd be naming them and I'd be taking notes, writing down all the tune titles. Well you go and listen to Buddy for a couple of hours, there are an awful lot of tunes on the list! [laughter] Dougie would be laughing at me, I'd be writing the stuff down so much. I was like that with everybody. Wherever I'd go, I'd be asking, "What's that tune?" So people would say, "Go to this book, go to that book," or "It's in The Skye Collection." Well at the time, The Skye was only available in the archives [The Beaton Institute] -- so I thought, "If I want this book so badly, there must be other people who want it, too." So that was how I started publishing books.

...

The Skye Collection was your first effort, What took place between The Skye and your second project, being The Simon Fraser Collection, to put that drive on -- what stirred the interest?

When I put The Skye out, I thought that this was the kingpin of books, but the more I got to know, the more I realized that the repertoire was huge and so I started accumulating photocopies of older books -- visiting people like Joe MacLean, who had a huge library of old books, Alex Francis MacKay, who inherited a lot of Dan R. [MacDonald]'s old books, Danny Fraser, who has a large collection of photocopies of books from the National Library of Scotland... So I had a network of people who were helping me find older books. And then once I found them, I had to make head or tail of what music had already been accepted by the tradition and what music could be accepted by the tradition. So I'd take photocopies of books to people like Winston Fitzgerald, Mildred Leadbeater or Dan Joe MacInnis -- people who liked to read through old books -- and lend my copies to them for awhile and they'd mark the tunes that they thought I should check out.

And the reason you chose The Simon Fraser Collection?

It was just a gut feeling that it was different from other books. A lot of the settings of tunes are from Gaelic songs and also there was a lot of history in the book -- it was a little deeper than your average tune book because it had a mixture of the dance music as well as the slower music. So I guess that was really a publishing decision, that this was something that would be interesting to the public. It's not mainstream to the Cape Breton tradition, as a book like The Skye would be, or some of the things I've done since. But I just thought it was a rich part of Scotland's heritage that was unavailable.

So, I put those two books, The Skye and Fraser, out in the marketplace, and then, in the mid-'80s, I took a sabbatical from publishing. It wasn't until the late '80s, when you and I did our book [Jerry Holland's Collection of Fiddle Tunes] that I started into the business of publishing books again.

My book was the first after a period of six years?

Yours was really the first, because the first two were classic books that were just being made available again. What you and I did was from the ground up. We started writing your tunes down in about 1980, but it wasn't with books in mind. When I used to come to visit you, I was just trying to glean some music, to learn to play better. Sometimes it would be repertoire, but a lot of times I'd just be listening to you -- we didn't have any agenda when we were writing those tunes out. I'd say it was easily five or six years of me visiting you and writing tunes out before we thought of the possibility of a book.

These tunes that you would write out for me, nine times out of ten you would record them, take them back to the island, and painstakingly take one note at a time and figure out what I was playing. You acquired an ability to be able to do that quite fast.

Taking it off a tape recorder and transcribing is different than learning a tune one-on-one. Learning a tune one-on-one in some ways really puts the pressure on you to have a sharp ear, because it's embarrassing to take forever on a tune and not get it! So I developed my ear over a many-year period, and it's the same with transcribing. I've gotten better over time.

What were some of the things you faced - the easy things, the hard things, and so on when putting my book together?

Well, I had just gotten involved with computers. Before that I had been using a music typewriter. In the early '80s, I apprenticed with an older German music typesetter for a couple of months one summer. Also, Ron Caplan helped me to learn the ropes by publishing my transcriptions in Cape Breton's Magazine. With those experiences I quickly realized that there was no way I was going to be able to typeset entire books, edit, arrange and continue being a musician and a lighthousekeeper. Typesetting alone was a full time job. So it wasn't until 1987, when I got a home computer -- a Mac with reasonable music software -- that I was in a position to create books. And that was when our project came along. We put the book out in 1988. So that shows how they went hand in hand.

...

I've heard a lot of your compositions, and I have very great respect for them. Often you run tunes by me, looking to get them critiqued...

It's tricky to get an honest critique of a tune, because as soon as you say it's "your" tune, people look at it in a different way. So I often would try to sneak a tune by people, and play a medley of tunes with an old tune in front of it and an old tune behind it and sneak the new one in the middle and see if it caught anyone's ear.

Your book [The Lighthouse Collection] is mainly original tunes. Do you think that it's solely focused toward the Cape Breton fiddler?

No, the styles of the tunes are diverse. Lots of tunes are Scottish-oriented, others Irish, and there are tunes that would be specifically Cape Breton. Because that's what my history is. I've studied the old Scottish books a lot, and then some of the dance tunes would have more of the Cape Breton feel. And I spent a lot of time in Ireland. Between 1990 and the time of the book, I was in Ireland, I think, every year. There's no doubt that there's a lot that are Irish in influence. So those three -- the Irish, the Scottish, and Cape Breton -- are the main styles in it. And they are being played in those circles.

...

Paul, I feel you have a niche here in Cape Breton that works. Is it comfortable and are you happy with it?

The balance works for me. It allows me to be productive - with the research side of music - and at the same time, to have fun with it socially, and to manage a business. The combination of the lighthouse and the people I live with, it all has a good balance.

Today you have a home you're based out of and I've experienced your hospitality and your cooking. I would guess that you have a lot of visitors. Could you talk a little bit about that - the types of people you come in contact with through your home, either to do with music or your business...

Most of the people who visit me are musical friends; I do try to keep the business mail order only. But it seems I'm also one of the "sights to visit" when people come to Cape Breton. So I'm often meeting musicians who have come to Cape Breton for music. They'll often get funneled through friends to my place for a session of music or whatever. There's a piano in the center of my house and fiddles hanging from the walls so it's pretty obvious when someone walks in the door that music is the focus of what goes on here.

[Paul's book and album of original music: The Lighthouse Collection (book and CD), 1996. Other projects from Cranford Publications: The Skye Collection, 1887, 1979; The Simon Fraser Collection, 1816, 1982; Music from the Simon Fraser Collection (CD), 1982, 2000; Jerry Holland's Collection of Fiddle Tunes, 1988, 1992; A Tribute to Dan R. MacDonald (cassette), 1989; The Alexander Walker Collection, 1866, 1992; Brenda Stubbert's Collection of Fiddle Tunes, 1994; Winston Fitzgerald: A Collection of Fiddle Tunes, 1997.

To order books or recordings from Cranford Publications, or for a free copy of Silver Apple News, contact Paul at (888) 860-8073; www.cranfordpub.com.]

 

Violin Maker Otis Tomas: Exploring the Link between the Trees and the Tunes

By David Papazian

Otis Tomas, originally from Rhode Island, has made Cape Breton his home for the past twenty-five years. Otis' violins are valued and played by many traditional fiddlers, including Brenda Stubbert and Paul Cranford. Also an accomplished musician and composer, Otis understands the important relationship between his raw materials and the end goal -- music. This interview took place in Otis' workshop in St. Ann's, Cape Breton.

How did you get involved in violin making?

Well, I started out actually in my late teensI began making guitars, and I still make them. I was about twenty when I started playing the violin. The more I got into the violin world, my interest started shifting more and more to violin making.

So it grows out of your own passion for traditional music?

Oh, yes, definitely. I think if I didn't play it, I wouldn't have the same kind of connection with it.

You used to work in the house there, for years, in slightly smaller confines.

Yes, the house started out as one room, and I had a bench in the corner, so I started on the kitchen table with a trunk of tools I'd pack away under the bed every night. Gradually as the house grew, I was on the porch for awhile, then I built a room on the back Finally, when we got tired of sawdust in the bed and in our dinner [laughs], it was time to move out Probably five years ago, I built this workshop, about seven steps off my back porch. We've had a lot of good sessions out here -- many wonderful players and wonderful tunes have passed through these walls. That's all part of [my] violin making -- there's good acoustics in here, very alive sound.

Is a violin more than simply a tool to play music?

Yes, it's not strictly functional. Like the music itself, it's a whole aesthetic experience You spend the time trying to make a nice varnish, to make it look good and feel good -- that's all part of it, too. Certainly, it has to play [well] and the voice is the first thing But it has more dimensions than that -- the artistry, the conception, the methodology. That's why I like to play around with the designs, the circles, the proportions

Could you tell me a bit about those shapes and proportions?

Many years ago, the mathematical Pythagorean structure was seen as an order that went through everything. Do you know that old story of Pythagoras hearing a blacksmith banging on an anvil with his hammers, and they were playing intervals in the ringing of the hammers? He asked the smith about it and found that the weights of the hammers were, for example, two pounds, four pounds, and eight pounds. They had a nice simple ratio in the weights of them, giving out tones that played this musical scale. He took that as a mathematical harmony that went through all of nature and [theorized] that it ordered the planets and the heavens -- this archetypal harmony. He mathematized the ideas of music and harmony that describe our musical scale of today.

So you played around with some of those ideas?

Yes, you can take those same numbers that generate the musical harmonies and treat them visually or geometrically in these simple ratios; the curves and the arches can be built out, an arrangement of circles, describing the lower bouts -- composing with them the same way you'd compose a tune, something that has nice little echoes and resonances. You see them and work with them mathematically. I'm not claiming these aesthetics have any direct relationship to the way an instrument plays and sounds -- that's a whole other side of it.

Violin making seems to involve a compromise between opposing characteristics, hard and soft, rigid and elastic Do you agree?

Yes, I think with any kind of instrument making, you can look at it as a balance between the structure and its function. You need a certain strength to withstand the pressures that it's put under, but what you're looking for is that point which optimizes the acoustical efficiencyit wants to be very vibrant and alive and free and light, but if you take that to an extreme, obviously it's going to collapse. So you try to balance that point where you have the strength you need but still the lightness and freedom that you look for in projecting its voice. Every instrument has an individual voice; there's no single answer of what a good violin is -- no two sound alike. That's what's interesting, the uniqueness of each voice that comes from a particular tree. You have to make judgements along the way; a little thicker or thinner, arch it a little differently. Spruce that is used on sound boards of just about all stringed instruments, pianos, guitars, fiddles, has the highest ratio between its stiffness and weight, of any other wood. So, it's very strong, but light in mass and that gives it the freedom to vibrate. The top is the most vibrant and responsive part. But the whole instrument vibrates in ways more complex than anyone can really understand or explain with a simple formula.

...

You like to use the local woods found here in Cape Breton?

Oh, very much. Using the local materials is very important to me now. I'm interested in discovering what I can find right here. Look at the maple in that fiddle [points to his own fiddle]. It's made out of firewood -- a friend of mine found it in his woodpile. Lately I've been using the two trees pictured on my website [www.fiddletree.com]. The sugar maple is local, certainly, about a five minute walk from here. I knew this tree long before I cut it down. I'd looked at it for a long time. I knew it had this quilted grain that was figured. I didn't take it lightly, you know, going out and cutting it down. The center of it was rotten, but it was still growing. The trunk at the ground was six feet across.

You have spruce from Nova Scotia as well?

Yes, from the mainland. I've seen a little spruce in Cape Breton, but the woods have been cut over by the logging industry and now the pulp companies. Good spruce is especially hard to find. The log I have came from Lunenburg County south of Halifax, an old wood lot, which is run as an eco-forestry school; the farm represents a wood lot that's been under careful selective management for over 150 years, since the first settlers came there. It's never been cut over -- a mature forest of two and three hundred year old red spruce, grown slow and straight and tall A healthy forest should grow cellos, I always figure. Lately, I've taken to collecting the resin from the balsam firs for my varnish. It's quite tedious. The little blisters that appear on the bark are full of resin -- just a few drops here and there. It makes a lovely gold-brown colour after it's been cooked and reduced. For me, it puts more integrity into the instrument, to know all of its parts intimately.

You make all the fittings for your violins as well?

Yes, I make the pegs and chin rest and tailpiece. It just doesn't seem right to use manufactured ones after following the process from a tree through to a finished instrument.

You have certain details that are unique in the carving of your violins, kind of a personal signature to you work.

I'll usually make a little knot in the purfling just below the button of the heel where it joins the body. I don't go overboard -- I try not to, anyway. The fiddle is such a classic perfect form as it is.

Does an instrument take years and lots of playing to mature its sound, its voice?

Yes, I think a lot of the magic of the great old instruments comes from the fact that they've matured that voice for three hundred years. I think an instrument, a violin especially, should just get better as it gets olderyou like to think that something nice is left behind after you're gone. I certainly thought about mortality when I went to cut that big old maple tree. Music is the real eternal element. You take strips, the flesh of the tree, and you bend it around and carve it and put it under all kinds of stresses, stretch these strings across. It's nothing like it was after spending two hundred years growing straight up, feeling the wind blow through it and the seasons change. You try to build it in a way that all the parts are comfortable and relaxed, but even so, the wood has to get used to these new stresses and has to come to a new equilibriumThat all takes time and the varnish hardens and changes over the years. It's a bit difficult to send them off as soon as they're done. They're just babies and I don't get to know them very well.

...

[Otis Tomas can be contacted at R.R. 4, Baddeck, N.S., Canada B0E 1B0; (902) 929-2766; otis@fiddletree.com; http://www.fiddletree.com

[David Papazian makes and repairs violins, mandolins, and octave mandolins. He can be contacted at 44435 Cabot Trail, Little River, Cape Breton, N.S., Canada B0C 1H0; (902) 929-2953; papazian@ cranfordpub.com. He plays fiddle, concertina, Irish pipes, and a variety of other instruments.]

 

Wilfred Prosper: A Mi 'kmaq Fiddler

By Paul MacDonald

Wilfred Prosper was born in 1927 at Barra Head, Richmond County, Cape Breton. Barra Head is situated at the southern mouth of the Bras d'Or lakes, near St. Peters. Close by is the community of Chapel Island, an Indian reserve. Several miles across the lake to the north is the community of Eskasoni, Cape Breton's largest reserve. Several miles across the lake to the west are the communities known as Malagawatch, Whycocomagh and Nyanza, all Micmac (Mi'kmaq) reserves. The Micmac communities were encompassed by French, Irish and later Scottish immigrants, a rich cultural mosaic. Surrounding communities include St. Peters, Arichat, Irish Cove, West Bay, Castle Bay, Iona, Christmas Island, East Bay, River Denys and Glencoe. Although these communities would seem isolated from each other, they were easily accessible by boat in summer and over the ice in winter. All of these communities were known for their music. Here the Micmac were faced with the challenge of learning three languages: French, English, and then Gaelic. It must have been like starting over each time.

There was a fourth language to learn: the fiddle. As in other North American native cultures from Peru to Alaska, the fiddle and its music was adopted by the native Micmac culture in Cape Breton. By the turn of the 20th century, the fiddle was a popular instrument on all the reserves. What is unique about the Micmac fiddlers is that they learned the various regional tunes and styles -- French, Irish and Scottish. A snapshot of the repertoire of a Micmac fiddler early in the last century would certainly illustrate that. Various regional styles coexisted at one time in Cape Breton and the Micmac fiddlers, itinerant by nature, picked up tunes all over the island. Although there was no actual Micmac fiddle music, the Micmac fiddlers bring a unique rhythm to Cape Breton fiddle music, a rhythm adopted from the rhythm of the Micmac language. In fact, a childhood game was to make up Micmac words for the first four bars of a tune that mimicked the rhythm of the phrase. A practice also common in English and Gaelic, mouth music helped in remembering the tunes -- a primitive melodic index.

Wilfred Prosper started out on the guitar and switched to the fiddle at age sixteen. Wilfred's mother Clara Young could jig a few tunes. She came from the Antigonish area and had heard Hugh A. MacDonald and other Lanark County players.

Wilfred recalls, "My great grandfather on my mother's side was a fiddler. His name was William Nevins. They were from Whycocomagh originally but they were living in Dartmouth. His wife was killed in the 1917 Halifax explosion there. He played mostly clogs and one of his sons, Richard, was a clog dancer. He was in the Boer war, that fellow. My grandfather was a penny whistle player; he was also living in Dartmouth. There is a Nevins Avenue named after them. I used to go visit them there during the war, 1943."

Among the first fiddlers that Wilfred heard was Simon Cremo (1900-1964). Simon was an itinerant fiddler and he sold baskets. His territories included all the reserves and communities surrounding the Bras d'Or lakes. He would come to the house and play the fiddle for two hours for one dollar. He was reputed to have played in every house in Richmond county. His repertoire was a generous mixture of French, Irish and Scotch tunes. He was an influential player. Fiddler Johnny Wilmot credited Simon as the source for the then-popular pipe tune "Miss Scott." For years it went by the title of "The Indian Reel." This occurred in Qubec as well -- Jean Carignan's father learned from an Indian fiddler in the Rimouski area. Later, Jean Carignan recorded a different reel going by the same title. Simon's son Lee Cremo, who passed away last fall, went on to become one of North America's most famous Native fiddlers. Lee was often referred to as "the Electric Indian" when he played in a band called Eastern Variation. Wilfred and Lee were good friends and played together for many years.

"Lee was a nice boy, I really miss him. A big chew of tobacco and a big smile on his face! I miss Lee. His father Simon was pretty much the samehappy-go-lucky! The greatest people on earth, boy. Simon could go without a bite to eat for a week as long as he had that chew of tobacco and a big smile on! AhGod almighty I don't think there was a bad bone in his body! He was reputed to have had a third language, Scottish (Gaelic). I heard him speak a few words of it. Some of those fellows spoke French, too. This old fellow from over here, Micky Paul, they claim he spoke French. He used to get by selling baskets, too. He used to go to the Magdalen Islands and Rimouski to sell them. But the best I ever heard Simon play the fiddle was in Barra Head, 1944. He had lived in Eskasoni for two years. When he came to Barra Headby cripes he opened up, boy Matty Lewis (Eskasoni) had the guitar But he couldn't use the finger-work, he had a slide. There was another guy who used to come around Chapel Island there, his name was MacKenzie. He was quite the musician. He had The Scottish Violinist (Scott Skinner's Book). Now who in the name of God would believe that an Indian could play out of that book in them days. I'm talking, oh God, I was just a kid, over sixty years ago. He married a girl from Chapel Island andcould she dance And she played the piano a little bit. Another good player was George Paul's father Frank Paul, he had great tunes. He played the same tunes as Simon but he used to play a lot of Bill Lamey's stuff too, from the records."

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Today Wilfred has developed a highly personal style. His repertoire consists of slow airs, marches, clogs, hornpipes, jigs, Irish reels, French reels, and Scottish strathspeys and reels. He learned to read music on his own and was further encouraged to read by fiddler Father Angus Morris. Wilfred plays with a gentle lilt, yet he has a driving swing and spirit to his music. His music is highly ornamented, as he uses a variety of bowing and melodic techniques. He is a sensitive slow air player and plays them with beautiful open phrasing. Wilfred is also a composer and some of his tunes, including "Elmer Briand's Jig," are popular with the other Cape Breton fiddlers.

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Wilfred often performs at various festivals and concerts, including Eskasoni's own Scottish concert. Each year, Wilfred is host to a session in his home following the concert. These sessions have become as popular as the concert itself. Wilfred has appeared playing the fiddle, along with Lee Cremo, in the films "Down Home" by Aly Bain and the Irish film entitled "The Magic Fiddle." Wilfred, a respected elder and translator in his own community, is a long- standing member of the Cape Breton Fiddlers' Association. He told me once that he can't explain why he loves Scottish music so much. He said, "Maybe I'm just a Scotchman in Indian garb!"

[Paul MacDonald is a guitar accompanist, a recording engineer, and a writer based in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia.]

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Fiddler and Composer Dougie MacDonald: In the Spirit of the Music

By Jerry Holland

Since making his first public performance at the age of ten at the Glendale festival in Cape Breton, Dougie has gone on to become one of the finest fiddlers in the Cape Breton tradition. He is also a first-rate composer whose tunes have been played by a long list of musicians including Solas, Liz Doherty, and myself. Many have also become popular session tunes. "It's a wonderful compliment to have anybody play any of your tunes," says Dougie. Dougie's first book of original compositions came out in 1992, and he is now working at a second book, to include the tunes from the first one along with many new ones. Through his compositions, his performing, and his teaching, Dougie has been and continues to be an influence on many people, young and old. In the true spirit of traditional music, Dougie delights in sharing the music and passing it on.

Dougie was born in 1968 in Port Hawkesbury, Cape Breton. He explains, "There was an ice storm that night, and they couldn't make it to the hospital in Antigonish [on mainland Nova Scotia]. I was impatient -- I wanted to be a true Cape Bretoner." Dougie got an early start on the fiddle, getting his first instrument at age five. His father was a fiddler, as were some other relatives on both sides of the family.

One of Dougie's major influences was the fiddler and composer Dan Hughie MacEachern, a neighbor when he was growing up. "And of course, music was going on around me -- my uncles played. Howie MacDonald was playing around the same time I was. I remember the first album I got that had any kind of influence on me was Theresa MacLellan'sAnd then Carl MacKenzie came out with the one he had 'Tullochgorum' on. And after that, your Master Cape Breton Fiddler album came out. After I heard that, I wanted to play the fiddle, I didn't just do it because it was, at that point, kind of expected of me -- I really found enjoyment in it for myself. Because that album was more of the time, and modern, and I saw that it could be taken in another direction."

Dougie was first inspired to start composing when he saw the respect that new tunes were given: "Dan Hughie MacEachern was painting my father's saw mill in Queensville. He went home and said, 'I'm going to make a tune for that.' And he came back with 'The Red Mill' and he gave it to me. There was another jig on the back -- he made two of them that afternoon. It was just before the concert in Glendale and I played it onstage. And I remember there were about eight fiddlers around when I got off the stage, saying 'Where'd you get that tune?' Wilfred Prosper was one of them. They learned the tune from me -- I played it for them. And I guess that's where I got an interest in composing. I thought, gee, I was important for five minutes! So that was the first time I felt -- I wouldn't call it respect from me peers -- but people older than me took notice, because of a tune I played that nobody else knew."

"'The Split Level Reel' was the first tune I made, when I was sixteenComposing, for me, is as hard a job as playing the fiddle and staying in practice, or moreso. Because you've only got seven notes there and you're trying to rearrange them in a way that nobody else has before. It's a real job to do." Dougie explains that while sometimes tunes just come to him, other times he has to sit down and consciously work at them. "Sometimes I'll just pick the paper up, and I don't know how, but I can almost see the notes going on the page. Other times I can hum a piece, and other times I have to work the hell out of it. I might work at something for a month. I might work at trying to make a rotten reel for a month and come up with a half-decent jig!"

Asked about his practice habits, Dougie says, "I guess when I'm at it, I'm fairly well disciplined. I try to break everything down to its most basic element, note-for-note. Now I'm working at improving my vibrato, so I'll keep going back and doing one thing over and over and always trying to make it sound better, and reaching for something that I'll probably never achieve. I guess the reason I like to practice is that if you really stick at it, you can eventually hear an improvement in yourself. And it's always nice to get a new line of tunes to play. You put a CD on, and perhaps you hear somebody doing something that you're not doing, and you try to dissect that and bring it into what you're doing yourself."

Asked what his favorite setting is to play music in, Dougie replies, "Well, if I had a choice of anything, just sitting down for one person that enjoyed it and understood what I was doing." But he also enjoys playing for dances, and the age of the crowd will determine what tunes he'll chose to play. "If you get a bunch of younger people, they might want you to play a little faster, and maybe a different run of tunes than you play for an older group. I like to try to bring the older people back to when they were young and listening to music, by choosing tunes that they remember listening to and maybe haven't heard for awhile -- the Winston tunes, or maybe an old Buddy tune."

"The place that I find the most rewarding to play is the local nursing home, and watch people get fifty years younger in an hour. That generation gave us these tunes, and they gave us a way to make maybe a partial living -- it's hard to make a living around here, and if you go out and play for a dance and get two hundred dollars, it's a help. And that's quite a gift that we were given."

Working as a miner most of his adult life, Dougie found it necessary to be away from Cape Breton for the better part of ten years. Unfortunately, he found it difficult if not impossible to play while he was away. "I didn't have a chance to. When you're working in camps, you have people working different shifts, so you can't play to the level or intensity you need to without waking everybody up." But he was able to do quite a bit of composing, and certainly had the desire to play. "The only thing I could do when I was away was compose. I made a lot of tunes away -- 'Marble Hill March,' 'John Morris's Reel,' the first part of 'Ciaran Tourish'They were all made away, while wanting to play the fiddle but not really being able to."

"I find I don't play because of the way it makes me feel. I play because of the way I feel when I'm not playing. I just don't feel 100% if I'm not doing it. It'll kind of bubble up inside me I get hard to live with when I'm not playing the fiddle!"

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[For more information or to order Dougie's recordings, see www.cranfordpub.com/dougie.]

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