35 f Beyond Fiddle
The extraordinary Duncan Chisholm has taken the art and soul of Scottish fiddle playing to another level. Hector Christie is quite overcome.
to speak to my companion, I can only give a weak and inadequate thumbs-up, such is the power of Duncan Chisholm’s play- ing. I’m at Sidmouth Folk Week, and Dun- can is the man I’ve come to speak to and to see perform.
W He’s touring the show Tracks From The
Trilogy, ie the Strathglass Trilogy, at whose heart lie the three glens of Glen Strathfar- rar, Glen Cannich and Glen Affric, which musically represent the core of the ancient Chisholm Clan lands. Each has inspired, and in turn has merited its own album. What this concert showcases is the culmi- nation of six years work. This started with the release of Farrar in 2008, was followed in 2010 by the release of Cannaich, and culminated after another two years with the release of Affric. While Affric on one hand brings this project to a conclusion, it simultaneously provides the launch pad for further work. Of which more later.
This is the first time I’ve seen Duncan
play, and I’m immediately conscious of the fact that this isn’t just another good fiddler – this is an artist totally without artifice. Mike Harding has said that Duncan is “one
ithin seconds of his bow touching the strings, I’m helplessly gripped by a wave of emotion I barely understand. Too overcome
of the best fiddle players to have come out of Scotland”. The trouble with this state- ment is that, while undoubtedly true, it doesn’t convey how or why, and it doesn’t put sufficient distance between his work and that of those new kids on the block who seem to pop up every year or three,
and have similar sounding claims made on their behalf. Of course the man himself, now in his 40s, is no ‘new kid’, and whether in previous incarnations with what he him- self has described as a “Highland rock group”, Wolfstone, to special projects such as the 2002 Clunes Collection to his current membership of the Julie Fowlis Band, he’s actually been around the block.
Mike Scott of The Waterboys has said that Duncan’s music “evokes communi- ty gatherings and celebrations”, and that indeed may be part of what he does, but it isn’t what has so moved me and others today.
At first I think the root of what I’m feeling comes from my Scottishness. I know the lands Duncan comes from and have some experience of their remoteness, unforgiving harsh- ness and utterly breathtaking beauty; these are lands where the skies can be huge, with cloud shadows chasing across deserted expanses at high speed in a silence so absolute it’s deafening, where vestigial remains of a cruel history remain, and where to unexpect- edly spot another human can seem an affront to the senses.
Photo: Judith Burrows
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